Opinion ID: 2175676
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: C: The Post-Murder Gun Sighting

Text: We also uphold the trial court's in limine decision to admit Fields' testimony that he had seen a gun in Bullock's car several days after the murder. Even assuming that possession of a .38 revolver like that at issue here would pass the threshold requirement that it constitutes evidence of crime or wrongdoing, cf. Jones v. United States, 477 A.2d 231, 237-38 (D.C.1984) (mere possession of .38 revolver, without more, not wrongful conduct and thus not Drew evidence), the evidence was properly admitted under ( Ronald ) Lee v. United States, 471 A.2d 683 (D.C.1984) and ( Abdus-Shahid M.S. ) Ali v. United States, 581 A.2d 368 (D.C.1990). Lee upheld the introduction in evidence of a knife, found in a defendant's car sixteen hours after the complainant was raped, on the theory that it was evidence of the crime charged and thus not Drew other crimes evidence at all. Here, Fields gave testimony that the gun looked like the one he saw Johnson use to murder Smith. As in Lee, where the knife was held admissible despite its significant difference in length from the knife described by the witness, reversible error does not lie here simply because Fields contradicted himself and could not state that the gun in the car was the actual gun used in the murder. Similarly, in the more recent case of ( Abdus-Shahid M.S. ) Ali v. United States, supra, 581 A.2d at 375, we reaffirmed this proposition, holding that any uncertainty that the gun as identified by a witness was the same one used by the appellant in the charged offense would go to the weight of the evidence rather than its admissibility. There, the appellant argued that admission of photographic and other evidence concerning his possession a month before the charged murder of a sawed-off shotgun, allegedly similar to the murder weapon, violated the principles of Drew. We held that even though some of the evidence depicted appellant's possession of the gun as unconnected with the murder, other evidence supported the inference that appellant's possession was related to the murder and hence not just to an independent crime. Thus, we said, the photographs and other evidence constituted evidence of the crime charged, id. at 377, and were not subject to Drew. The same is true here, especially where the gun was found only a few days, not a month, from the charged offense.