Court Opinion

ID: 9452313
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:37:10.162173+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:10.118109
License: Public Domain

*193DANAHER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
A.
My colleagues in the exercise of hindsight now rule that a severance should have been granted because the joinder was prejudicial.1 Despite the jury’s verdict, the majority has decided that “the evidence as to one of the robberies was so weak as to lead one to question its sufficiency to go to the jury.” But Rule 8, as they are bound to concede, permits the joinder of two or more offenses in separate counts if they are “of the same or similar character.”
Here, on October 12, 1964, the robber entered the Home Plate Liquor store, gun in hand, told the manager and a clerk to hold up their hands and warned of a holdup. Demanding money, the robber fired a pistol. The manager testified “I suddenly heard and felt a bullet go right over the top of my head.” That bullet, recovered by the police, had been discharged from a .45 caliber gun.
October 29, 1964, a robber entered another liquor store. Gun in hand as he perpetrated his holdup, the robber promptly shot Lewis Brown, part owner of the store. His death had been caused by a .45 caliber bullet.
The expert ballistic testimony disclosed that the two bullets used in the robberies thus briefly mentioned had been fired from the same gun.
I submit that the Government was entitled to join in one indictment the counts which charged the described offenses. Convictions, to be sure, required further proof, but the District Court’s ruling with respect to the joinder was addressed to the court’s discretion, as Rule 14 makes clear. Reversal is called for only when that discretion clearly has been abused. Robinson v. United States, 93 U.S.App.D.C. 347, 349, 210 F.2d 29, 31 (1954); Opper v. United States, 348 U.S. 84, 95, 75 S.Ct. 158, 99 L.Ed. 101 (1954).
Drew v. United States, cited by my colleagues, is not to the contrary. Rather, this court noted in the Drew case that “A fundamental difference between two persons contemplating crimes of this character would be the degree to which each was prepared to use force to achieve his objective. Thus it is that the testimony about the use of the pistol in the one case, and not in the other, takes on enhanced significance.” 118 U.S.App.D.C. 11, 18-19, 331 F.2d 85, 92-93 (1964).
The rationale of the Drew case clearly demonstrates the applicable principles. The distinction between the offenses there considered turned on the facts, as the Drew opinion makes clear. In the instant case, the essential elements of the crimes are identical. That Brown met his death in the second robbery and that the manager of the liquor store in the first did not, will not nullify the basic fact that a trigger-happy robber, willing to use force to achieve his objective, fired two .45 caliber bullets which came from the same gun.
B.
The descriptions of the robber supplied by the witnesses at the scenes of each robbery made the robber out to be clean shaven. Gregory testified that he did not know his whereabouts on October 12 and October 29, 1964, but he did know, he claimed, that he then had been wearing a goatee. He called witnesses to establish his claim. His brother-in-law testified that the appellant had been wearing a goatee on October 13, 1964, a date which he was able to fix because that was his wife’s birthday and she had spoken to the appellant about a birthday present. The appellant’s sister fixed October 13, 1964 as the date when she saw Gregory wearing a goatee for she remembered seeing him on her eighteenth birthday. It is obvious these witnesses, not unlike people with whom we talk every day, associated a date with an event.
So it was, the Government called in rebuttal Officer Johnson to testify that three weeks earlier than the first rob*194bery, Gregory was clean shaven. Defense counsel, with the officer’s reports in his hands, attempted to shake the officer’s testimony as to the date when he had seen the cleanly shaven Gregory at Frank’s Restaurant. After an episode which there occurred, the officer had gone to Gregory’s mother’s house to seek a picture of him. Defense counsel asked “When was that, sir?” The officer answered “That was on the day of — the day that he pointed the gun at me, sir.”2 That perfectly natural reply engages the notice of my colleagues who carefully avoid ruling that the judge should have declared a mistrial. I suggest that they quite well realize that defense counsel had himself evoked that very answer as he baited the officer. Defense counsel knew exactly what had been set out in the officer’s report. He knew that on September 23, 1964, Gregory, according to the officer’s report, had pointed a gun at Officer Johnson in Frank’s Restaurant.3 The defense is entitled to no advantage whatever, by insinuation in the majority opinion or otherwise, as a result of the attorney’s having elicited the answer of which the same attorney has here complained.
