Opinion ID: 1931722
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the attempted impeachment for bias

Text: The only issue raised by Coles on appeal which merits plenary consideration is whether the trial judge erred by limiting the cross-examination of Kurt Goodwine, a witness for the prosecution. [4] We discern no legal error or abuse of discretion. In our view, the limitation of which Coles complains pertained to a matter of very little, if any, probative value, and its exclusion was justified by its potential for distracting the jury from the issue at hand. At the very least, the trial judge could reasonably so conclude.
During the prosecution's case-in-chief, Goodwine testified that he had sold defendant Coles a Smith and Wesson handgun, as well as ammunition and a speed loader, when the two men were employed by the Department of the Navy approximately five years before the trial. Goodwine identified Government's Exhibit No. 2, by its serial number, as the weapon that he had sold to Coles. Exhibit No. 2 was the handgun that Coles had allegedly dropped during the officers' pursuit of him. On cross-examination, Goodwine acknowledged that he had no documentation of the sale of the handgun to Coles, and he was unable to recall either the precise date of the transaction or the exact amount paid to him by Coles. Coles' attorney then attempted to cross-examine Goodwine regarding an employment discrimination complaint that Coles had allegedly filed in January 1999 against Goodwine's superior at the Navy Department. The judge inquired as to the relevance of the question, and counsel proffered that the proposed line of inquiry would demonstrate that Goodwine was biased against Coles. Counsel explained that Goodwine had been called as a management witness by the Department of the Navy in an administrative hearing on Coles' complaint. Subsequently, in January 2000, Goodwine had stated in an affidavit that Coles had a deleterious effect on morale of the section because none of us could understand his motivation and we could all see where this was heading. [5] The judge indicated that she did not see how the discrimination complaint provided Goodwine with a motive to fabricate evidence falsely implicating Coles in an armed robbery. She pointed out that if the proposed questioning was permitted, the prosecutor would have the right to bring out the witness' position. Coles' attorney acknowledged that this was so: Oh, no question. The judge then explained that she did not propose to try what she regarded as a collateral matter (namely, the rights and wrongs of Goodwine's criticism of Coles in connection with the discrimination case): I'm not going to try that [discrimination] case. I think, you know, bias is always relevant, that is true, but given when this affidavit was given, the circumstances under which it was given, an administrative action where this witness was just called as a witness, that he was not alleged to have been one of the discriminators or that he took any action against your client, I don't see how that is probative of bias in terms ofI'm not going to turn this into some discrimination trial. Coles' attorney then argued that Goodwine's motive was to curry favor with his boss. The judge disagreed and declined to permit the proposed cross-examination.
A criminal defendant's right to cross-examine prosecution witnesses is protected by the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment. Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 315, 94 S.Ct. 1105, 39 L.Ed.2d 347 (1974); Lawrence v. United States, 482 A.2d 374, 376 (D.C.1984). That right, however, is not unlimited. Reed v. United States, 452 A.2d 1173, 1176 (D.C. 1982), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 839, 104 S.Ct. 132, 78 L.Ed.2d 127 (1983). [D]espite the Sixth Amendment, the trial court has broad discretion to impose reasonable limits on cross-examination based on concerns about, among other things, harassment, prejudice, confusion of the issues, the witness' safety, or interrogation that is repetitive or only marginally relevant. Grayton v. United States, 745 A.2d 274, 280-81 (D.C.2000) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). A proposed line of questioning may, and should, be disallowed if the trial court concludes that its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, id. at 281; see also Mercer v. United States, 724 A.2d 1176, 1184 (D.C.1999), or if the inquiry may divert the attention of the jury from the issue at hand. The trial judge has wide latitude insofar as the Confrontation Clause is concerned to impose reasonable limits on cross examination, Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 679, 106 S.Ct. 1431, 89 L.Ed.2d 674 (1986), for she has the responsibility for seeing that the side-show does not take over the circus. EDWARD W. CLEARY, McCORMICK ON EVIDENCE § 40, at 89 (3d ed.1984). In the present case, the proposed cross-examination was designed to impeach Goodwine for bias: Bias is a term used in the common law of evidence to describe the relationship between a party and a witness which might lead the witness to slant, unconsciously or otherwise, his