Opinion ID: 2345595
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Exclusion of Proffered Testimony from a Defense Witness on Relevance Grounds

Text: Stewart's counsel sought to have Michael Evans testify not only that he was driving a brown Pontiac with temporary tags in the vicinity of 1600 E Street around the time of Rosebure's murder, but also that the police stopped his car and detained him for several hours that night for questioning about the murder. As Evans never was charged with Rosebure's murder and appellants conceded he was not involved in it, the trial judge asked why the additional testimony from Evans would be relevant. Holt argued that the fact that police considered Evans a suspect tended to impeach the government's evidence that Sue Ann Mascall identified McCraney by name to the police within minutes of the shooting, because if [McCraney] was a suspect, why are [the police] arresting somebody else? [33] Viewing this rationale as pure speculation, the judge precluded appellants from examining Evans about his questioning by the police as a suspect in Rosebure's murder. Appellants contend the judge erred in excluding the proffered testimony of Evans as irrelevant and thereby infringed their Sixth Amendment right to present a defense. The testimony would have been relevant, appellants argue, either to discredit the testimony that Sue Ann Mascall promptly identified McCraney or to indicate that the police were skeptical of her identification. (The latter rationale is offered for the first time on appeal.) Whether proffered evidence is relevant or not is a determination entrusted to the trial court's sound discretion. [34] We are not persuaded the trial judge abused his discretion in making that decision in this instance. In general, a defendant is entitled to wide latitude in presenting evidence tending to impeach the credibility of a witness, especially ... a key government witness, [35] and competent evidence that is relevant to that or any other matter in issue is presumptively admissible. [36] For evidence to be relevant, however, it must tend[ ] to make the existence or nonexistence of a fact more or less probable than would be the case without the evidence. [37] This standard is met so long as the evidence offered conduces in any reasonable degree to establish the probability or improbability of the fact in controversy. [38] A defendant has no right to present irrelevant evidence. [39] Like the trial judge, we think the inferences appellants would have asked the jury to draw from the police interrogation of Evans as a suspect in Rosebure's murder are entirely too speculative and illogical to render that testimony relevant. There are obvious reasons why the police treatment of Evans as a suspect does not even remotely impeach the testimony that Mascall already had identified McCraney, nor fairly imply that the police were skeptical of that identification. Even if the police knew that one of the shooters was McCraney, they had reason to consider Evans to be a possible accomplice: they observed him near 1600 E Street minutes after the murder driving a vehicle strikingly similar to that in which Rosebure's assailants reportedly fled; and, according to Mascall and other witnesses, there was at least one other shooter whose identity was still unknown. That other shooter could have been Evans. It would have been poor police work indeed to ignore Evans merely because the police credited Mascall's identification of McCraney. Thus, the fact that the police questioned Evans implies nothing about when Mascall identified McCraney or whether the police disbelieved her. In other words, the proffered evidence that police viewed Evans as a suspect on the night of Rosebure's murder was irrelevant. [40]