Opinion ID: 1964941
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Reverse-Drew/Winfield Issue

Text: Battle's defense was alibi and thus misidentification. Before trial, he moved to admit evidence of another shooting that had taken place on November 25, 1993, two weeks before the charged homicide. Battle had apparently been identified by the victim of that (non-fatal) shooting from a photo array as the assailant, and the government had charged Battle with the assault. (The criminal complaint in that case named the victim only as John Doe.) It later dismissed the charge, however, when an examination of the records at the Oak Hill juvenile facility appeared to show that Battle has been confined there on November 25. [3] Besides what Battle thus alleged was his misidentification as someone closely resembling him, the government had established that one of the same guns later used to shoot Ronald Thomas had been used to shoot John Doe. On the basis of these similarities and the fact that the shootings were separated by only two weeks and took place within a few blocks of each other, Battle sought to introduce proof of the earlier shooting as reverse Drew  evidence to raise a reasonable doubt whether herather than the unknown assailant on November 25 had shot Thomas. Battle also requested discovery of the identity of John Doe and all information the government had about the circumstances of that shooting. At a hearing on the motion, Battle renewed his request for discovery and admission at trial of the November 25 misidentification. In response, the prosecutor stated that the paper trail had indeed indicated that Battle had been at Oak Hill at the time of the November shooting, so that the government had dismissed that charge against him after concluding it could not prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecutor asserted, however, that the Oak Hill custody records were in complete disarray according to a detective who had reviewed them, and that an examination of daily passes from the facility to see if Battle had been issued one for November 25 was impossible because they were in boxes all over the floor. [4] As to the identification of Battle, the prosecutor stated that John Doe had been reinterviewed and has stated that his initial identification [of Battle] was correct. In a written memorandum and order, the trial judge (Burnett, J.) denied the motion to admit evidence of the earlier shooting. He stated, in summary: The fact that another person, not a witness to the crimes which are the subject of the trial, misidentified the defendant in another crime incident has no probative value in this case, for different individuals have different observation and recall abilities. The fact that the same gun was allegedly used in both crimes also is of no substantial significance, as guns can readily pass from one person to another on a daily basis. Nor has counsel for the defendant shown that degree or remarkable similarity as to establish that the two (2) offenses are so alike or unique that they would constitute signature crimes and support a rational conclusion that they both were committed by the same person. Further, according to the judge, the evidence of the November 25 shooting would be collateral and would inject unwarranted confusion into the trial.
Battle contends that the judge's determination that the November 25 shooting had no probative value and so was inadmissible on whether he committed the charged murder is inconsistent with our decisions affirming a defendant's right to offer such evidence to create a reasonable doubt that he committed the charged offense. We agree. Taken at face value, Battle's proffer was that someone resembling him closelyso closely that he had been mistaken for Battlehad shot the occupant of a car using one of the guns used to kill Ronald Thomas only two weeks later in the same neighborhood. Ordinary principles of relevance, as defined by our cases, dictate that that evidence was probative enough to require its admission. The relevancy issue has been framed by our decisions as the admissibility of `defensive' or `reverse' Drew  evidence, [5] Newman v. United States, 705 A.2d 246, 255 (D.C.1997), corresponding to the introduction of other crimes evidence by the government to prove (for example) a defendant's identity or intent. See also Morris v. United States, 622 A.2d 1116, 1127 & n. 24 (D.C.1993). In Newman, however, quoting with approval the Supreme Court of New Jersey, we explained that while other crimes evidence offered by the prosecution requires close similarity between offenses to guard against conviction of a defendant based on propensity, the same is not true when the evidence is used defensively: [W]hen the defendant is offering that kind of proof exculpatorily, prejudice to the defendant is no longer a factor, and simple relevance to guilt or innocence should suffice as the standard of admissibility, since ordinarily, and subject to rules of competency, an accused is entitled to advance in his defense any evidence which may rationally tend to refute his guilt or buttress his innocence of the charge made. Newman, 705 A.2d at 255 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). In Newman, we drew a parallel between this standard and the test for admission of a particular species of `reverse' Drew evidence established in Winfield v. United States, 676 A.2d 1 (D.C.1996) (en banc), i.e., third-party perpetrator evidence. Id. at 3. We reiterated in Newman (quoting Winfield ) that there is only one standard of relevance [6] and that, to be admissible