Court Opinion

ID: 9763063
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:36:16.091057+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:38.869051
License: Public Domain

*149FERREN, Associate Judge,
concurring in part, dissenting in part, and dissenting from the judgment:
I.
I concur wholeheartedly in the majority’s conclusion in Part II.A. that the prosecutor implicitly — and improperly — argued to the jury that Hunter’s trial testimony was incredible because Hunter had failed to tell the government after indictment, before trial, “how this [criminal charge] all came about.” But Hunter has made another valid contention the majority rejects. The prosecutor did not merely chastise Hunter in front of the jury for failing to tell his entire story to the government after indictment. During the same part of the closing argument the majority criticizes, the prosecutor also impermissibly berated Hunter for failing to tell the police before trial all the exculpatory details he gave during his testimony at trial.1
The prosecutor’s closing argument had one unifying theme — appellant was not credible — which was emphasized to the jury at the beginning of his argument: “Now we’re in a credibility case, obviously.” The prosecutor then attacked appellant’s credibility at every step of the case, from arrest, to indictment, through'the end of trial when appellant finally testified and told his full story. This is “the context of the case as a whole,” ante at 146, in which we must view the prosecutor’s offending remarks.
The prosecutor made his improper comments near the beginning of his closing argument when a jury’s attention is at its highest:
How did this case start with the Government, with the D.C. Police? Okay_
At 3:50 [on the morning of Hunter’s arrest], on the first rights card talked to by Detective Fluck, Government’s Exhibit No. 1 for identification, you will see that [Hunter] refuses. All right. Now we’re in a credibility contest case obviously. ...
******
But how does Mr. Hunter, how does he start off as the man of credibility? ... He doesn’t even sign the rights card after being — after being read the rights on the back. And you will get this exhibit if you call for it.
******
And here we are on trial day, and Mr. Credibility once again tells us this afternoon, on the last day of trial, that, oh, here’s what happened. See, I hit him with the stick, but it was on 3-14-89, but it was between five and six in the evening at [his girlfriend’s] house. And it was not as the Government says, at eight in the morning on March 14th; it was later, at five and six p.m. at night.
Now here’s a man charged with an indictment. At the time this indictment came down, it’s got armed robbery in there....
At that point, appellant raised his second objection during the government’s closing argument,2 which the court overruled without explanation. The prosecutor continued:
And it has an unauthorized use of a vehicle count. Here’s somebody charged in an indictment by the District of Columbia grand jury, which normally you would not take lightly. You’d get your*150self an able lawyer. He has an able lawyer. And, yet, he doesn’t tell the Government, didn’t tell the police, doesn’t tell anybody, hey, you don’t understand how this all came about.
You know. We’re going to wait to the last day of trial, and then we’re going to tell the world, just like I told the world on these cards [the rights card appellant signed during his interrogation by Officer Fluck] and everything else. It’s the same thing.
The prosecutor therefore (1) started off his argument by claiming Hunter should not be believed because he did not sign a rights card; (2) then said Hunter “didn’t tell the police” and referenced Hunter’s trial testimony on “the last day of trial” (in which he told a much fuller version of his story than the few questions he had answered for Officer Fluck after arrest); and, finally, (3) mentioned, once again, the rights card appellant had eventually signed for Officer Fluck during interrogation. In this way the prosecutor effectively made a powerful argument: that the jury should not believe “Mr. Credibility” because he omitted many important details he obviously would have mentioned — if they were true — in his statement to the police immediately after arrest (and long before indictment) instead of waiting until trial.3
The prosecutor’s comment on Hunter’s failure to elaborate his story to the police, well before indictment and trial, reflects an egregious impropriety similar to the impropriety in commenting on Hunter’s failure to tell the government his side of the story after the indictment. But, as elaborated below, this reference to the police also transgressed an established evidentiary rule, to Hunter’s detriment. That rule precludes any comment on omissions from a defendant’s pretrial statement that are not materially inconsistent with the defendant’s trial testimony. I believe the trial court’s failure to correct the two improprieties, at least through appropriate cautionary instructions, amounted to reversible error when viewed together in the context of this case.
II.
Specifically, the majority errs in three respects: (1) in concluding that the prosecutor did not attempt to impeach Hunter’s trial testimony with an omission from his pretrial statement to the police; (2) in failing to recognize that our caselaw requires the trial court to make a threshold ruling of law — before the jury may find as a fact — that a defendant’s pretrial omission in a statement to the police is material enough to use in evaluating the defendant’s credibility; and (3) in saying that the defense, not the government, has the burden of seeking such a threshold ruling if one is desired.
