Opinion ID: 2175776
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: maurice lewis' proposed testimony

Text: Maurice Lewis was a friend both of Ms. McConnell and of appellant Collins. He visited frequently in the home which Collins had shared with Ms. McConnell until a few weeks before the incident which precipitated this prosecution. Collins' counsel proffered that Lewis would testify that Ms. McConnell had a crack cocaine habit. Counsel argued that [t]he fact that she has a crack cocaine habit would show ... the regularity with which she would use drugs and the regularity [with] which she would keep them in her home. The trial judge viewed this testimony as irrelevant because Lewis had not seen drugs in the apartment on the day in question. She stated that the fact that Ms. McConnell had a drug habit by itself doesn't mean necessarily [that] there were drugs on the table.... That's a quantum leap to make. The judge's use of the word necessarily was not an aberration. After counsel had presented further argument, the judge remarked again that the fact that she has a drug problem doesn't necessarily mean that the drugs were hers. Several pages later in the transcript, the judge put the same thought in a slightly different way: it would be speculating that because she lives there and in the past has had some drugs there ... that the drugs that were found were definitely hers. Necessity and certainty were evidently deemed to be preconditions for admissibility. The judge repeated the same general theme in connection with the defense proffer of Ms. McConnell's testimony. She declared that whether or not Ms. McConnell displayed drugs in her apartment for friends in May or June really doesn't make any difference. Indeed, in the judge's view, [i]t makes no difference whether there were drugs the day before or whatever else. The only question is whether there were any drugs on the table that particular day. Okay. That's the only thing that's pertinent. What happened on prior occasions doesn't make one bit of difference. Courts ought not to be uncharitable when assessing what has been said by a participant in a fast-moving trial. We have generally declined in that context to attribute to remarks made by a prosecutor the most unfavorable interpretation which could possibly be given to them. Irick v. United States, 565 A.2d 26, 33 (D.C.1989). I think the same principle should apply with at least equal force to the comments of a trial judge. Nevertheless, I find the conclusion inescapable that the judge's evidentiary rulings in this case were predicated on a misconception of the proper standard in determining relevance. Repeatedly, the judge stated or implied that if proffered evidence did not necessarily prove the point Collins was trying to establish, then it was irrelevant. [3] The government claims that the correct analytical rubric here is the line of cases dealing with attempts by a defendant to show that a different individual committed the crime. See, e.g., Brown v. United States, 409 A.2d 1093, 1097 (D.C.1979) (before evidence of the guilt of another can be deemed relevant and thereby admissible, the evidence must clearly link that other person to the commission of the crime). More recently, however, this court has explained that [w]hat we mean by clearly link, as used first by this court in Brown, supra, 409 A.2d at 1097, is proof of facts or circumstances which tend to indicate some reasonable possibility that a person other than the defendant committed the charged offense. This proof permits the admission of evidence which otherwise is generally excluded because it is too remote in time and place, completely unrelated or irrelevant to the offense charged, or too speculative with respect to the third party's guilt.       There is no requirement that the proffered evidence must prove or even raise a strong probability that someone other than the defendant committed the offense. Rather, the evidence need only tend to create a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the offense. In this regard, our focus is on the effect the evidence has upon the defendant's culpability, and not the third party's culpability. Johnson v. United States, 552 A.2d 513, 516-17 (D.C.1989) (citations omitted) (emphasis in original). See also IA J. WIGMORE, EVIDENCE § 139, at 1724 (Tillers rev. ed. 1983): [I]t is not a question of absolute proof, nor even of strong probability, but only of raising a reasonable doubt about A's commission [of the offense], and for this purpose the slightest likelihood of B's commission may suffice or at least assist.... [I]f the evidence is in truth calculated to cause the jury to doubt, the court should not attempt to decide for the jury that this doubt is purely speculative and fantastic but should afford the accused every opportunity to create that doubt. A contrary rule is unfair to a really innocent accused. Even if the sole purpose of Lewis' proposed testimony had been to show that the drugs had probably been in the possession of Ms. McConnell rather than of Collins, I am satisfied that it would have been receivable under the Johnson test. In any event, I do not think we have to reach the Brown-Johnson line of analysis at all. The law ought not to be an arcane and remote intellectual discipline in which the lessons of real life are sedulously ignored. Everybody knows that drug users and are more likely than, say, Mother Theresa, to have cocaine in their homes. If Ms. McConnell was a cocaine addict a few months before the incident in question, then this made it more probable than it would otherwise have been that the officer was mistaken in his assumption that Collins was the source of the packet of cocaine. My colleagues correctly point out that defense counsel failed to proffer precisely when it was that Lewis claimed to have seen Ms. McConnell use cocaine. [4] It cannot be gainsaid that the defense posture would have been stronger