testimony in favor of or against a party. Bias may be induced by a witness' like, dislike, or fear of a party, or by the witness' self-interest. United States v. Abel, 469 U.S. 45, 52, 105 S.Ct. 465, 83 L.Ed.2d 450 (1984). Bias is always relevant, Hollingsworth v. United States, 531 A.2d 973, 979 (D.C.1987), and [t]he Supreme Court has established that the refusal to allow any questioning about facts indicative of bias from which the jury could reasonably draw adverse inferences ... is an error of constitutional dimension, violating the defendant's rights secured by the Confrontation Clause. Ford v. United States, 549 A.2d 1124, 1126 (D.C.1988) (emphasis in original) (citing Van Arsdall, supra, 475 U.S. at 678-79, 106 S.Ct. 1431). Here, the judge allowed no cross-examination regarding Goodwine's purported bias, which was alleged to have stemmed from Coles' discrimination complaint. But the party posing the question must proffer to the court some facts which support a genuine belief that the witness is biased in the manner asserted, that there is a specific personal bias on the part of the witness, and that the proposed questions are probative of bias. Barnes v. United States, 614 A.2d 902, 905 (D.C.1992) (emphasis added) (quoting Porter v. United States, 561 A.2d 994, 996 (D.C.1989)). The trial judge ... has discretion in determining whether particular evidence is relevant to bias or motive. White v. State, 324 Md. 626, 598 A.2d 187, 194 (1991) (quoting McCORMICK ON EVIDENCE, supra, § 40, at 87). Indeed, the trial court has a great deal of discretion in making this determination. Id. [T]he burden of showing the relevance of particular evidence to the issue of bias rests on its proponent. Chambers v. State, 866 S.W.2d 9, 26-27 (Tex.Crim.App.1993). Moreover, not everything tends to show bias, and courts may exclude evidence that is only marginally useful for this purpose. State v. Lanz-Terry, 535 N.W.2d 635, 640 (Minn.1995). Evidence tending only slightly to prove bias may be admitted; however, rejecting such evidence is within the discretionary power of the trial court. State v. Jackson, 340 N.C. 301, 457 S.E.2d 862, 870 (1995). Proportionality is of consummate importance in judicious adjudication, Allen v. United States, 603 A.2d 1219, 1227 (D.C.1992) (en banc), and, as the foregoing authorities demonstrate, the principle that the preclusion of all cross-examination regarding a witness' possible bias violates the Constitution must be applied with a measure of common sense. Trivial motivations are insufficient. If Jones accidentally steps on Smith's toe and momentarily inflicts a little pain on Smith's corn, this might reasonably provide a motive for Smith to curse Jones or even to push him, but no reasonable person would view it as a motive to throw acid into Jones' eyes or to shoot Jones through the heart. The present case may not be as extreme as the foregoing hypothetical, but an expression of dissatisfaction with Coles' role in the discrimination proceeding in which Goodwine was merely a witness reasonably appeared to the trial judge to provide a very unpersuasive motive indeed for helping to frame a man for armed robbery by fabricating a five-year-old sale of a handgun. [6] Although the judge did not express herself in precisely these terms, we are satisfied that this is what she was driving at. To articulate the point by resort to this court's language in Barnes, supra, the defense proffer did not amount to the specific personal bias, 614 A.2d at 905, required to lay a foundation for cross-examination for bias. The proffer of bias was marginal at best, and thus quite inadequate to require the judge to permit the proposed line of inquiry. Cf. Lanz-Terry, supra, 535 N.W.2d at 640; Jackson, supra, 457 S.E.2d at 870. Moreover, the situation before the trial judge was rife with the potential for confusion of the issue and for distraction of the jury from the question whether Coles was innocent or guilty: Impeachment is not a dispassionate study of the capacities and character of the witness, but is regarded in our tradition as an attack upon his credibility. Under our adversary system of trials the opponent must be given an opportunity to meet this attack by evidence sustaining or rehabilitating the witness. McCORMICK ON EVIDENCE, supra, § 49, at 115 (emphasis in original). Accordingly, if the trial judge had permitted the line of inquiry proffered by the defense, the prosecution would have had the right to rehabilitate Goodwine, and would presumably have done so by attempting to show that his comments about Coles were accurate and justified and did not reflect bias against the defendant. The inquiry would then have been diverted from the question of Coles' innocence or guilt to the merits of a collateral dispute between Goodwine and Coles which arose in the context of a discrimination case. It is no secret that allegations of unlawful discrimination tend to capture one's attention, and the proposed cross-examination would have had a significant potential for distracting of the jury. Under these circumstances, we perceive no legal error or abuse of discretion on the trial judge's part. [7]