Opinion ID: 2383219
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the alleged comparison between hunter's pretrial statement and his trial testimony

Text: Hunter also secondarily contends [7] that the prosecutor's argument quoted at pages [142-143], supra constituted an impermissible comment to the effect that his trial testimony was inconsistent with his pretrial statement to the police, and that this too requires reversal. We disagree. We note at the outset that it is not at all clear that the jury was ever asked to draw the inference which Hunter says was improper. In fact, the prosecutor never explicitly mentioned the earlier statement at all. The closest he came to any allusion to it was his general remark that Hunter had disclosed his version of his dealings with Stevenson for the first time in his testimony at the trial. [8] The unambiguous prime focus of that remark was on Hunter's failure to come forward with counsel after he had been indicted for serious crimes, a situation which, according to the prosecutor, would have triggered a trip by Hunter and his attorney to the prosecutor's office. Nothing that the prosecutor said was directed to the conversation between Hunter and Officer Fluck at the police station on the day of Hunter's arrest. [9] To demonstrate that his conviction should be reversed for improper prosecutorial argument, Hunter should first be required to show unambiguously that the allegedly offending argument was in fact made. We do not think that Hunter has met this threshold requirement. But even if the prosecutor's comments could reasonably be construed as an attempt to impeach Hunter's trial testimony with an omission from his pretrial statementand we do not think they can Hunter's counsel never made any objection on that ground. What was at most an implicit comparison of Hunter's two accounts, made without any actual allusion to Hunter's statement to the police, cannot reasonably be regarded as jeopardizing the very fairness and integrity of the trial. Mills, supra, 599 A.2d at 787. Finally, Officer Fluck's testimony as to what Hunter had said to him was received in evidence without objection. The jurors had also heard Hunter's account of the events in question. Hunter's complaint in this court, thena secondary complaint by his own admissionis of what was at most a subdued and indirect comparison between two accounts, both of which were in the record. [10] But [t]he government has the right during closing argument to comment on the evidence and to draw reasonable inferences from it. Dixon, supra, 565 A.2d at 80. We would surely be intruding on the prosecutor's argument to an unprecedented and unjustifiable degree if we were to hold that yes, he may mention the statement to the police, and yes, he may comment on the trial testimony, but if he alludes to the uncontested fact that something was in Hunter's second version but not in his first, then a new trial is required. See Allen v. United States, 603 A.2d 1219, 1127-1228 (1992) (en banc). In Dixon, a case in which the prosecutor's reference to a critical omission from the accused's statement to the police was far more forceful and specific than the alleged allusion here, we did not explicitly decide whether the prosecutor was required to seek leave of court before contending in closing argument that the defendant's pretrial statement was inconsistent with her trial testimony. Id. at 80; cf. Hill v. United States, 404 A.2d 525, 531 (D.C.) (per curiam) (prosecutor must seek leave of court before impeaching criminal defendant during cross-examination with omissions from her pretrial statement to police), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 1085, 100 S.Ct. 1042, 62 L.Ed.2d 770 (1979). [11] We emphasized in Dixon, however, that the prosecutor's having argued that Ms. Dixon's statement and her testimony were inconsistent did not preclude defense counsel from arguing the contrary. 565 A.2d at 80 n. 15; see also Mills, supra, 599 A.2d at 786. We strongly implied, and now hold, that in the absence of unusual circumstances, a prosecutor should be permitted to make reasonable comments on, and comparisons between, the defendant's pretrial statement and his trial testimony, provided that the prior statement is in evidence and that the prosecutor makes no characterizations unsupported by the record. Defense counsel may, of course, request the court, by motion in limine, to make a threshold determination whether a potential argument by the prosecutor regarding an omission from the pretrial statement would create an inconsistency when none exists. [12] The prosecutor should not be precluded from making such a comparison, however, unless the judge determines that an impartial juror could not rationally find the two statements to be inconsistent with one another. [13] We recently observed in our en banc opinion in Allen, supra, at 1227, quoting Judge Learned Hand [14] and Professor McCormick, [15] that jurors are quite capable of detecting prosecutorial non sequiturs, and that the most appropriate remedy for an illogical argument by counsel is usually the answering argument and the jury's good sense. See also Mills, supra, 599 A.2d at 786. Assuming that the prosecutor was indeed comparing Hunter's trial testimony and his pretrial statement and asking the jurors to find an inconsistency, and assuming further that a case could be made for the proposition that there was no such inconsistency, the defense attorney was in a position to expose the weakness of the prosecutor's position and put the government on the losing side of the debate, thus promoting her client's chances of acquittal. Robust response by counsel to a weak argument, rather than meticulous appellate censorship after the fact, provides genuine protection for the rights of the accused without the heavy societal cost of symbolic reversals on grounds unrelated to the guilt or innocence of the accused. See United States v. Mechanik, 475 U.S. 66, 72, 106 S.Ct. 938, 942, 89 L.Ed.2d 50 (1986); Allen, supra, at 1227-1228.