Opinion ID: 2319400
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 16

Heading: Long's position

Text: Long's argument that he suffered Strickland prejudice is capsulized in the following sentences in his counsel's brief: Michael Plummer's testimony was essential to Colie Long's defense. At the first trial, it had been the only evidence presented that directly countered the testimony of William Tilghman.    Since a jury presented with Plummer's testimony did not convict Mr. Long of first-degree murder while armed and two related offenses, it can be concluded that there was a reasonable probability that counsel's failure to provide the jury with Plummer's testimony contributed directly to Long's conviction. In other words, according to Long, because his conviction at the second trial came about after Plummer's testimony was omitted from what had been Long's comparatively successful defense at his first trial, the unfavorable result of the second trial probably occurred because of that omission. Standing alone, this contention, based primarily on the sequence of events, arguably proves too much. Indeed, it might fairly be viewed as embracing the  post hoc ergo propter hoc  fallacy. [14] In this case, however, Long correctly argues that the order in which the events occurred does not stand alone. Missing from the defense case at the second trial was testimony that a person other than Long specifically, Tilghmanincriminated himself in a very major way by admitting (and boasting) to Plummer, in the presence of others, that he, not Long, murdered Williamson, and that he had falsely placed the blame on Long. Admissions and, in some instances, statements against penal interest, see Laumer v. United States, 409 A.2d 190 (D.C. 1979) (en banc), are received in evidence, as exceptions to the hearsay rule, because they are deemed reliable. In the absence of coercion, of which there is no evidence here, a person is not ordinarily expected to confess to a crime which he or she did not commit. A confession, especially one that survives the multiple attacks that can be made on its admissibility, has traditionally been regarded as extraordinarily reliable evidence of the defendant's guilt, EDWARD W. CLEARY, McCORMICK ON EVIDENCE, § 144, at 364 (3d ed. 1984) (emphasis added), and thus, in many cases, as proof of an alternative suspect's innocence. The first Justice Harlan, writing for the Court in Hopt v. Utah, 110 U.S. 574, 4 S.Ct. 202, 28 L.Ed. 262 (1884), stated the principle as follows: A confession, if freely and voluntarily made, is evidence of the most satisfactory character .... [It] is deserving of the highest credit, because it is presumed to flow from the strongest sense of guilt .... The presumption upon which weight is given to such evidence [is] that one who is innocent will not imperil his... interests by an untrue statement. Id. at 584-85, 4 S.Ct. 202. [N]o other statement is so much against interest as a confession of murder. Donnelly v. United States, 228 U.S. 243, 278, 33 S.Ct. 449, 57 L.Ed. 820 (1913) (Holmes, J., dissenting), quoted with approval by our en banc court in Laumer, 409 A.2d at 197. In Ingram v. United States, 885 A.2d 257 (D.C.2005), we recognized, citing Laumer, that a statement asserting a fact distinctly against one's interest is unlikely to be deliberately false or heedlessly incorrect, id. at 263, and we applied this principle to a confession made by a third party to a criminal defendant's attorney, holding that it made no difference that the admission of guilt had not been made to a law enforcement officer. Given these authorities, which are surely consistent with common sense, I am of the opinion that testimony to the effect that someone other than Long (here Tilghman) freely confessed to killing the decedent, and falsely placing the blame on Long, constituted important and (if credited) potentially decisive evidence. [15] To be sure, Plummer was certainly not an ideal witness. At the time of Long's second trial, Plummer was himself on trial, also for the second time, for an unrelated murder of which he was convicted a few days after Long's trial ended. But Plummer was also facing the murder charge when he testified at Long's first trial, albeit he had not yet been convicted, and the prosecution nevertheless failed to obtain a murder conviction of Long at that proceeding. Long's contention that the difference in result between his first and second trials was not attributable to coincidence, [16] but resulted from Baer's failure to present Plummer's testimony, is at least plausible. This is not to say, however, that the government's strikingly different assessment of Long's claim is implausible, for it is not; indeed, it has been essentially accepted by my colleagues in the majority.