Opinion ID: 2320334
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Dispositions of all Q Street Convictions

Text: Without the identifications attributable to Tillman (by Butts), the jury was leftas to McClain and Webb on Q Streetwith only Rivera's testimony ascribing identifications to Smith. Smith himself, however, declined to make incourt identifications and admitted only pretrial identifications coerced by the police. We cannot say, absent the Tillman identifications as corroboration, that the jury would have found Rivera's testimony more plausible than Smith's. In short, without Tillman's testimony in evidence, we cannot say assuredly enoughwithin the meaning of Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 765, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946)that the jury would have relied on Smith and other evidence to convict McClain and Webb for the Q Street crimes. The error in admitting Tillman's identifications as dying declarations, therefore, was not harmless as to McClain and Webb. The harmless error analysis as to Bell is more complicated, however, because Bell admitted in writing that he had been in the station wagon at the crash site, which others had identified as the source of the Q Street shootings. The evidence showed no hiatus between the Q Street crimes, the police pursuit, and the crash. The evidence, thereforewithout the Tillman and Smith identificationsappeared to be sufficient, we may assume, for convicting Bell of those Q Street crimes. Mere sufficiency of the evidence, however, does not dictate a finding of harmless error. Here, the jury heard statements attributable not only to Tillman (by Butts) but also to Smith (by Rivera), identifying Bell on Q Street, including an identification attributed to Smith describing Bell as a shooter from a passenger seat in the station wagon. On the other hand, for the reasons explained above as to McClain and Webb, we cannot say that the juryabsent Tillman's corroborating testimony would have believed Rivera's report of Smith's identification testimony that Smith, himself, repudiated. Furthermore, we cannot say that the jury, without credible eyewitness identification from Q Street, would have convicted Bell for the crimes there based on his presence at the crash site coupled with a written statement admitting only that he had been in the car asleep, awakened by gunshots, none of which he fired. We cannot conclude, therefore, that the jury would have convicted Bell of the Q Street crimes on the evidence uninfected by the trial court error, within the meaning of Kotteakos. Accordingly, we must reverse the murder, AWIK, and weapons convictions not only of Webb and McClain, but also of Bell, derived from the Q Street shootings. We now turn to the convictions for crimes at the assailants' crash site after the police pursuit.