under that standard, proffered evidence need only tend to indicate some reasonable possibility that a person other than the defendant committed the charged offense. Newman, 705 A.2d at 255 (internal quotation marks omitted). Further, while the trial judge must consider too whether the probative value of that evidence outweighs the hazard of jury confusion from hearing proof of uncharged conduct, we made clear that that concern is unlikeand not nearly as grave asthe risk that a jury will draw an inference of criminal disposition from the government's use of other crimes evidence. Id. at 260 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). We therefore emphasized, as we had in Winfield, that `the trial court must resolve close questions of admissibility in this setting in favor of inclusion, not exclusion,' because a defendant's constitutional right of `a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense' is implicated. Id. at 256 (quoting Winfield, 676 A.2d at 6-7) (other citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Applying these standards, we hold that the trial judge should have admitted the evidence of the November 25 shooting. [7] Proof that another person bearing a very close resemblance to Battle (provided, of course, it was not Battle himself) shot a man in a car in the same neighborhood with the same gun used to shoot Thomas surely tend[ed] to indicate some reasonable possibility that a person other than Battle shot Thomas two weeks later. Newman, 705 A.2d at 255 (emphasis added). It is true, as the government points out, that the unknown third person was not shown to have had any motive or opportunity to shoot Thomas. But that was also true in Newman (and, as to motive, is true of Battle himself), and we nonetheless found the similarities between the charged and uncharged assaults in Newman sufficient to demonstrat[e] a `reasonable possibility' that someone other than [defendant] Samuels committed both crimes. Id. at 257; see also id. (evidence of the earlier assault ` tended to create a reasonable doubt that [Samuels] committed the offense' charged (emphasis in original; citation omitted)). The government argues that the similarities in Newman were stronger in revealing a modus operandi than they are here, but it does not dispute Battle's assertion that the government would [or at least might] have been able to introduce evidence of the November 25 ... shooting had there not been a misidentification issue (Govt. Br. at 43 n. 28, paraphrasing Battle's argument). Even in the usual Drew setting, our decisions have not required the presence of one distinctive similarity but rather an amalgamat[ion] of like circumstances to support admission of other acts. Gates v. United States, 481 A.2d 120, 123 (D.C. 1984). And we stated in Newman that if the evidence could have been admitted in a standard Drew context, it presumptively should be admitted in a `reverse Drew ' context. Newman, 705 A.2d at 260 (emphasis in original). Newman and Winfield together establish simple relevance to guilt ... as the standard of admissibility for defensive use of other crimes evidence. Newman, 705 A.2d at 255 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The distinctive features of use of the same gun in both shootings, by a person misidentified as Battle (if the Oak Hill evidence is believed), in assaults occurring only two weeks and several blocks apart from one another, easily satisfied that standard. The government asserts that proof of the November 25 shooting would have required a veritable trial-within-a-trial, Winfield, 676 A.2d at 5, because the government necessarily would have challenged Battle's theory of misidentification by calling the victim of the earlier shooting as a witness and presenting evidence as to the disarray of the Oak Hill records and their failure to establish conclusively Battle's presence there at the time in question. As explained earlier, a trial judge must weigh the probative value of the proffered evidence against the possibility of jury confusion if the defense evidence, coupled with the government's rebuttal, would become a distracting mini-trial. Newman, 705 A.2d at 259 (citation omitted). But, as we have also pointed out, that concern is subordinate to the defendant's constitutional right to mount a complete defense, including misidentification. Id. at 260. In this case the trial judge's concern that evidence of the November 25 shooting would inject ... confusion into the trial is too generalized. Battle presumably would have sought to prove little more than that the victim of the shooting had identified him as the shooter, and that records the government itself relied on in dismissing the charge showed he could not have been the perpetrator. (Indeed, Battle might naturally have preferred a stipulation that the victim identified him to live testimony by a witness accusing him of a second armed assault.) The remainder of the evidence on the issue likely would have been the government's rebuttal of the misidentification, proof it could restrict if it feared jury distraction from the December 7 events. Moreover, an accumulation of evidence about the November 25 shooting realistically would have harmed Battle as much as the prosecution, by undermining the simplicity of his defense that a look-alike (indeed, his double) had done the shooting because he himself was incarcerated. In these circumstances, the concern with the jury being distracted by consideration of the events of November 25 could not properly be invoked to deny Battle the right to adduce relevant evidence.
