Opinion ID: 2770336
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Was Appellant Prejudiced?

Text: We next turn to whether appellant‟s convictions should be reversed because a portion of D.J.‟s CAC statement was played for the jury. See Johnson, 398 A.2d at 367 (a trial court abuses its discretion when there has been an erroneous exercise 18 of discretion and “the impact of that error requires reversal”). “We apply the Kotteakos harmless error standard in evaluating the impact of an erroneously admitted hearsay statement.” Jones v. United States, 17 A.3d 628, 631 (D.C. 2011).3 Under that standard, “reversal is not warranted if we determine, „with fair assurance, after pondering all that happened without stripping the erroneous action from the whole, that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error.‟” Id. at 634 (quoting Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 765 (1946)). The jury ultimately convicted appellant of thirteen counts of child sexual abuse. Six of those counts related to M.J., five to D.J., and two to another victim, E.W. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the two counts relating to the fourth victim, K.H. Appellant contends that the admission of D.J.‟s CAC statement requires reversal of all of his convictions, asserting that, if it believed D.J.‟s allegations of abuse, the jury was more likely to believe the testimony of the other victims. 3 D.J. responded to questions on cross-examination, and appellant does not argue that he was deprived of his constitutional right to confront the witnesses against him. We therefore do not apply the more stringent constitutional harmless error test. See Duvall v. United States, 975 A.2d 839, 843 (D.C. 2009). 19 There is no doubt that we must set aside the conviction on count nine because the CAC video provided the only evidence of that abuse. We also agree that the other counts relating to D.J. should be reversed. D.J.‟s testimony at trial was, at best, reticent and lacking in detail. As the trial court explained, when the prosecutor asked her questions on direct examination, she often covered her mouth or eyes, turned away, or stayed silent on the stand. When she did respond, most of her replies were one-word answers to leading questions. Playing D.J.‟s CAC interview likely bolstered her testimony at trial. D.J. mostly mumbled on the video, but, when repeated by the CAC interviewer, her answers provided a coherent narrative of the abuse in 2005. Perhaps more importantly, D.J. cried softly during a portion of the video, and this display of emotion probably had a bigger impact on the jury than her testimony in court. We therefore cannot say “with fair assurance” that the jurors were not swayed in their assessment of D.J.‟s testimony by viewing the video. However, we can say with the requisite assurance that D.J.‟s interview did not substantially sway the jury‟s decision on the counts related to the other victims. As the trial court recognized, the central issue of the case was whether or not the jury believed the government‟s complaining witnesses. In effect, appellant argues 20 that if D.J.‟s credibility was bolstered by playing the video, the credibility of the other witnesses would have been bolstered as well. We disagree with that contention for three reasons. First, the victims testified as individuals, and the jury instructions focused on assessing the credibility of “any” witness or “the” witness. The jury‟s failure to come to a decision on the charges relating to K.H. shows that it separately evaluated the credibility of each victim. If the jurors had evaluated the testimony of the victims collectively, it is not likely they would have convicted on some charges while failing to come to an agreement on others. The verdicts show that the jury believed the testimony of D.J., M.J., and E.W., but was not persuaded by K.H.‟s testimony. Second, neither the video nor D.J.‟s testimony corroborated the testimony of the other victims. The portion of the video played to the jury only described the first time appellant abused D.J. in 2005. It did not refer to his abuse of other children. D.J.‟s in-court testimony contained only minimal references to appellant‟s abuse of the other victims. To the extent that D.J. testified about the other victims, her testimony was helpful to appellant. For example, she testified 21 that she had never seen appellant abuse M.J. while she and M.J. shared a room in a residence on Parkland Place. Finally, the testimony from the other victims was much more compelling than D.J.‟s testimony. M.J. testified in detail about several acts of sexual abuse appellant committed against her, tying each specific act to a certain location. E.W. likewise testified in detail about the two occasions when appellant touched her inappropriately. The video was only mentioned twice in the government‟s closing arguments. Appellant contends that these references in rebuttal show that the video was essential to the government‟s entire case. In context, however, the video was mentioned only in relation to D.J. (“is it possible that that little girl could have made those emotions up?”). Any generalizations about the other victims were not specifically linked to the video. And appellant‟s counsel was able to argue, in line with the defense theory, that D.J. cried in her CAC interview because M.J. had “dragged [her] into this” and “pressured” her to fabricate the abuse. We therefore conclude that the convictions relating to M.J. and E.W. were not substantially swayed by the improper admission of the video recording. 22 Accordingly, we affirm the eight convictions relating to the abuse of M.J. and E.W., but vacate the five convictions relating to the abuse of D.J.4