Opinion ID: 2178244
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Substantive Crimes

Text: The issue of whether the statements reasonably may have contributed to appellants' convictions for the individual crimes of May 11 and 14 is a harder one. As the government points out, it presented substantial eyewitness testimony identifying all or some of the appellants as among the assailants on both of those days, [6] and as having shot at Michael Thompson in particular on May 14, causing his death. In the main, these witnesses knew the appellants and were not shown to have had any obvious reason to incriminate them falsely. In light of this testimony, the government argues that [i]t is clear beyond a reasonable doubt that a rational jury would have found the defendant[s] guilty absent the [erroneous admission of the evidence]. Neder, supra note 5, 527 U.S. at 18, 119 S.Ct. 1827. For the reasons that follow, we cannot agree. First, although of lesser importance to our conclusion, the jury was instructed that appellants could be found guilty of the substantive crimes not only as principals or aiders and abettors but also as joint principals and member[s] of a conspiracy who [are] liable for crimes of co-conspirators. The latter two theories subjected appellants to liability for the acts of others in furtherance of the conspiracy (or joint criminal venture) based on their membership in the conspiracy alone. [7] See Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640, 646-47, 66 S.Ct. 1180, 90 L.Ed. 1489 (1946); Akins v. United States, 679 A.2d 1017, 1028 (D.C.1996) (citing Pinkerton ). These instructions permitted the jury to resolve doubts it had about any defendant's individual involvement in the shootings by resort to principles of vicarious liability. The government asserts that the prosecutors did not argue a theory of Pinkerton liability to the jury (Supp. Reply Br. for Appellee at 24), but that is not entirely so. In his initial closing, the prosecutor reminded the jury that [u]nder the law of conspiracy, a conspirator is liable for the reasonably foreseeable crimes by any other coconspirator in furtherance of the conspiracy, regardless of the personal involvement of the defendant. And in rebuttal he returned to the theme, though briefly, by explaining that even if you were to conclude, ... the evidence could not possibly support this conclusion, but even if you were to conclude that [the defendants] weren't present on May 11 and May 14, under the law of conspiracy they can still be guilty of what happened on [those days] because of the other things they did in furtherance of the conspiracy. Second, in the same way that the statements of Kilgore and Thomas were corroborative proof that a conspiracy had existed, they were significant proof of appellants' motive to commit the retaliatory shootings on both May 11 and May 14. As the prosecutor told the jury, the fact that appellants were actually members of something called the Stanton Terrace Crew and dealt drugs would help it understand why this violence took place, why they would have a motive to do what they did. Mark Barnes, it is true, provided similar testimony about the dual reasons for the beef and the shootings, as did other more marginal witnesses; but Barnes, as mentioned, was vigorously challenged as someone with weighty reasons to fabricate or embellish. Indeed, recognizing Barnes's vulnerability, the prosecutor encouraged the jury to rely more heavily on Kilgore's statement because Barnes was not a senior like Mr. Kilgore ... who ha[d] been around for a longer period of time [than Barnes] and [was] involved in a lot more. The other, relatively disinterested eyewitnesses whom the government now emphasizes bystanders such as Tia and Nathan Wright, Edna Reid, and Chris Williams identified one or more of the appellants as shooters but had comparatively little knowledge of their motive to assault Dawkins or Thompson. Third, most importantly, the statements of Kilgore not only outlined the conspiracy and its goals but described the involvement of himself and everybody in both the May 11 and the May 14 shootings. The government argues a fine distinction by asserting that, because the names of the coconspirators were deleted from the statements (and there were numerous other STC members besides appellants), the jury reasonably would have taken the references to May 11 and 14 as proof only of overt acts demonstrating the conspiracy, not of their personal involvement in the shootings Kilgore described. As noted earlier, however, beyond a general admonishment not [to] speculate about what information was deleted or obscured, the jury was not given any limiting instruction concerning the admission of the statements, which accordingly could be used against the appellants for whatever corroborative significance the jury chose to give them. Appellants assert that, because they were the only four STC members in court as