Opinion ID: 2325528
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The August 22 Threat.

Text: The 15-count indictment charged appellant with threatening to kill Parker and her children during a telephone call on August 22. During the CPO hearing, Parker did not testify about an August 22 threat, but only about a call, recorded and played at the CPO hearing, in which appellant admitt[ed] that he gets high. During his immunized testimony, appellant denied ever threatening Parker, but he acknowledged that in August 2000, he was angry with Parker because she had placed posters with his picture on it in stores and on poles, and the posters stated that appellant had threatened to kill Parker and her two sons (posters that appellant testified he saw before the 20th something of August). [28] At trial, Parker testified that, on August 18, appellant threatened to kill her and her kids, and that thereafter she created and put up in the neighborhood wanted posters with his picture on them. She testified that on August 22, appellant, who was angry because he had noticed the posters, called her and said, I am going to kill you because I'm tired of people telling me that you are hanging my pictures up. I keep seeing my pictures everywhere. Appellant asserts that this testimony was the first time Parker ever mentioned a motive for the alleged August 22 threat, and that it was based on his immunized testimony that he was angry about the posters. During the Kastigar hearing, the government submitted no evidence that prior to appellant's CPO-hearing testimony, Parker had mentioned the posters as a motive for the August 22 assault. The arrest report for that date, which the government introduced into evidence, states that Defendant called [Parker] at home and stated `I am going to kill you bitch,' but it makes no mention of the posters. Smith-McGuire's affidavit about the September 9 threat ties a September in-person threat to anger over the posters, but it makes no such connection for a threat made by telephone on August 22. We agree with appellant that the government failed to prove that the portion of Parker's testimony that ascribed to appellant a motive for the August 22 threat was derived from a source wholly independent of appellant's immunized testimony. Here, too, the trial court clearly erred in finding nothing in [appellant's] CPO testimony that affected the substance of Parker's testimony. This motive testimony was not insignificant evidence. Of course, the government is not required to prove motive, but lack of evidence of a motive can be considered by the jury in deciding whether the government has proved the charge beyond a reasonable doubt. [29] The additional important factor here is that the government emphasized this motive in its closing argument. The prosecutor asked the jury, Isn't this [Parker's having created the posters] what started it all, started him from just pestering her and calling her to becoming angry and violent? Because once this poster got posted all over the neighborhood[,] . . . this poster made Kenneth Aiken angry. [30] In light of this emphasis by the government, we cannot say that the motive testimony was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt as to appellant's conviction for the August 22 threat. Accordingly, we agree with appellant that he is entitled to reversal of his conviction on that charge.