Opinion ID: 2815635
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Evidence of Prior Gun Possession

Text: The prosecutor notified appellant’s lawyers by letter five days before trial that the government intended to present evidence of appellant’s possession of a gun on at least three occasions in the year leading up to the shootings on July 3-4, 2009. The prosecutor stated in the letter that Mr. Stuckey had previously described the gun he saw fall out of appellant’s pocket on the night of the shootings as a .44 11 caliber Bulldog revolver. The prosecutor stated further that when he asked Mr. Stuckey at a witness conference how he knew the gun was a Bulldog revolver, Mr. Stuckey said he had seen appellant carrying the gun at least three times in the year before the shootings and, on one of those occasions, had been close enough to the gun to see the model name “Bulldog” stamped into the metal. Neither party filed a written motion in limine addressing the admissibility of the evidence outlined in the prosecutor’s letter. During a discussion of preliminary matters on the first day of trial, however, the prosecutor advised the judge that he intended to elicit testimony from Mr. Stuckey regarding three or four occasions in the “several months” leading up to the shootings on which Mr. Stuckey observed appellant carrying a Bulldog revolver, including one occasion on which Mr. Stuckey actually touched the gun and saw the name “Bulldog” stamped on it. The prosecutor proffered that he had learned the information directly from Mr. Stuckey on the day he sent the letter to appellant’s lawyers, and he explained that the testimony was important to the government’s proof of appellant’s involvement in the shootings because a firearms expert would testify that bullets recovered from Mr. Brown’s body were fired from a single weapon, either a .44 caliber Charter Arms Bulldog revolver or a .44 caliber U.S. Arms Magnum revolver. The prosecutor stated further that Mr. Stuckey’s testimony about the prior incidents 12 would enable the jury to understand how Mr. Stuckey knew the gun he saw in appellant’s possession on the night of the shootings was a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver. Appellant objected to the admission of the evidence, arguing that the government’s disclosure of the proffered testimony was untimely and that the alleged incidents of prior possession of the weapon were too remote in time to be relevant. The trial judge overruled appellant’s objection. The judge explained that appellant was charged with murder and carrying a gun and that the probative value of the evidence of appellant’s prior possession of a Bulldog revolver outweighed any risk of unfair prejudice to him. At trial, Mr. Stuckey testified on direct examination that a “.44 Bulldog” fell out of appellant’s jacket pocket in the basement of Mr. Stuckey’s home prior to the shootings on the night of July 3-4, 2009. Asked by the prosecutor how he knew it was a .44 Bulldog, Mr. Stuckey stated that he had seen appellant carrying the gun three times before the night of the shootings and that on one of those occasions he had actually held the gun in his own hands and seen the name Bulldog “branded on the gun.” The prosecutor, however, never asked Mr. Stuckey when the prior incidents occurred, and Mr. Stuckey said nothing to place any of them in time. 13 Appellant’s lawyer asked no questions about the prior incidents on crossexamination of Mr. Stuckey and made no further objection at trial to the testimony about them. Appellant now contends that the trial judge erred in admitting Mr. Stuckey’s testimony about the incidents of prior gun possession because the government’s disclosure of the evidence was untimely, the earlier incidents were too temporally remote, the testimony actually presented at trial did not support the prosecutor’s pretrial proffer, the judge failed to give the jury a proper limiting instruction, and the probative value of the evidence was substantially outweighed by its unfair prejudicial effect. We find no reversible error. It has long been the rule in this jurisdiction that evidence of a defendant’s uncharged criminal conduct is inadmissible to prove the defendant’s disposition to commit an offense charged in the case. See Drew v. United States, 331 F.2d 85, 89 (D.C. Cir. 1964). Under Drew, evidence of other crimes committed by a defendant is admissible only if it is offered to prove a legitimate and materially disputed issue, such as motive, intent, common plan, identity, or absence of mistake or accident, Williams v. United States, 106 A.3d 1063, 1067 (D.C. 2015), and only if the trial judge finds by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant committed 14 the other crimes, Roper v. United States, 564 A.2d 726, 731 (D.C. 1989), and determines that the probative value of the evidence is not substantially outweighed by the risk of unfair prejudice posed by its admission, Williams, 106 A.3d at 1067. The Drew rule, however, applies only to evidence of uncharged criminal conduct that is independent of the offense charged in the case. Johnson v. United States, 683 A.2d 1087, 1090 (D.C. 1996) (en banc). The strictures of Drew, therefore, are inapplicable to evidence of the defendant’s other criminal conduct that “(1) is direct and substantial proof of the charged crime, (2) is closely intertwined with the evidence of the charged crime, or (3) is necessary to place the charged crime in an understandable context.” Id. at 1098. We have repeatedly recognized, moreover, that evidence of a defendant’s prior possession of the weapon or type of weapon used to commit a charged offense can be admitted as direct and substantial proof of the crime charged. See, e.g., Daniels v. United States, 2 A.3d 250, 254, 262 (D.C. 2010) (upholding the admission of testimony in a murder case that the defendant had been seen many times with a black or silver gun, where other testimony established that the murder weapon was black or silver); Coleman v. United States, 379 A.2d 710, 712 (D.C. 1977) (“An accused person’s prior possession of the physical means of committing 15 the crime [charged] is some evidence