Opinion ID: 1889625
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The nature of the evidence.

Text: There is no gainsaying that Ms. Hawkins' evidence, as proffered by Sanders' attorney, was potentially probative and significant. If Ms. Hawkins had testified to everything that counsel hoped that she would say, then she would have directly contradicted the testimony of the one prosecution witness who implicated both defendants in Brown's murder. Kinard testified that at the time he witnessed the shooting of Nathaniel Brown, he (Kinard) was near the park in the company of Ms. Hawkins. Sanders' attorney proffered, however, that Ms. Hawkins would testify to the contrary: Ms. Hawkins will say that she was not on the scene, she was in a house on Florida Avenue at the time that this happened. . . . [S]he did not want to get into specific details about where Kinard was . . . . He may have been with her. . . . My understanding is that she will say that she was not out there talking to him at any time during the relevant period that afternoon. If Ms. Hawkins had testified in conformity with the foregoing proffer, and if the jury had believed her account, then this would have been a potentially serious blow to the prosecution. Without Kinard's evidence, the government's case was problematic. The testimony of the other prosecution witnesses who identified Sanders as the shooter, while not necessarily incredible, was beset with difficulties. See notes 6 and 7, supra. The prosecution's proof of motive, e.g., it's whatever and stuff like that, was ambiguous at best. Credible evidence to the effect that Kinard was not where he said he was, and with whom he said he was, when Brown was killed would have struck at the heart of the testimony of the one witness whom the jury probably had to believe in order to convict the defendants. The government describes Ms. Hawkins' expected account as cumulative impeachment testimony and seeks to minimize its significance. We do not believe that the government's characterization of the defense proffer is an accurate one. Kinard's credibility had previously been attacked by the defense on the grounds, among others, that Kinard had a grudge against Sanders, that he was a drug user, and that he had been seeking the assistance of the District of Columbia prosecutors with the resolution of charges pending against him in Virginia. But unlike the foregoing evidence, which tends only to impeach Kinard's general credibility, Ms. Hawkins' testimony, as proffered, would have contradicted Kinard's account of this particular shooting, and it might have raised a doubt as to whether Kinard observed the event at all. [10] The government's claim that Ms. Hawkins' evidence would have been cumulative appears to rest on a tacit assumption that Kinard's credibility had already been undermined, and that testimony directly contrary to his account of the murder, even if true, could not have weakened it further in any significant measure. We find this contention singularly unpersuasive.