C.
At trial the manager - of the Home Plate Liquor store positively identified Gregory as the man who had perpetrated the October 12th robbery and who had there fired the gun. On October 29th, when the second holdup occurred, Lewis Brown was in his liquor store. Present also were Brown's son-in-law, one Rosen-stein, a salesman named Donald Roth-baum, and presently, one Caddell. As the latter entered the store the robber announced “This is a holdup.” The robber ordered those present to lie down. Cad-dell apparently failed to move with sufficient alacrity, for the robber pistol-whipped him in the jaw — and Caddell lay down. The robber fired the pistol, and Brown was hit in the back. Caddell testified that it was “a black gun, looked like a .45, and the hammer was cocked on it, ready to fire.” The bandit seized cash amounting to some $2,400 or more and placed it in a brown paper bag. The bandit was described as “clean shaven.”
As the robber was leaving the store, a tobacco salesman named Martin, from a distance of about 50 feet, observed the robber moving rapidly away and carrying a brown paper bag in one hand. The robber was clean shaven. The witness identified Gregory as that man. So did Rosenstein. Rothbaum described the robber as clean shaven, but having promptly obeyed the command to “Get down on the floor,” he had not seen enough of the robber to be able to identify him.
Caddell identified Gregory in court. He had seen him at the police station after Gregory’s arrest on November 17, 1964. By that time, Gregory was wearing a goatee. When asked in the presence of Gregory if he was the “person involved,” the witness said he simply shook his head, but “two minutes later I told the detectives that was him, because I didn’t want to say yes in front of him.”
There is no point in going into further detail, and I have set forth such particulars only to suggest that the evidence of the crimes and the proof of the identification of Gregory overwhelmingly established his guilt. Those two .45 caliber bullets coming from the same gun spoke louder than words in establishing the connection of Gregory with both offenses.
No matter what one or two witnesses called by the defense said as to their doubts in some respects, Mrs. Bellamy, for instance, a customer in the store, described the robber as clean shaven, *195and in other particulars corroborated Government witnesses. Despite the defense attempts to put a goatee on Gregory as of the critical dates, the jury rejected such testimony after a trial which commenced on June 21, 1965 and continued until June 25, 1965. The jury appraised the demeanor of the witnesses. It heard arguments in extensive review of all testimony. The jury must have found overwhelming the evidence of guilt. It was a jury case in its every aspect. The jury was polled and returned its verdict of guilty.
D.
Expansion of my comments will serve no special purpose even as I decline to join my colleagues on yet other grounds wherein I think they are mistaken. As illustrative, however, note their statement that “Information favorable to the defense must be made available to the defense. Brady v. State of Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963).”4 I say, read that ease. The Supreme Court told us precisely what it was holding, and it is not as just stated. Rather, the Court said:
“We now hold that the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.” (Emphasis added.) 373 U.S. at 87, 83 S.Ct. at 1196.
As to the Jencks Act statements, there was no such error as to require reversal. It is clear enough that the District Judge had not followed the practice we outlined in Reichert v. United States, 123 U.S.App.D.C. 294, 359 F.2d 278 (1966). But that case had not been decided until April of this year, and additionally there had here been no such implications of abuse, to the prejudice of Gregory, as-were seen in the Reichert record.
Viewed in its entirety, the instant case was fairly tried. There was no error adversely affecting Gregory’s substantial rights.5 I would affirm.

. So were the facts in this case.

. That episode had led to the issuance of a warrant for the arrest of Gregory on a charge of assault with a dangerous weapon. Pursuant to that warrant, Gregory was arrested on the evening of November 17, 1964.

. That officer might even have been called during the Government’s case in chief to establish the basis upon which the process of identification of Gregory went forward.

. Then, notice, my colleagues are quick to add, “It is not suggested here that there was any suppression of evidence.”
Moreover, the record indicates that one witness the Government had intended to call became a witness for the defense because of his fears.

. Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(a); and see Dichner v. United States, 348 F.2d 167, 168 (1 Cir. 1965).