Opinion ID: 2345595
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Winfield Proffer

Text: The most important fact Stewart's counsel proffered was that an unnamed eyewitness[a] person who was there on the scenehad told her that the last individual to possess the guns fired outside 1600 E Street on New Year's Eve (the presumptive murder weapons) was Sue Ann Mascall's brother Ricardo. At some point during the noisy celebration, Holt elaborated, the police showed up, and Ricardo took the guns and hid them. The judge agreed that such eyewitness testimony would be very powerful evidence ... that would permit a Winfield defense to go to the jury. But when the judge asked Holt if she actually had such testimony to present, she refused to state that her source would testify [8] and she acknowledged having no other witness who could tie Ricardo Mascall to the murder weapons. At trial, appellants never called such a witness, nor did they cross-examine Sue Ann Mascall (or any other government witness) on Ricardo's possession of the guns fired by appellants the night before Rosebure's murder. Holt further proffered that Rosebure was known to have sold crack cocaine, which he habitually concealed in his rectum, [9] and an unidentified witness had said that on the day [of] the shooting Mr. Rosebure did in fact have a stash and he was going to that area [i.e., 1600 E Street] to sell it and promised to give this individual money after the sale. (At a subsequent bench conference, Holt identified the witness in question as the mother of Rosebure's child, who had been pressing him for money.) No money or cocaine was recovered from Rosebure's body, but Holt represented that his pants were missing when the police and paramedics arrived on the scenesuggesting he had been robbed, presumably by Sue Ann and Ricardo Mascall. At trial, however, a paramedic testified without contradiction that Rosebure's pants were on when I got there. [10] Finally, Holt proffered, the ballistics and medical evidence would be consistent with the hypothesis that Rosebure was shot on the porch outside the apartment buildingnot in the lobby as Sue Ann Mascall claimedand then dragged inside. (Evidence at trial, including testimony that there was no blood outside the building before the paramedics moved Rosebure outside to work on him, tended to refute this hypothesis.)