of the probability of his guilt, and is therefore admissible.”); see generally Johnson, 683 A.2d at 1097 (“Our cases have repeatedly held that admissibility of this kind of evidence [possession of pistol allegedly used in assault with intent to kill] is based upon a determination of whether it was directly relevant to some issue in the case. We have never held, and do not do so now, that such evidence must meet the standards established by the Drew line of cases.”) (alteration in original) (quoting King v. United States, 618 A.2d 727, 730 (D.C. 1993)). Ultimately, the admissibility of evidence of a defendant’s prior possession of the weapon or type of weapon used in a charged offense turns on a consideration of the temporal proximity of the incidents of prior possession to the charged offense and a comparison of the appearance of the weapon previously possessed by the defendant with that of the weapon actually used in the charged offense. Williams, 106 A.3d at 1069. These factors inform the trial judge’s determination of the relevance of the evidence and drive the requisite balancing of the evidence’s legitimate probative value and the risk of unfair prejudice posed by its admission; the more likely it is that the weapon previously in the defendant’s possession was the weapon used in the charged offense, the “less relevant” is the length of time 16 between the earlier sightings and the crime charged. McConnaughey v. United States, 804 A.2d 334, 339 (D.C. 2002). A trial judge has broad discretion to determine the admissibility of evidence of uncharged misconduct as direct and substantial proof of the crime charged under Johnson, and on appeal our review of a judge’s ruling admitting such evidence is limited to a consideration of whether there has been an abuse of discretion. Busey v. United States, 747 A.2d 1153, 1165 (D.C. 2000). We find no abuse of discretion in the judge’s decision to admit Mr. Stuckey’s testimony based on the prosecutor’s pretrial proffer. First, the government did not run afoul of any pretrial disclosure obligation. We have never determined whether the government must provide pretrial notice of its intention to present evidence of a defendant’s uncharged criminal conduct as direct and substantial proof of the crime charged under Johnson. In Johnson itself, we considered whether, in the Drew context, we should adopt a provision of Rule 404 (b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence that requires prosecutors in federal cases to provide advance notice of the government’s intent to present evidence of other crimes at trial. 683 A.2d at 1100 n.17. We declined to impose an across-the-board notice requirement for the government’s intent to introduce Drew evidence, 17 although we acknowledged that “even without a rule or policy requiring such notice, the trial court has the discretion to require parties to disclose in advance their intention[s] to use evidence of other crimes, and in any event a prosecutor may find it prudent to afford such notice.” Id. We understand that many Superior Court judges generally require the pretrial disclosure of other crimes evidence and that the government routinely discloses its intention to present such evidence even without a judge’s order. Advance disclosure has many benefits – it notifies the defense of allegations of uncharged criminal conduct the defense must investigate and prepare to confront at trial; it informs the judge of often-difficult evidentiary rulings the judge may have to make at trial; and, as we stated in Johnson, it “may obviate any possible claim of unfair surprise and may avoid a request for [a] continuance.” Id. We need not decide, however, whether the government always has an obligation to disclose Johnson evidence in advance of trial, because even if we were to assume the existence of such an obligation, the record reflects that the prosecutor notified appellant’s lawyers of his intent to present evidence of the prior incidents of gun possession on the day the prosecutor learned of the incidents from Mr. Stuckey. On this record, there can be no argument that the government’s disclosure was untimely. 18 Second, the prosecutor’s pretrial proffer amply supported the trial judge’s determination that evidence of appellant’s prior possession of a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver had significant legitimate probative value despite the temporal remoteness of the earlier incidents. As the prosecutor explained to the judge, ballistics evidence would show that a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver was one of only two types of guns that could have been used in the shootings on July 3-4, 2009, and Mr. Stuckey’s testimony would clearly link appellant with a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver. Given the likelihood that the gun previously seen in appellant’s possession was of the same distinctive type used in the charged offenses, it was less concerning that the prior sightings may have occurred several months, or even a year, before the charged offenses. See McConnaughey, 804 A.2d at 338-39 (upholding the admission of testimony relating to the defendant’s possession of a gun eleven months before the charged offense “in light of the evidence strongly suggesting that the gun [seen previously in the defendant’s possession] was the gun with which [the victims] were shot”); (Phillip) Johnson v. United States, 701 A.2d 1085, 1092 (D.C. 1997) (more than one year before the charged offense); Coleman, 379 A.2d at 712 (five months before). 