Opinion ID: 1925998
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Merits of Taylor's New Trial Motion

Text: Taylor's § 23-110 claim must rise or fall on his assertion that there was evidentiary disparity, which is premised on the assertion that the government used the tape recording for an in-court voice identification of Taylor at trial. The trial court rejected this argument in no uncertain terms: [T]he defendant has sought to characterize the government's use of the tape recording as an identification procedure... To suggest that the jury used the audio tape evidence under the circumstances of its admission as proof of the defendant's identification as the robber is to insult the intelligence of the jury. We agree with the trial court that at trial the government did not use the tape recording to make a voice identification of Taylor. Rather, the tape recording was a re-broadcast, with the actual voices of the various players, of a series of events that Officer Welch had already described to the jury in exacting detail, after he had identified Taylor at trial from their face-to-face encounter during the robbery. [6] Prior to the tape of the robbery being played for the jury, Officer Welch recounted at length, step by step, his encounter with Taylor and Taylor's co-defendants on the night of the robbery, describing the entire scene, the parties' various movements, and the role each played. During the course of this testimony, Officer Welch described the gunman's appearance on the night of the robbery, his movements during the incident, and made an in-court identification of Taylor as the gunman; the officer did the same for Taylor's co-defendants, describing their various roles and making in-court identifications of each co-defendant. Only after Officer Welch had thus testified was the tape played. The jury was given a transcript of the recording prepared by the officer to aid them in following who was speaking at each moment. As the tape played, Officer Welch described the parties' various movements in relation to what was being said by the participants: Q. What's happening here? A. Mr. Taylor's coming up to the passenger side window and he's asking if I want a bottle and we're telling him we want three bottles. Q. And where is [co-defendant] Lawrence at that time? A. Sitting directly beside me on the passenger seat. Q. Was this after he motioned to Mr. Taylor or before? A. After. Mr. Taylor had already come to the car. . . . . Q. What's going on here? A. Now, Mr. Taylor is asking if I'm going to check or test the liquid PCP. . . . . Q. Now, what's going on here? A. Mr. Taylor has come back to the car. He's sitting in the passenger seat and [co-defendant] Shorter's standing by the driver's window. . . . . Q. What's going on here? A. Now, I know I'm in trouble. Mr. Taylor has just ran all the way down the street, came back, sweating. He said he's got all three ounces. He's trying to get me to but [co-defendant] Shorter's  . . . . Q. What were you thinking, when, at this point, Mr. Taylor is saying, You're trying to by, you trying to buy then but it from him? A. I can't figure him out. Now I'm trying to get him out of the car. . . . . Q. What were you trying to do? A. In my experience, I know that I should get one of them out of the way, so I only have to deal with one. And at that point I didn't trust Mr. Taylor. I wanted to get him out of the car. . . . . A. At that point Mr. Taylor reached for the door, as if he was going to get out, and came back around with the gun in his hand. If you could play it back just a little bit. Q. For what purpose? A. There's a distinct noise on there. It's two clicking sounds, just the click of the hammer coming back on the gun. As the foregoing testimony makes clear, Officer Welch identified the voice on the tape as Taylor's from what the various actors on the tape were saying and doing, but did not identify Taylor as the robber from the voice on the tape. This is a crucial distinction that is fatal to appellant's case. Because the government did not use the police tape to identify Taylor from his voice, the court's evidentiary ruling excluding a tape-to-tape comparison using the police tape to impeach the officer's identification did not offend the rule of parity. Taylor argues that we are precluded from so holding because, according to Taylor, in both Taylor I and II we recognized that the officer identified Taylor from the voice on the tape and rejected the argument that the officer's identification of Taylor's voice on the tape was unimportant to the government's case. In Taylor I, we stated that Welch identified Taylor's voice on the tape as that of the gunman in the robbery, 601 A.2d at 1066, which is consistent with what we herein describe. We also noted in Taylor I the importance to the government's case of the recording and Welch's identification, id., and in the facts section of Taylor II related that the tape of the robber's voice, as well as Officer Welch's in-court identification of that voice as appellant's, figured prominently in the government's case. 661 A.2d at 640. Our holding today that the officer did not identify Taylor from the robber's voice on the tape is consistent with these prior statements from Taylor I and Taylor II: the tape was important to the government's case as powerful corroborating evidence that the robbery occurred as he described it, as was Officer Welch's identification of Taylor as the gunman based on their personal encounter during the robbery. We recognized in Taylor I that an opportunity to present evidence that Taylor's voice was not on the tape could have had an effect on the jury's decision by calling Welch's in-court identification of Taylor into question. See 601 A.2d at 1066. As we have concluded, however, the trial court properly denied Taylor that opportunity, a finding Taylor does not appeal. Because exclusion of the proffered tape-to-tape comparison was proper, and because we perceive no disparity in the trial court's evidentiary rulings, Taylor's conviction is Affirmed.