Opinion ID: 2345595
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Preclusion of Appellants' Third-Party Perpetrator Defense

Text: At a hearing on the eve of trial, Stewart's counsel Veronice Holt announced appellants' intention to present a so-called Winfield [6] or third-party perpetrator defensethe (surprising) gist of which was that Sue Ann Mascall and her brother Ricardo were the real murderers, and that they killed Rosebure in order to rob him of drugs he was carrying. After eliciting a proffer of the evidentiary basis for that claim and finding the proffer wanting, the judge barred appellants from asserting, either in argument to the jury or in leading questions on cross-examination, that Mascall and her brother were guilty of the murder. [7] Appellants argue that the judge thereby abused his discretion and deprived them of their Sixth Amendment rights. We do not agree.
The most important fact Stewart's counsel proffered was that an unnamed eyewitness[a] person who was there on the scenehad told her that the last individual to possess the guns fired outside 1600 E Street on New Year's Eve (the presumptive murder weapons) was Sue Ann Mascall's brother Ricardo. At some point during the noisy celebration, Holt elaborated, the police showed up, and Ricardo took the guns and hid them. The judge agreed that such eyewitness testimony would be very powerful evidence ... that would permit a Winfield defense to go to the jury. But when the judge asked Holt if she actually had such testimony to present, she refused to state that her source would testify [8] and she acknowledged having no other witness who could tie Ricardo Mascall to the murder weapons. At trial, appellants never called such a witness, nor did they cross-examine Sue Ann Mascall (or any other government witness) on Ricardo's possession of the guns fired by appellants the night before Rosebure's murder. Holt further proffered that Rosebure was known to have sold crack cocaine, which he habitually concealed in his rectum, [9] and an unidentified witness had said that on the day [of] the shooting Mr. Rosebure did in fact have a stash and he was going to that area [i.e., 1600 E Street] to sell it and promised to give this individual money after the sale. (At a subsequent bench conference, Holt identified the witness in question as the mother of Rosebure's child, who had been pressing him for money.) No money or cocaine was recovered from Rosebure's body, but Holt represented that his pants were missing when the police and paramedics arrived on the scenesuggesting he had been robbed, presumably by Sue Ann and Ricardo Mascall. At trial, however, a paramedic testified without contradiction that Rosebure's pants were on when I got there. [10] Finally, Holt proffered, the ballistics and medical evidence would be consistent with the hypothesis that Rosebure was shot on the porch outside the apartment buildingnot in the lobby as Sue Ann Mascall claimedand then dragged inside. (Evidence at trial, including testimony that there was no blood outside the building before the paramedics moved Rosebure outside to work on him, tended to refute this hypothesis.)
A third-party perpetrator defense requires proof of facts or circumstances which tend to indicate some reasonable possibility that a person other than the defendant committed the charged offense. [11] Without such a foundation in the evidence, the defense is unduly speculative and likely only to distract and mislead the jury. [12] A defendant proposing to present a Winfield defense therefore must proffer some evidence, either circumstantial or direct, of a third party's actions, motives, opportunity, statements or declarations against penal interest. Such evidence may consist of one fact or circumstance, or a set of facts or circumstances, which, in the aggregate, establishes the necessary link, connection or nexus between the proffered evidence and the crime at issue. [13] We agree with the trial judge that appellants' evidentiary proffer was too speculative and insubstantial to show a reasonable possibility that Rosebure was murdered by Sue Ann or Ricardo Mascall. Among its other deficiencies, the proffer identified no witness who actually would testify that Ricardo Mascall received the murder weapons on New Year's Eve as counsel alleged; [14] no testimony or other proof that Sue Ann or Ricardo Mascall robbed Rosebure (or rummaged through his clothing before police and paramedics arrived on the scene); no evidence that either of them had any motive to kill or rob Rosebure; [15] and no incriminating statements attributed to either of them. Even if the defense arguably impeached Sue Ann Mascall's testimony that Rosebure was shot in the building lobby with evidence he actually was shot on the porch outside, that discrepancy is not enough to implicate Mascall or her brother in the crime. Our review of a trial judge's ruling barring a Winfield defense is for abuse of discretion. [16] We are satisfied the judge exercised his discretion appropriately here.