Opinion ID: 2336370
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Gun in the Mailbox

Text: Following the voir dire of the jury, but before the parties presented any evidence, the prosecutor disclosed to the court that Brian Warren, whom the government expected to call as a witness, had been granted immunity for his testimony. Before the grand jury, Warren had testified that he did not know anything about a gun connected to the shooting involving his cousin, Vernon Boykin. After invoking the Fifth Amendment at a later proceeding, however, Warren disclosed to his attorney that he had disposed of a gun that was found in the mailbox at his home a day or two after Jordan was shot. The gun had been discovered by another family member, a young person, who brought it to Warren's attention. Because the government could not link the gun to Boykin, the prosecutor said, he did not plan to bring out any information about it during the trial. Later, however, to buttress the defense theory that Brock was the gunman, defense counsel asked Warren, [W]hen Brock came up onto your porch, he gave you a gun, didn't he? Brock answered, No, he didn't. Defense counsel was seeking to elicit an admission from Warren that he had disposed of the gun and that Brock either gave him the gun or left it in the mailbox on the night of the shooting, before the police arrested him. The prosecutor objected on the ground that counsel did not have a good faith basis for believing that Brock gave Warren the gun. [15] In an ex parte bench conference, defense counsel revealed that an undisclosed person had told a defense investigator that he or she had heard that Brian Warren received a gun that was used by Eric Brock in the shooting and that Brian Warren got rid of it. Characterizing the evidence linking Brock and the gun as rank hearsay, the court ruled that counsel did not have a good faith basis for the question and struck it from the record, instructing the jury that it could not consider the question or its answer in its deliberations. Neither party made any further attempt to introduce evidence about the gun.