Opinion ID: 1960214
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The Unavailability of Bienville Davis

Text: Defendant claims that the prosecutor rendered Bienville Davis unavailable to him as a defense witness by holding open against Davis the charge of accessory after the fact. According to the defense, the prosecutor never intended to pursue the charge and took advantage of the charge to intimidate Davis during defendant's trial and render him unavailable. [9] In the motion for new trial, defense counsel stated by affidavit that Davis' attorney would not allow Davis to speak to him while the charges against Davis were still pending. Counsel further asserted that Davis has now implicated a third person, Sherman Reed, as the shooter [10] and that the prosecutor's actions prevented him from presenting Davis as a witness in his defense, in violation of the rule of Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973). Defense counsel presented the defense that defendant was not the triggerman and argued to the jury that the state's evidence did not exclude the reasonable hypothesis that a third person (neither defendant nor Davis) was the murderer. Counsel played for the jury an audio tape of the police chase which occurred immediately after the shooting, on which an officer was heard to say, We've got another black male that's headed south behind the apartments going towards Oleander, all dark clothing. In closing argument, defense counsel theorized that the police allowed the escape of the real killer, whom the police missed when the two suspects bailed out of the blue Cadillac. While Davis' testimony possibly may have aided defendant's case, [11] it was not indispensable to the third party gunman defense, which was presented principally to challenge the sufficiency of the state's evidence. Moreover, defendant's right to call Davis as a witness had to yield to Davis's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, whether or not an indictment was still pending. This court, when faced with resolving the tension between a witness's Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to present a defense, has consistently favored the witness' right not to incriminate himself. State v. Brown, 514 So.2d 99, 108-12 (La.1987). Defendant's right in this case to compel Davis to testify was not absolute. Brown, supra . Finally, the evidence proffered in support of the new trial motion evidence does not meet the criteria in La.Code Crim. Proc. art. 851(3) for granting a new trial on the basis of newly discovered evidence, i.e., that [n]ew and material evidence [exists] that, notwithstanding the exercise of reasonable diligence by the defendant, was not discovered before or during the trial, is available, and [that] if the evidence had been introduced at the trial it would probably have changed the verdict or judgment of guilty. La.Code Crim. Proc. art. 854(1); State v. Cavalier, 96-3052, p. 3 (La.10/31/97), 701 So.2d 949, 951. Courts treat with great skepticism belated exculpatory evidence provided by codefendants who have resolved their own cases after the defendant's conviction. Generally, such evidence is not a sufficient ground for granting a new trial. State v. Perique, 340 So.2d 1369, 1377 (La.1976). In the present case, the third party gunman theory was known, presented as evidence, and argued to the jury at defendant's trial, and the defense knew that Davis could have provided evidence on this issue. Furthermore, the scenario now apparently espoused by Davis is so completely at odds with the other evidence that counsel cannot fairly describe it as material enough to the issues of guilt and punishment at trial that it warrants consideration by a second jury. [12]