Opinion ID: 2319400
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 17

Heading: The government's position

Text: According to the government, its success in securing convictions on the major charges at the second trial, but not at the first, had nothing to do with Plummer. The government points out that Plummer's testimony represented only a very brief portion of defense counsel's closing argument. In the government's view, it was the return of a superseding indictment between the first and second trials that explains the different outcome in the second. In essence, the government claims that it succeeded at the second trial, when the first resulted in a hung jury, because at the first trial, it was required to prove that Long was the shooter, while at the second trial, it was not. Unlike the original indictment, the superseding indictment charged Long with conspiracy to commit armed first degree murder, as well as with the substantive murder itself. The government points to a note from the jury at the second trial in which the jurors posed the following question: If the jury finds that there was a conspiracy to commit murder between the defendant and Tilghman, and that either the defendant or Tilghman murdered Williamson, can the defendant be found guilty of first-degree murder while armed? (Emphasis in original.) The judge gave a qualified affirmative response to this question, and a verdict of guilty was returned on the following morning. Emphasizing that the defense devoted little of its closing argument on behalf of Long to Plummer, the government dismisses as inconsequential Plummer's testimony that Tilghman admitted both that he shot the decedent and that he falsely placed the blame on Long. At first blush, the government's argument appears to rest on a flawed premise. The government evidently now assumes that Long could not have been, or was unlikely to be, convicted at the first trial unless the jurors unanimously believed that he (and not Tilghman) fired the fatal shot. But according to District of Columbia law, [i]n prosecutions for any criminal offense all persons advising, inciting or conniving at an offense or aiding the principal offender, shall be charged as principals and not as accessories, the intent of this section being that as to all accessories before the fact the law heretofore applicable in cases of misdemeanor only shall apply to all crimes, whatever the punishment may be. D.C.Code § 22-1805 (2001). As Judge Learned Hand wrote for the court three quarters of a century ago, an aider and abettor is guilty as a principal if he in some sort associate[s] himself with the venture ..., participates in it as something he wishes to bring about, that he seek[s] by his actions to make it succeed. United States v. Peoni, 100 F.2d 401, 402 (2d Cir.1936); accord, Nye & Nissen v. United States, 336 U.S. 613, 619, 69 S.Ct. 766, 93 L.Ed. 919 (1949); Wilson-Bey v. United States, 903 A.2d 818, 831 (D.C.2006) (en banc), cert. denied, 550 U.S. 933, 127 S.Ct. 2248, 167 L.Ed.2d 1089 (2007); English v. United States, 25 A.3d 46, 52-53 (D.C. 2011). Indeed, the government's own position at the first trial, as well as at the second, was that both Long and Tilghman were guilty of armed premeditated murder, regardless of which man pulled the trigger and fired the fatal shots. The First Count of the original indictment, returned by the grand jury at the government's behest on May 13, 1996, reads as follows: Colie L. Long, also known as Meatball, and another person whose identity is known to the Grand Jury, within the District of Columbia, while armed with a firearm, that is, a pistol, with deliberate and premeditated malice, killed Ronald Williamson, by shooting him with a firearm, that is, a pistol, on or about March 19, 1996, thereby causing injuries from which Ronald Williamson died on or about March 19, 1996. (First Degree Murder While Armed (Premeditated), in violation of 22 D.C.Code, Sections 2401, 3202). (Emphasis added.) It was thus the prosecution's theory that both menLong and Tilghman (the latter being the man whose identity was known to the Grand Jury) committed first-degree premeditated murder while armed, although only one of them could have fired the fatal shot. According to the government's own position, Long would have been guilty even if Tilghman was the shooter, so long as the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Long aided and abetted him. The government's contention that it was the absence of a conspiracy count that led to the failure to secure a murder conviction at Long's first trial becomes more plausible, however, in light of what appears, in retrospect, to have been a somewhat surprising ruling by the presiding judge. The prosecutor at that trial requested the judge to instruct the jury with respect to aiding and abetting. Although, in my view, the evidence warranted such an instruction, [17] the judge declined to give it. When the prosecutor asked [what] if [the jurors] believed the defense theory... that William Tilghman was the shooter, the judge responded: Then they'll find [Long] not guilty. This exchange suggests that, if the first jury's view of the case was similar to that of the second jury, the lack of an instruction as to conspiracy or aiding and abetting may have significantly affected the outcome. The government also argues that in light of the prosecutor's questioning of Plummer at Long's first trial regarding, inter alia, Plummer's alleged participation in theft from, threats to, and intimidation of Tilghman, the introduction of Plummer's first trial testimony would probably have done Long's prospects more harm than good. The government asserts that, at the second trial, it could have introduced additional evidence to support the alleged facts on which the prosecutor's questioning of Plummer had been based even if the defense had simply read Plummer's first trial testimony to the jury. The government did not present proof, other than Tilghman's evidence on rebuttal, substantiating the prosecutor's questioning either at Long's first trial or, ten years later, at the § 23-110 hearing, and the prosecution's presentation of Tilghman's rebuttal testimony did not enable the government to secure a conviction. Neither the trial court nor this court can ascertain with any measure of reliability what the prosecutor would have done at the second trial if Plummer's first trial testimony on direct and cross-examination had been read to the jury. All we know is that the government had two other opportunities to introduce additional evidence more credible than Tilghman's, that it did not do so on either occasion, and that the first trial resulted in a hung jury notwithstanding, Tilghman's rebuttal evidence.