Opinion ID: 2345595
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Denial of Sanctions under the Jencks Act for Failure to Preserve 911 Call

Text: In October 1997, when the grand jury indicted appellants for the murder of Rosebure, the Assistant United States Attorney assigned to the case requested the Metropolitan Police Department's Communications Division to prepare a tape of the recorded 911 calls and police radio transmissions relating to that incident. In response to that request, a communications officer searched the master tape maintained by the Division and copied the relevant calls and radio transmissions recorded on January 1, 1997, around the time of the shooting. The resulting radio run tape, created on October 17, 1997, included 911 calls made by Hart, Johnson, and an unidentified female caller, plus a dispatcher's communication informing police that a caller (whom the dispatcher did not identify) had reported a shooting at 1600 E Street, N.E. Curiously, the logged time of the dispatcher's communication to police was 20 seconds before the logged time of the earliest 911 call. [41] This seemed to imply that the dispatcher must have referred to an earlier 911 call that was omitted from the radio run tape, because the dispatcher would not have known about the shooting until after someone called 911. Appellants requested the radio run tape in February 1999 and noticed the apparent omission. By then, the original master tape recording of police calls and radio communications made on January 1, 1997, had been recycled (after having been maintained for over a year as required by the applicable MPD records retention policy). As the master tape could no longer be searched, appellants moved the trial court to sanction the government for negligently failing to preserve the putatively lost 911 call, which they posited had been made by Sue Ann Mascall. [42] After holding a hearing and taking testimony from the head of the Communications Division and the officer who prepared the radio run tape, the trial judge denied the sanctions motion. In addition to finding no evidence whatsoever of any act, omission, or shortcoming by the government ... that would warrant the imposition of sanctions, the judge found it purely speculative on this record whether there even was a missing 911 call, and if there was, whether it was from Mascall. Appellants argue that the judge abused his discretion in failing to sanction the government for violating the Jencks Act. [43] No such violation was established, however. While the trial judge found multiple defects in appellants' motion, we need address only one. The preservation and disclosure requirements of the Jencks Act apply only to prior statements made by persons whom the government chooses to call as its witnesses at trial. [44] That limitation dooms appellants' invocation of the Jencks Act here. As the judge found, the evidence did not support appellants' claim that Sue Ann Mascall made a 911 call. Mascall testified that she did not telephone the police. Nor was there evidence that any other government trial witness placed the putative lost call. Accordingly, no sanctionable violation of the Jencks Act was shown.