Opinion ID: 2325528
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The relationship between appellant and Parker, and the alleged March 2000 assault.

Text: In her direct testimony at the CPO hearing, Parker testified that she and appellant used to date, explaining that they had dated from October 1999 until appellant assaulted her in March 2000. Parker also testified that in March 2000 (on or about March 11 [22] ), appellant hit her in the eye after she asked him to leave her apartment (where the two had been living together) following a disagreement. Appellant, who was unrepresented by counsel at the hearing, cross-examined Parker as to that testimony, asking her, when we first met[,] we were smoking coke, that's how we met right[?]; that's when we started dating? In response to a relevance objection from the Assistant Attorney General, appellant explained: Because I'm leading on to when we started dating. I don't want to leave out the facts as to when we started. . . . I don't want her credibility to try to overwhelm my credibility because what she's trying to do is make it look like we just met. And what we do, we go back. And we have a circle. [23] Following his cross-examination of Parker, appellant took the stand. He asserts that his testimony contained significant new information, including an account of his relationship with Parker that was very different from the one Parker had described and his account of what precipitated the March incident. Specifically, appellant testified that his relationship with Parker began in 1995 and ended in July 2000 (although he and Parker w[eren't] dating exactly for those five years, during some of which he was in jail). Appellant described Parker as a crack head and testified that she and appellant had smoked crack together. Appellant further testified that he had no recollection of an incident happening on March 12th, but described an incident that he claimed occurred on March 3, 2000. According to appellant, Parker had asked him to babysit her kids so she could go out. Appellant told Parker that he, too, was going out, and Parker got mad, calling appellant bitch and throwing a cell phone at him. Appellant stated that, as he was putting his clothes on to leave, Parker pushed him, grabbed a bat and an ax, and told her son to call the police. Appellant testified that Parker was never hurt. Almost four months after the CPO hearingin January 2001Parker testified at trial. In her trial testimony, Parker described her relationship with appellant by saying I met him in '94. And we used to have a drug and sex relationship. . . . We did drugs and had sex. That was it. . . . We used to smoke crack cocaine together. Parker further testified that she and appellant did drugs together for about eight or nine months from 1994 to 1995. She testified that her earlier relationship with appellant ended after she started studying with Jehovah's Witnesses and decided to change her life after having used cocaine for three years. Parker testified that she did not see or hear from appellant from 1995 to 1999, but that they started seeing each other again in October 1999. Regarding the March incident, Parker testified that she had asked appellant to watch her twin sons that morning because [appellant] was in the bed and . . . [she] wanted to go to the grocery store to get some breakfast food. Parker stated that she was not aware that he already had previous plans to go out. According to her, appellant flicked out and said `I'm not no fucking babysitter. And I'm not watching nobody's damn kids. . . . I got something to do.' Parker told appellant to get dressed and go home. When Parker then walked over to appellant's side of the bed, appellant punched her in the face with his fist. The government introduced photographs showing how Parker's eye looked after the assault. [24] Appellant now argues that Parker's trial testimony regarding her relationship with appellant was in direct response to his testimony at the CPO hearing. He contends that in this testimony, Parker added new facts and events that . . . added depth to her story and significantly strengthened the credibility of her allegations. Emphasizing the importance of narrative in domestic violence cases, appellant characterizes Parker's CPO testimony as bare-boned and asserts that her trial testimony added descriptive richness [25] that gave the jury a view of the relationship between the parties that inform[ed] [their] credibility decisions and. . . conclusions about what occurred, improv[ed] the clarity and strength of [the government's] presentation, and added contextand credibilityto her claims that [appellant] was the initial aggressor. Appellant also asserts that through the testimony that Parker gave in reaction to his testimony about their early relationship and drug useParker's admission in her direct trial testimony that she had been a drug user but had changed her life by studying to become a Jehovah's Witnessthe government was able to blunt[] the impact of . . . damaging information that the defense could introduce. Appellant contends in addition that Parker's trial-testimony account about asking him to babysit so that she could go out to buy breakfast items and her references to his using vulgar language were intended to counter his CPO testimony about Parker going out to sell her body, and to buttress her image as a good mother and family caretaker while portraying him badly. Appellant argues that the government did not prove that this testimony was independent of Parker's exposure to his immunized testimony. We reject appellant's argument that Parker's testimony about her early relationship with appellant was based on her memory being refreshed or her attention being focused by his immunized testimony. To the contrary, as the account above shows, prior to testifying, appellant had already drawn Parker's attention to that early history through his cross-examination question and through the statements he made to the court in response to the relevance objection. It was only appellant's testimony that was immunized, D.C.Code § 16-1002(c), not his cross-examination questions or his unsworn statements to the court. [26] Regarding Parker's trial testimony about the context of the March 11 assault, the government showed at the Kastigar hearing that Parker reported to Smith-McGuire some of the additional information that testimony supplied, including that Parker and appellant began to argue after appellant said that he was going out and couldn't watch [Parker's] children. We agree with appellant, however that the account that Parker gave of the March 11 incident appears to have been affected by his immunized testimony; as discussed above, Parker added details seemingly designed to improve her image. We generally agree with the trial court that [t]he law does not require that a witness use the same words or syntax in relating testimony or limit the prosecutor from presenting evidence that was not presented at the CPO hearing, but we conclude that the trial court erred in finding that [n]othing in [appellant's] CPO testimony . . . affected the substance of Ms. Parker's testimony. Nevertheless, we agree with the government that the additional details Parker added in her trial testimony were tangential, and that, in light of the volume of the government's evidence against appellant and the evidence that amply exposed the failings of both Parker and appellant, any incremental support [they] lent to Parker's credibility in all reasonable probability made no difference in the outcome of the trial. In other words, we think this use of appellant's immunized testimony was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.