Opinion ID: 2293008
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Prosecution's Efforts to Ensure the Witness's Presence at Trial

Text: The determination that a witness is unavailable is a legal conclusion that is a precondition to admission of prior testimony, and it is measured by a fact-specific inquiry into the proponent's efforts to secure the presence of the witness at trial. The lengths to which the prosecution must go to produce a witness, `is a question of reasonableness.' Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 74, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980) (quoting California v. Green, 399 U.S. 149, 189 n. 22, 90 S.Ct. 1930, 26 L.Ed.2d 489 (1970) (Harlan, J., concurring)). Based on the record, it is clear to this court, as it was to the trial court, that Harling was a reluctant witness at the first trial who did not want to testify in court. This does not mean, however, that her absence at the second trial lessened the government's burden of showing that she was unavailable. To the contrary, a witness's known reluctance to testify adds to the government's burden to show that it made reasonable, good faith efforts to secure her appearance because it makes her failure to appear voluntarily all the more foreseeable. The government argues that, despite her reluctance, Harling in fact appeared at both trials, so that appellant's insistence that she was unreliable and that the prosecutor failed to take additional ex ante precautionary measures to insure her appearance rests largely on hindsight. We need not dwell in this case on whether the prosecution should have taken preventive measures to secure Harling's presence before she went missing, equal to what it would have done for the sole eyewitness if Harling's prior testimony had not been available. [11] Instead, we focus primarily on what we conclude were the government's inadequate efforts, after Harling left the courthouse, to find her and bring her back to court. Once Harling left the courthouse and did not return to testify after the lunch recess, the government tried overnight, unsuccessfully, to contact her through family and former addresses; the next day, at the trial court's suggestion, the government called D.C. hospitals and the jail. It had no other leads, proposed no additional efforts, and did not ask for additional time. The prosecutor expressed that he had no expectation Harling could be found. These efforts, we conclude, were insufficient to discharge the government's obligation to show the witness was unavailable for purposes of the Sixth Amendment. The trial court and the prosecutor seem to have been of the view that if Harling voluntarily chose not to appear, the government's efforts could be limited to ensuring that she had not been detained involuntarily. The witness's evasiveness, however, is not the same as the government's burden to show the witness' unavailability, which is a measure of the government's efforts. Lynch, 163 U.S.App.D.C. at 17, 499 F.2d at 1024. In Hardy v. Cross, 565 U.S. ___, 132 S.Ct. 490, 493-94, 181 L.Ed.2d 468 (2011) (per curiam), the Court held, on habeas review, that the state court had not erred in finding a witness unavailable where the witness ha[d] made it impossible for anybody to find where she is, and government had been in constant contact with the witness and her mother before her disappearance, and after she disappeared, over a period of several weeks before trial, government had made constant personal visits . . . at all hours of the day and night to her home, and other personal visits and telephone calls with parents and various family members, visited her ex-boyfriend's family 40 miles away, and made multiple calls to school, hospitals, and other relevant state government agencies. In this case, on the other hand, although the witness made herself scarce, it was not shown that it was impossible to find her, and the government's efforts were paltry. Here, the fact that Harling had been seen in the courthouse a couple of hours before she was to testify (and was apparently not hospitalized or under arrest) meant it was likely that she was in the vicinity and that it was possible to locate her. The government had been able to secure Harling's presence on prior occasions and make her available to testify when it needed her, at the first trial, and there is no reason to believe that more diligent or extended efforts would not have been successful. But it appears the government's interest had flagged. It made a routine overnight search using the indirect contacts it had to get in touch with her, see note 13, supra, and, the next day, made a few calls to D.C. hospitals and the jail. However, when defense counsel suggested that calls also be made to Virginia, where Harling had been arrested in the past, the prosecutor dismissed the suggestion, based on stale information from the first trial, held eight months earlier, that there were no charges pending against her. And even though the prosecutor at one point thought Harling had told him she needed to see her lawyer during the lunch break, there is no evidence in the record that the prosecutor made any attempt to identify and speak to the lawyer for assistance in finding her. Instead, the prosecutor declared he had no expectation that she could be found. [12] What the situation demanded, however, was an intensification of efforts, a doubling-down, to search for and locate the witness, even if it required more than an overnight continuance of the trial. In short, this is unlike prior cases, in which we have held that in the absence of evidence that there was any possibility of locating [the missing witness], no matter how remote, we cannot say that the government failed to meet its good faith effort requirement. Warren, 436 A.2d at 831; cf. Roberts, 448 U.S. at 74, 100 S.Ct. 2531 (The law does not require the doing of a futile act. Thus, if no possibility of procuring the witness exists . . . `good faith' demands nothing of the prosecutor.). Here, there appears to have been more than a remote possibility that, with diligent concentrated effort, Harling could and would have been found. We are mindful that the government can face real challenges in dealing with witnesses who may be unwilling to testify for any number of reasons, some of them understandable and compelling. In some cases, notwithstanding conscientious efforts, the government may not be able to secure a witness's presence at trial. But this is not such a case. The government's efforts were pro forma and plainly inadequate in light of Harling's demonstrated reluctance and her importance to the government's case. It is difficult to imagine, in this prosecution dependent on a sole eyewitness, that this lackadaisical approach was equally as vigorous as that which the government would [have] undertake[n] to prevent Harling from disappearing had it not had her prior testimony. Lynch, 163 U.S.App.D.C. at 18, 499 F.2d at 1023. We can only infer that the government's vigilance had relaxed and only minimal steps were taken to present her live testimony at appellant's second trial once Harling's prior testimony was in hand. Cf. Windham v. Merkle, 163 F.3d 1092, 1102 (9th Cir.1998) (holding no constitutional violation occurred because prosecutor made good faith efforts by subpoenaing the witness, meeting with the witness after the subpoena's issuance, phoning the witness three times as the trial date approached, contacting the witness's parole officer, having a bench warrant issued, and hiring a criminal investigator to locate the witness). Half-measures do not satisfy appellant's rights under the Confrontation Clause or the evidentiary requirement that the witness be unavailable before prior recorded testimony may be admitted. See Idaho v. Wright, 497 U.S. 805, 835, 110 S.Ct. 3139, 111 L.Ed.2d 638 (1990) (If the State's feeble exertions in this case can be called a good-faith effort to secure [the witness] for trial, the Sixth Amendment protections . . . would be toothless.). Thus, we conclude that the trial court abused its discretion in admitting Harling's prior testimony in the second trial because the evidence does not support that the prosecution made reasonable, good faith efforts sufficient to meet its substantial burden of demonstrating that Harling was unavailable.