At trial, Officer Fluck testified that after Hunter’s arrest, Hunter initially refused to answer any questions. Later, when Hunter asked the officer what was going to happen to the woman who had been with him when the police stopped him, the officer replied that Hunter would have to waive his rights before he could receive any information. After Hunter had signed a waiver card, Officer Fluck told him that his friend was going to be charged. Hunt*151er replied that “she didn’t have anything to do with it” and that he had paid a “gentleman” forty dollars for the ear. The officer asked Hunter for the name of the gentleman, Hunter refused to answer, and then, according to Officer Fluck, “out of the blue I asked him, ‘What kind of a stick did you hit him with?’ and he answered, ‘A broomstick.’ ” There is no indication in the record that the officer asked Hunter any more questions.
During the discussion about jury instructions among counsel and the court before closing arguments, Hunter’s counsel objected to the court’s proposal to give instructions on any alleged prior inconsistent statements by Hunter.4 Counsel argued that Hunter’s failure to mention to Officer Fluck the details about his transaction with Stevenson was not a material omission amounting to an inconsistency. The trial court agreed, ruling that because there was no evidence Hunter had known he was being accused of armed robbery at the time he spoke with Officer Fluck, there was no reason why he would have mentioned further details; thus, there was no basis for the jury to question Hunter’s credibility on the basis of his pretrial statement to the Officer. When the court asked the prosecutor whether he had anything to say on the matter, he replied in agreement, “I wouldn’t ask for the instruction.”
During closing argument, however, the prosecutor, in effect, repudiated that agreement, as revealed by the portions of that argument I have highlighted above.
The majority, however — in its first error — denies that the prosecutor commented on Hunter’s credibility when he referred to Hunter’s failure to tell his story to the police. Ante at 147. This view is not only contrary to the clear meaning of the prosecutor’s words, quoted above, but also ignores the fact that the government in its brief admitted the prosecutor made such a credibility argument at trial (although it claimed the argument was not improper).
The majority adds, however, that even if the prosecutor did comment on Hunter’s statement to Officer Fluck, this was not improper because of an elementary legal principle authorizing impeachment if there is a proper evidentiary ground for it: “[I]n the absence of unusual circumstances, a prosecutor should be permitted to make reasonable comments on, and comparisons between, the defendant’s pretrial statement and his trial testimony, provided that the prior statement is in evidence and that the prosecutor makes no characterizations unsupported by the record.” Ante at 148 (emphasis added). But in that statement the majority commits its second error. My colleagues erroneously assume that Hunter’s alleged pretrial omission “is in evidence.”
If a defendant’s pretrial statement to the police does not include all the details of the defendant’s trial testimony, the question becomes whether that pretrial statement constitutes a “material omission,” amounting to “evidence,” which the government can use to impeach the defendant. In Hill v. United States, supra note 1, 404 A.2d at 531, this court concluded that the question whether a pretrial omission is a material omission, and thus evidence that the government may argue to the jury, is a question of law. The government has the burden of showing a threshold inconsistency between the pretrial omission and the defendant’s later statement at trial, and the trial court is required to make a threshold legal determination that the pretrial omission was material enough to constitute “evidence.” See id. at 531-32. Only after the trial court makes such a ruling may the government argue the pretrial omission to the jury as evidence bearing on the defendant’s credibility. If the alleged omission is not formally in evidence, of course, it may not be used in the prosecutor's closing argument, for it is fundamental that the prosecutor may not argue facts not in evidence or misstate the evidence. See, e.g., Mills v. United States, 599 A.2d 775, 785 (D.C.1991).
In sum, an argument to the jury that a defendant’s testimony is incredible is permissible only when that argument is a logi*152cal inference from admissible evidence and not just based on the prosecutor’s own opinion. See McGrier v. United States, 597 A.2d 36, 43 (D.C.1991). The majority, therefore, is far afield of the law in implying that the jury may decide, without permission from the judge, that it is appropriate to consider a defendant’s alleged pretrial omission in weighing the credibility of the defendant’s trial testimony.
Finally, the majority — committing its third error — reverses the evidentiary burden and states that the defendant, not the government, must raise in advance (presumably with intuitive foresight bordering on the telepathic) the issue of whether “a potential argument by the prosecutor regarding an omission from the pretrial statement would create an inconsistency where none exists.” See ante at 148 (emphasis added). This view ignores the two firmly established requirements that the government has the burden to demonstrate that a pretrial omission is material enough to constitute evidence, and that the court has the duty to make a legal ruling that the omission is material, and thus evidence, before the jury is permitted to hear about it either through witness testimony or in closing argument.
