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

Heading: The Section 23-110 Hearing

Text: There was no dispute at the § 23-110 hearing that Stewart had paid the majority of McCraney's legal fees; on that point, Sroufe and Holt confirmed the essential details of McCraney's testimony. In brief, after having been represented prior to trial by four different court-appointed lawyers, McCraney met with Stewart and told him he wanted to retain counsel of his own choosing. Stewart agreed to help McCraney pay for one. A week later, Stewart's counsel Holt introduced McCraney to Sroufe, who offered to represent him for a total fee of $8,000. Holt told McCraney he would need to pay only $3,000 of that sum because Stewart would pay the balance. McCraney agreed to that arrangement and Sroufe became his counsel. Prior to trial, McCraney testified, he informed Sroufe that when the police arrived outside 1600 E Street on New Year's Eve, he and the other persons who were shooting their guns in the air went upstairs to Ricardo Mascall's apartment and left their weapons in Ricardo's keeping. Ricardo had all the weapons and he put them up somewhere in his house. To McCraney's knowledge, Ricardo Mascall thus was the last one in possession of the guns allegedly used in the shooting the next day. According to McCraney, he also told Sroufe that he had given his car to Ricardo Mascall approximately three to five weeks before the shooting. (In his testimony, McCraney did not explain the circumstances under which that alleged transfer of possession took place.) McCraney further testified that he met with Sroufe, Holt and Stewart at the D.C. Jail during trial and expressed to them his desire to testify about Ricardo's possession of the murder weapons and the car. In McCraney's words, Holt was very displeased with that prospect because his testimony would open the door to the admission of evidence that one of the weapons used to shoot Rosebure also was used in two of my co-defendant's [Stewart's] other cases in which I wasn't his co-defendant on. If McCraney insisted on testifying, Holt warned him, she would have to sever our defense and point the finger at me in order to save her client. McCraney testified that Sroufe was largely silent during this discussion, but that when he asked her for her advice, she agreed with Holt. The meeting at the Jail concluded without a decision being reached, but McCraney later decided not to take the stand. He said he was persuaded by Holt's argument that it would not be in his interest for the jury to hear the other-crimes evidence she described. In their hearing testimony, Sroufe and Holt disputed details of McCraney's account, but they agreed that Sroufe knew of Holt's opposition to McCraney's desire to testify at trial. Sroufe remembered that Holt told McCraney she would withdraw from the case if he decided to take the stand, and that Holt instructed Stewart to tell [his] co-defendant not to testify. [54] Sroufe also acknowledged that she seconded Holt's recommendation that McCraney not testify. Sroufe insisted, however, that she advised McCraney against testifying only because the substance of his testimony would have been detrimental to his case, and not in order to protect Stewart. Sroufe and Holt denied that McCraney told them Ricardo Mascall possessed the murder weapons or the car in which those weapons were found. [55] According to Sroufe, McCraney attributed Sue Ann Mascall's accusation of him to her ire at his rejection of her romantic advances, not to any desire to shield her brother. Furthermore, Sroufe testified, McCraney admitted to her that he had parked his car where the police found it, and he could not explain how the murder weapons came to be in the car's trunk. Sroufe feared that McCraney would face a hammering cross-examination on that damning fact if he testified. (I told him the government's going to ask you how those guns got in your car, what are you gonna say? And I said you're just gonna say I don't know and he agreed with that.) She thought his testimony would only subvert the efforts of the defense at trial to dissociate McCraney from the car by suggesting that the vehicle had been abandoned. Additionally, Sroufe testified, McCraney told her that Rosebure had once robbed him. If McCraney mentioned that robbery in his testimony, Sroufe believed, the jury would think it simply gave him a stronger motive to kill Rosebure. Sroufe also was concerned that McCraney would have difficulty explaining why (as his own mother testified at trial) he absented himself from the District of Columbia for a period of six months following the shootingbehavior the government would ask the jury to construe as flight manifesting consciousness of guilt. To Sroufe, the risks of putting McCraney on the stand outweighed the possible benefits. Indeed, Sroufe stated that she eventually asked him point blank if he could furnish any testimony that would not be cumulative of other defense evidence. McCraney answered that he could not and then said he did not want to testify.