if counsel had proffered an approximate date. Under the particular circumstances of this case, however, it would be unreasonable to penalize Collins on that account. The judge repeatedly stated that only the events on the day of the arrest were relevant. These remarks would have made any inquiry into the precise dates of Lewis' visits to the McConnell residence appear futile. Moreover, Collins' attorney specifically told the court that she would have to speak further with Lewis to obtain more detailed information about these visits, but the judge made her ruling that the proposed testimony was inadmissible before counsel was able to consult with her witness. Even if Lewis last visited the apartment several months before the incident, [5] I think evidence to that effect would have been admissible. It is a matter of common knowledge that drug addicts have great difficulty in kicking the habit. As I show below, an individual who was a cocaine addict in January is far more likely than a life-long non-user to have the dread substance in her home the following June. Ms. McConnell's use of cocaine in January would thus represent a brick in the wall of reasonable doubt, McCORMICK, supra, § 185, at 542-43, which Collins was attempting to construct, one section at a time. Moreover, any information from Lewis that Ms. McConnell was involved with cocaine a few months before Collins' arrest would have tended to corroborate Collins' own testimony that he last saw drugs when he moved out of Ms. McConnell's apartment at the end of April, 1988. [6] Whether Ms. McConnell's past drug use was relevant is surely one of those issues which might best be approached with what Justice Frankfurter has called the saving grace of common sense, Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81, 83-84, 75 S.Ct. 620, 622-23, 99 L.Ed. 905 (1955); see also Riggs Nat'l Bank v. District of Columbia, 581 A.2d 1229, 1262 (D.C.1990), rather than by resort to ruminations regarding temporal remoteness or by doctrinal adherence to purported rules of evidence which do not bear the slightest relation to reality. No matter how forbidding our ebony-colored robes may appear, we ought not to be blind as judges to what we know as men and women. Edwards v. Habib, 130 U.S.App. D.C. 126, 140, 397 F.2d 687, 701 (1968), cert. denied, 393 U.S. 1016, 89 S.Ct. 618, 21 L.Ed.2d 560 (1969). We adjudicate in the real world, and our decisions have real consequences for real people. Although invocation of scholarly works on the nature of drugs and addiction is hardly necessary to resolve the question confronting us, I pause to belabor the obvious. According to the World Health Organization, the characteristics of drug addiction include: 1. An overpowering desire or need (compulsion) to continue taking the drug and to obtain it by any means; 2. A tendency to increase the dose; 3. A psychic (psychological) and, sometimes, a physical dependence on the effects of the drug. G.F. UELMEN & V.G. HADDOX, DRUG ABUSE AND THE LAW § 2.3(a), at 2-4 (1990). The Council of the District of Columbia has told us that an addict is one who, among other things, has lost the power of self-control with reference to his [or her] addiction. D.C.Code § 33-501(24) (1988). Drug addiction is an illness. Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660, 667, 82 S.Ct. 1417, 1420-21, 8 L.Ed.2d 758 (1962). It results, among other things, in significant changes in the chemistry of the brain, which cannot easily be reversed. UELMEN & HADDOX, supra, § 2.3(b) at 2-132-14. It is surely no secret in 1991 that persistent abuse of drugs is not a malady for which the cure, even for those who seek one, comes simply, reliably or swiftly. Indeed, although short-term detoxification is not difficult, the problem is that after detoxificationeven years afterthe ex-addict remains at high risk of relapse. This is the fact that is recognized so correctly and effectively with respect to alcohol addiction by AA, when they regard alcohol addicts as always at risk, no matter how many years of abstinence are behind them. There seems to be something quite fundamental other than tolerance or physical dependence, that drives addicts to begin self-administering an addicting drug and that puts them at risk for relapse long after any physical dependence has worn off. Dr. Avram Goldstein, The Sidney Cohen Lecture (1986), quoted in UELMEN & HADDOX, supra, § 2.3(b) at 2-14 (emphasis added). Any judge, lawyer, probation officer or treatment specialist who has worked with drug offenders for any appreciable period can attest to the accuracy of Dr. Goldstein's analysis. If my colleagues in the majority were hiring a law clerk or a babysitter or even a domestic worker and were advised that he or she abused cocaine some time last year, I suspect that they would discern an appreciable possibility that such abuse might recur and that other bad things might happen too. They would surely deem the report significant enough to warrant a thorough investigation of the situation, and would doubtless be grateful to the person who brought the facts to their attention. The jurors in the present case were making a decision affecting a man's liberty. They ought not to have been denied access to such important evidence when they were exercising this sobering responsibility. We have held, as the majority says, that a trial judge's ruling excluding evidence as insufficiently probative is reviewable only for abuse of discretion. Shepard v. United States, 538 A.2d 1115, 1116 (D.C.1988). But exercise of judicial discretion must be founded on correct legal principles, and a trial court abuses its discretion when it rests its conclusion on incorrect legal standards. In re J.D.C., 594 A.2d 70, 75, (D.C.1991); Conrad v. Medina, 47 A.2d 562, 565 (D.C.1946); Jett v. Sunderman, 840 F.2d 1487, 1496 (9th Cir.1988). This is what happened here. In my opinion, Lewis' testimony should have been admitted. [7]