Court Opinion

ID: 9731303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:41:46.61607+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:09:14.136453
License: Public Domain

KERN, Senior Judge,
dissenting:
Under the particular facts and circumstances of this case, I am not persuaded that the clerical error, concededly not made in bad faith, by the United States Attorney’s Office constituted prejudice requiring reversal of the jury’s verdict of guilty entered after a trial that appears to have been fairly conducted.
In my view, the facts here place this case within the purview of this court’s decision in Belton v. United States, 580 A.2d 1289, 1295 (D.C.1990). In that case, we concluded that there was “no ground for reversal,” although the United States Attorney’s Office mistakenly failed to comply with the statute requiring five days’ notice of the chemist’s report so as to obviate the necessity of having the chemist appear to vouch personally for the results of his analysis, as well as for the chain of custody.
The record reflects that appellant and a codefendant were arrested and charged with a single count of unlawfully distributing cocaine. The arrest was effected minutes after the defendants sold a packet of crack cocaine to an undercover police officer for $50 in marked money. Some of this money was recovered from the codefend-ant’s person, and appellant was identified as his accomplice by a “drive-by” conducted immediately after the arrest.
A number of weeks prior to the trial— where the sole issue would be whether the defendants had distributed cocaine in a usable amount — the United States Attorney’s Office transmitted to the attorneys representing each defendant the report of the government’s chemist on the content of the substance sold to the undercover officer. Appellant’s original attorney, to whom the report mistakenly was sent, had been *516forced to withdraw from the case because, we are told in appellant’s brief, she suffered a horseback riding injury. Appellant’s present attorney asserted that the chemist’s report thus sent to her was not among the papers in the file she turned over to him once she withdrew and he was appointed as counsel in her place.
The trial proceedings extended over three days, but at no time prior to the close of the government’s case did appellant’s attorney alert the prosecutor or the court of this matter. The position of appellant’s attorney was that he did not “have an affirmative duty to notify the Government of their shortcomings or negligence.”
At the outset of the trial, appellant’s attorney and the prosecutor reviewed together the government’s witnesses who would testify, and the prosecutor gave him all so-called Jencks material. Thus, it was clear, even before opening statements, that the prosecution did not intend to call as a witness the chemist who had analyzed the packet of drugs sold by the defendants. Appellant’s attorney did not then request either that the government call the chemist or that the trial court postpone the trial.
Interestingly enough, the attorney for the codefendant, weeks prior to the trial, had received the government chemist’s report and, after the testimony commenced, announced that he planned to present a chemist (not the government’s chemist) as his own witness. In addition, appellant’s attorney sought to have the prosecutor refrain from calling its sole expert witness on the usability, packaging and handling of drugs — offering to stipulate that “whatever drugs are involved here, that it is a usable amount, and it’s packaged ... consistent with distribution.” The prosecutor declined to accept the stipulation, but appellant’s attorney still neither alerted the trial court of his predecessor’s failure to transmit to him before trial the chemist’s report nor requested the prosecutor to call the chemist as a witness.
On the second day of trial, appellant’s attorney cross-examined a police officer concerning the so-called DEA-7 form, as it was prepared in part by the officer who had made the buy. In the late afternoon, appellant’s attorney, after the codefend-ant’s counsel had conducted cross-examination of the police officer, requested a continuation until the next day in order to “coordinate the information contained in ... two documents.” The two documents to which he was referring were the DEA-7 form, which contained the chemist’s analysis, and the one-page property report, which detailed the $150 worth of bills recovered from the person of the codefend-ant, among which were two marked bills the undercover officer has used in his purchase of the drugs. Again, appellant’s attorney failed to alert the court of the absence from his case file of the chemist report mailed to his predecessor by the United States Attorney’s Office. Neither did appellant’s attorney request the prosecutor to produce the chemist on the next day of the trial.
On the following day, the court and the attorneys discussed certain preliminary matters before the trial resumed, but still no mention was made by appellant’s attorney that he had not received the chemist’s report and wanted the chemist produced as a witness. Finally, when the prosecutor moved to have the chemist’s report admitted into evidence — on what was then the third day of the trial proceedings — appellant’s attorney brought to the attention of the trial court the fact that he had never personally received from the government a copy of the chemist’s report. Even then, appellant’s attorney did not request that the chemist be called as a witness or that the trial be recessed until such witness could be produced. Appellant’s attorney did not indicate to the trial court that he intended to challenge the chemist’s findings. He merely argued that the chemist’s report should be excluded from evidence as hearsay because he was not there to vouch for its contents. The trial court overruled the objection and admitted the report. The majority concludes that this ruling constitutes reversible error.
Given what actually transpired, I am not persuaded that appellant suffered such prejudice as to call for a reversal of the *517jury’s verdict. I note that extensive testimony was presented concerning the handling and safekeeping of the cocaine after it was sold to the officer. The usability of the drugs at issue was probed at considerable length by the codefendant’s attorney. Appellant’s attorney conceded that the drugs recovered were usable and packaged for distribution.
In sum, appellant’s attorney was on notice from the outset of his appointment to represent appellant in this case that the chemical analysis of the drugs was necessarily an issue. He knew at the outset of the trial — which lasted three days — that the prosecution did not plan to call the chemist to the stand because it reasonably assumed that the predecessor attorney of appellant had turned over the statutory notice sent well before trial, with all other papers, to appellant’s trial attorney. Indeed, appellant’s trial attorney’s assertion that he did not have any affirmative duty to notify the government of its shortcomings or negligence, together with his failure to notify the court at the outset of this three-day proceeding of the need for the chemist to be present, suggests that appellant seeks to revive the procedural niceties of the strict 19th century code of common law plea'dings. I would affirm the trial court upon authority of Belton, and hence, I respectfully dissent.