Opinion ID: 2329091
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The missing gun

Text: Appellant complains that he was denied a fair trial by the trial court's refusal to sanction the government for destroying the .38 Rossi revolver used at the shooting by his drug rival (turned government witness) Cheek. Two years after the first trial in this case, the government, for reasons unknown, destroyed Cheek's revolver following trials against Cheek in other unrelated cases. Appellant now challenges the trial court's refusal to exclude the ballistics evidence related to the gun as a sanction against the government. [7] Where the government has failed to preserve evidence, [t]he factors to be considered in determining whether sanctions should be applied are [1] the degree of negligence or bad faith involved, [2] the importance of the evidence lost, and [3] the evidence of guilt adduced at trial in order to come to a determination that will serve the ends of justice. Cotton v. United States, 388 A.2d 865, 869 (D.C.1978) (internal quotations omitted). Absent an abuse of discretion, the decision of what sanctions, if any, to impose is committed to the trial court. Id. (citations omitted). [8] Appellant has shown some negligence on the part of the government in failing to preserve Cheek's .38 Rossi. That negligence, however, caused minimal, if any, prejudice to appellant, because the government preserved the bullet core recovered from the decedent's body and the bullet fragments recovered from the scene. At the pretrial hearing on this issue, appellant made clear that the bullet core and the recovered fragments were available to him prior to the second trial, and were examined by his own ballistics expert. Appellant's defense theory was that the shots that killed Lamont Simms and injured Keith Simms were fired by Cheek, not appellant. To support that theory, appellant represented at the pre-trial hearing that his ballistics expert had determined that the bullet core recovered from the decedent's body could have been fired from any weapon, i.e., including Cheek's.38 Rossi. Since Cheek's revolver would not have been necessary to prove this point, the loss of the revolver would not have been significant, and, in fact, was arguably helpful to appellant, since he no longer had to prove that the bullet fragments could have been fired from Cheek's particular gun. The government's ballistics expert testified at the first and the second trials that the bullet fragments and the lead core had been fired from a weapon with five lands and grooves [with a] right twist, while a.38 Rossi has six lands and grooves . . . to the right. Appellant, however, did not have his promised expert testify at trial to rebut the government's expert. The government's unrebutted expert testimony was therefore that the bullet that killed the decedent could not have been fired from Cheek's .38 Rossi. As we discuss in the next section, the government's case against appellant was strong, even aside from the ballistics evidence. Since the prejudice to appellant resulting from the destruction of Cheek's gun was so slight in light of the strength of the government's case, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in deciding not to sanction the government and in admitting the government's ballistics evidence.