defendants, the jury inevitably would have connected the dots between Kilgore's description of unnamed gang members bail[ing] out [of] the car to shoot Dawkins and approaching Thompson with the same intent, and the defendants themselves seated in the dock. [8] Viewed through the lens of constitutional harmless error, the legitimacy of this claim of prejudice is apparent, and it is made even weightier by the connections the prosecutor wove between the statements and the shooting crimes in his closing argument. So, for example, in arraying the evidence of the May 14 shootings, the prosecutor in his initial summation passed from Edna Reid, who observes among the people shooting, ... Curtis Morten, to the statement by Doonk [Kilgore] who says that he went down [there] with three others. At considerably greater length, the prosecutor in rebuttal told the jury how in fact all the testimony ... make[s] sense... when you look at it: Let us start with May 11. Remember, you start out with Antwanne Kilgore's statement where he's talking about the fact that they are up on Stanton Terracesome people were up on Stanton Terraceand somebody had seen J.C. at the top of the steps, the top of the steps over here. And they see him up there and he is a target of the conspiracy. So, they get together and they go down there in a car.... They see him up on the top of the steps. They turn around because they want to surprise him.... They get out of the car. They start running at him and shooting him.... You will be able to listen to his videotape and go through that at your own leisure. When they get out and start shooting, of course, he starts running down the hill because he doesn't want to get shot. He comes down the hill and starts to run in front of the people who are sitting out here in front of their steps. With that background in place, he moved to the testimony of Nathan Wright, who on May 11 saw a group of people shooting[,]... including Curtis Morten, ... Jermaine Felder, and the other two not here Doonk, Antwanne Kilgore and Michael Thomas. Turning similarly to the March 14 shootings, the prosecutor ridiculed the defense assertion that, for example, the eyewitness Edna Reed's testimony was uncorroborated: There is so much corroboration here.... Doonk Kilgore to the court [at his guilty plea:] Were you part of a group that killed a man named Michael Thompson in a car in a parking lot? Yes. Did you know Michael Thompson? No, ma'am. Did you have a gun? Yes, ma'am. How did Michael Thompson die. He got shot. Who shot him? I guess a friend of mine. Was the friend of yours who shot Michael Thompson in the group with you at the time that Thompson got shot? In other words, were you standing around at the moment he got shot? Yes. How many people were in the group with you? Three, four. So one of the three people, you made the fourth, shot Michael Thompson? Yes. And all four of you[ ] were in the same crew or no? Yes. Why was Michael Thompson shot? I guess he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, your honor. The only purpose this recital served realistically was to invite equation of appellants with Kilgore's accomplices. In sum, both in their content and in the use the prosecutors made of them in closing, the statements of Kilgore (and to a lesser degree Thomas) were a significant part of the government's presentation of the May 11 and 14 evidence. Unquestionably the government offered sufficient evidence independent of the statements to convict each appellant of the murder and the other assaults; [9] but that is not the issue. See Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 308-09, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991). Nor is the issue even whether we can say with fair assurance that the admission of the statements had [no] substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict. Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 776, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946); see also Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619, 631, 113 S.Ct. 1710, 123 L.Ed.2d 353 (1993). Were the yardstick to be applied here for non-constitutional error, the evidence the government marshals in its supplemental briefs as to why the jury need not have looked to the hearsay evidence or principles of vicarious liability to convict appellants of the May 11 and 14 crimes would, at the least, give us serious pause. But the error was of constitutional magnitude, and for the reasons stated above we conclude there is a reasonable possibility that the improperly admitted [statements of Kilgore and Thomas] contributed to the conviction[s]. Schneble, 405 U.S. at 432, 92 S.Ct. 1056. That is to say, we are not satisfied that it is clearly beyond a reasonable doubt that a rational jury would have found the defendant[s] guilty absent the errors. Neder, supra note 5, 527 U.S. at 18, 119 S.Ct. 1827. [10] The judgments of conviction are, therefore, Reversed.