The question we still must decide is whether the erroneous exclusion of the evidence was harmless error. The government concedes that, because the proffered evidence went to the heart of the defense theory of misidentification, Newman, 705 A.2d at 258 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted), we must analyze for constitutional harmless error, asking whether the exclusion of the proffered evidence was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. We inquire, in other words, whether the government has demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that the error ... did not contribute to the verdict obtained. Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). [8] The government's case was admittedly a strong one. It consisted chiefly of eyewitness testimony and evidence that Battle possessed two of the guns used to shoot Thomas during the two months following the shooting. Three teenage girls each identified Battle as one of three men who had surrounded Thomas's car and fired repeated shots into it. All of them recognized Battle as someone they knew from school or through family; all were positive that Battle was one of the shooters. Two had seen Battle and Tatum together in the past, one recalling that [t]hey would be together all the time. None could identify the third assailant. No evidence pointed to any opportunity the witnesses had had to contrive a common story. (Kentoura Donaldson testified that each of them had moved since the shooting.) No evidence or impeachment significantly challenged their opportunity to observe the shooting, and no bias or motive was imputed to any of them to identify Battle falsely. Battle points out that the government presented no evidence of lineup or photographic identifications made by the girls, and that testimony by two of the girls that they had made written (Smith) or oral (Mack) statements to the police shortly after the shooting was contradicted by a detective. [9] These shortcomings, however, are substantially offset by the corroboration which the girls' testimony received from Battle's possession of the Glock nine millimeter pistol, in company with Tatum, ten days after the shooting and his possession of another of the murder weapons six weeks later. Tatum's admission to possessing both weapons a week before the murder further solidified the link between Battle and himself as the shooters. [10] Moreover, Battle's defense of alibi i.e., that he had been incarcerated from November 8 to December 7, 1993, had been picked up at the juvenile receiving home by his uncle between 9:30 and 10:00 that evening (the killing took place shortly after 9:00 p.m.), and had gone directly home and spent the night with his grandfather, father, and auntwas not supported by any testimony but his own. Nevertheless, the exclusion of evidence of the November 25 shooting remains troubling. Our concern is not primarily Battle's argument that evidence of the shooting would have weakened the inference from his possession of the murder weapons after the killing by showing the ready access that others (or another) had to the Glock pistol. (Regardless of who possessed the pistol on November 25, by December 1 both murder weapons had passed into the possession of Tatum, whom the eyewitness and other testimony linked to Battle and the murder.) The concern rather is the larger one that exclusion of the evidence relieved the jury of having to come to grips with the possibility that Battle had been mistaken for the murderer just as he had been mistaken for the shooter on November 25 who used the same Glock pistol. That concern is only partly ameliorated by the risk which Battle faced that the jury would find no mistake in the earlier identification and thereby convert the reverse Drew  evidence into confirmation of his guilt. In his pretrial motion, Battle sought discovery of the identity of John Doe, all knowledge the government had regarding his identification of the assailant, and any information it had tending to show Battle's confinement at Oak Hill on November 25. The trial judge's exclusion of all evidence of the shooting leaves us unconvinced that the government has had the necessary incentive to examine its files for potentially exculpatory information responsive to those demands. See Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). We therefore believe that the proper disposition at this point is a remand to the trial court for additional inquiry about the November 25 events and Battle's whereabouts at the time. Precedent for such a remand and hearing in aid of this court's determination of harmless error vel non is furnished by Davis v. United States, 564 A.2d 31 (D.C. 1989) (en banc). There the trial court had erroneously failed to conduct the inquiry required in order to sustain a claim of fifth amendment privilege by a witness whom the defense had sought to call at trial. Because the nature of the trial court's error rendered the record inadequate for the appellate panel to determine whether the error was harmless under ... Chapman v. California ,  it remanded for further proceedings and directed the trial court to determine, on the basis of the supplemented record, whether the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 33, 87 S.Ct. 824. The en banc court subsequently ruled that the ultimate determination of constitutional harmlessness (or not) is a legal one concerning which the appellate court has a `constitutional responsibility that cannot be delegated to the trier of fact.' Id. at 39-40, 87 S.Ct. 824 (citation omitted). But, at the same time, we recognized the unique operational advantage of the trial judge in finding historical or subsidiary facts (as well as reasonable inferences deduced therefrom). Id. at 34, 87 S.Ct. 824. Following the Davis example, we will remand this case for a hearing, preceded by conscientious examination of its files by the prosecution, at which evidence is adduced about the November 25 shooting and what kind of reverse Drew/Winfield defense Battle could have presented, including the circumstances of John Doe's (and any other related) identifications of the shooter and the facts regarding Battle's confinement or not at the time. The trial judge should make appropriate findings [11] and transmit the supplemented record to us, enabling us to make a fully informed decision on the ultimate issue.