19 We readily conclude, moreover, that the trial judge did not abuse his discretion in determining that the probative value of the proffered testimony was greater than (and thus not substantially outweighed by) the risk of unfair prejudice to appellant. The judge understood that the evidence would explain how Mr. Stuckey knew the type of gun that fell out of appellant’s pocket on the night of the shootings, and it was apparent from the prosecutor’s proffer that the testimony could be elicited in front of the jury with a few simple questions of Mr. Stuckey. More complex is the question whether the trial judge erred in not striking Mr. Stuckey’s testimony about appellant’s prior possession of a Bulldog revolver when the government failed at trial to elicit any testimony to establish the dates on which the prior incidents occurred. Absent evidence of temporal proximity to the charged offenses, appellant argues, Mr. Stuckey’s testimony about the prior acts of possession was virtually irrelevant, and any limited probative value of the evidence was substantially outweighed by its unfair prejudicial effect. We agree that the testimony from Mr. Stuckey actually presented at trial did not fully support the prosecutor’s pretrial proffer and that without any indication of temporal proximity the admissibility of the evidence of appellant’s prior acts of possession of a Bulldog revolver would have been unlikely. Had appellant 20 objected at trial on this ground, therefore, the judge would have been required to strike the testimony or to provide some other appropriate remedy for the government’s failure of proof. See Anderson v. United States, 857 A.2d 451, 458 n.6 (D.C. 2004); Daniels v. United States, 613 A.2d 342, 347 (D.C. 1992). Appellant, however, raised no objection at trial to the incompleteness of Mr. Stuckey’s testimony about the prior acts of gun possession, and he never asked the trial judge to strike the testimony or to take any other corrective action. We held in Anderson, 857 A.2d at 458-59, that the plain error rule applies on appeal when a defendant failed to object at trial to the admission, under Drew, of other crimes evidence on the ground that the evidence actually presented to the jury did not fulfill the prosecutor’s pretrial proffer, even if the defendant objected before trial to the admission of the evidence. We explained that the “continuing objection doctrine only applies where the trial court ‘has already had an opportunity to decide the point at issue’ while ‘the purpose of the contemporaneous objection rule is to give the trial court an opportunity to correct any potential errors at the time they are made.’” Id. (quoting McGrier v. United States, 597 A.2d 36, 45 n.14 (D.C. 1991)). Therefore, “[w]here a trial court permits the admission of evidence subject to the fulfillment of a condition, an opposing party must object if it believes that condition has not been fulfilled when the disputed evidence is 21 presented.” Id. at 459; see also Huddleston v. United States, 485 U.S. 681, 690 n.7 (1988) (“It is, of course, not the responsibility of the judge sua sponte to insure that the foundation evidence is offered; the objector must move to strike the evidence if at the close of the trial the offeror has failed to satisfy the condition.”). We have never decided whether the same rule of appellate review applies in the Johnson context, but we see no meaningful distinction between the two situations and can think of no good reason why a defendant should be excused from interposing a contemporaneous objection when evidence of his uncharged misconduct admitted conditionally under Johnson fails to fulfill the prosecutor’s proffer. We thus limit to plain error analysis our review of the trial judge’s failure sua sponte to strike Mr. Stuckey’s testimony about the incidents of appellant’s prior possession of a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver. Under the plain error doctrine, appellant must establish (1) that the trial judge committed error; (2) that the error was plain, i.e., clear or obvious; (3) that the error affected his substantial rights; and (4) that a failure to correct the error would seriously affect the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. Marshall v. United States, 15 A.3d 699, 710 (D.C. 2011) (citing United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 732-36 (1993)). 22 Appellant has not made the requisite showing. Even if it should have been clear to the trial judge that the evidence of appellant’s prior possession of the Bulldog revolver lacked probative value without testimony placing it in temporal proximity to the charged offenses, appellant cannot establish that the judge’s failure to strike the testimony affected his substantial rights or that our failure to correct the error on appeal would seriously affect the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. Mr. Stuckey’s testimony about the defendant’s prior acts of possession covers less than a page in the transcript of a week-long trial, and without the evidence of temporal proximity proffered by the prosecutor the testimony was likely less compelling to the jury in any event. Indeed, the fact that appellant’s trial counsel chose not to raise the government’s failure to fulfill its pretrial proffer suggests to us that counsel reasonably viewed the government’s failure more as a benign oversight than as a point of unfair prejudice. Finally, appellant complains that the trial judge did not give an instruction limiting the jury’s consideration of the evidence of his prior gun possession to its proper purpose. A limiting instruction is generally required when evidence of other crimes is admitted under Drew. Jones v. United States, 477 A.2d 231, 243 (D.C. 1984). An instruction is not always required, however, when evidence of 23 uncharged criminal conduct is admitted under Johnson as direct and substantial proof of the defendant’s guilt of the charged offense; in that circumstance, it is left to the sound discretion of the trial judge to decide whether to grant a request for an instruction, even though a cautionary directive is usually warranted. Johnson, 683 A.2d at 1097 n.10. Appellant never asked the trial judge to give an instruction limiting the jury’s consideration of the evidence of his prior possession of the Bulldog revolver. His complaint about the judge’s failure to give a cautionary instruction is therefore subject to plain error review on appeal. Given the Johnson rule that limiting instructions are not always required when evidence of uncharged criminal conduct is admitted as direct and substantial proof of the defendant’s guilt of the charged offense, we find no error, and certainly no plain error, in the judge’s failure sua sponte to give a limiting instruction.