III.
In any event, had the government attempted to meet its evidentiary burden in this case, the trial court — based upon the evidentiary test for a pretrial omission— could not have allowed Hunter’s alleged omission in evidence, and thus the prosecutor would not have been able to impeach Hunter’s credibility with the omission in closing argument.
To answer the legal question whether the information appellant did not give Officer Fluck was material enough for impeachment, a court must apply the following standard: if the pretrial statement “ ‘fails to mention a material circumstance’ ” which the defendant mentions at trial but which also “ ‘would have been natural [for the defendant] to mention in the prior statement, the prior statement is sufficiently inconsistent’ ” to constitute evidence. Hill, 404 A.2d at 531 (quoting McCormick on Evidence, § 835 at 68 (2d ed. 1972); accord Martin v. United States, 452 A.2d 360, 363 (D.C.1982); see Outlaw v. United States, 604 A.2d 873, 879 (1992); see also Yoon v. United States, 594 A.2d 1056, 1058-61 (D.C.1991) (government’s use of defendant’s omission in statement to police constituted evidence subject to Rule 16 pretrial disclosure requirements).
More specifically, Hill requires the following individual determination in each case:
[1] The pretrial statement to be admissible for impeachment purposes should purport to address the facts surrounding the commission of the alleged offense.
[2] The prosecutor ... must apprise the trial court of the omitted facts to be relied upon as showing inconsistency and
[3] the court must consider whether such facts are sufficiently material that the failure to have mentioned them amounts to inconsistency.
Hill, 404 A.2d at 531 (bracketed numbers added). Absent a legal finding of threshold inconsistency, a defendant’s prior omission “may not have the probative value which would allow its admission at trial for impeachment purposes.” Martin, 452 A.2d at 363; see Outlaw, supra, at 878.
In applying the Hill test, we have concluded on at least four occasions that the government failed to meet its burden of showing that a defendant’s (or witness’s) prior omission in a pretrial statement was material enough to constitute evidence the government could argue. See, e.g., Sampson v. United States, 407 A.2d 574, 579 (D.C.1979); Martin, 452 A.2d at 363-64; Beale v. United States, 465 A.2d 796, 805 (D.C.1983); Outlaw, supra, at 879.
In Sampson, for example, the appellant waived his Miranda rights and made a brief exculpatory statement simply denying his participation in the crime described to him by the police. 407 A.2d at 579. We concluded that because the appellant had “made to the police a general denial of involvement with and knowledge of the crime but [had] made no statement concerning his whereabouts at the time during *153which the crime was committed,” the government “failed to establish a threshold inconsistency between appellant’s prior statement at the police station and his later alibi defense at trial.” Id.
Likewise, in Beale, the defense at trial was alibi, the appellant knew the nature of the crime at the time the police questioned him, but he did not give a statement concerning events surrounding the crime. We concluded “there is nothing to indicate that it would have been ‘natural’ for appellant to mention his whereabouts at the time of the [crime] since there is nothing to indicate appellant knew when the [crime] had occurred.... Appellant’s omission of his alibi that he was elsewhere at the time of the [crime] from his statement to the police was therefore not a circumstance ‘it would have been natural to mention.’ ” 465 A.2d at 805 (quoting Sampson, 407 A.2d at 578) (emphasis in original).
We have also applied the Hill test and upheld the government’s use of a defendant’s pretrial material omission to impeach the credibility of the defendant’s trial testimony. For example, in Hill itself the defendant testified at trial about details supporting his self-defense claim — details he had neglected to mention to the booking detective with whom he voluntarily had conversed about his “self-defense” shooting of the victim. Hill, 404 A.2d at 527-28. During cross-examination of the defendant, the trial court accepted the prosecutor’s proffered theory for impeachment by omission: The defendant testified on direct that he had heard a shot and then had seen the victim running toward him with a gun; it would have been natural to tell the booking detective about those details, because the defendant had told the detective about other persons having guns. Id. at 532.
Similarly, in Ford v. United States, 487 A.2d 580 (D.C.1984), the appellant failed to mention during two hours of police questioning after her arrest that she had encountered the murder victim just hours before the victim had been killed, a detail she noted in her testimony at trial. We reasoned that because the appellant knew she was a suspect in a murder investigation,
and having told the detective all that she did, it would have been natural to tell him also that she saw [the victim] on the day of his murder. We conclude that there was sufficient inconsistency between that omission and her testimony at trial to make it permissible to allow the jury to determine its significance.
Id. at 587.
In Dixon v. United States, 565 A.2d 72 (D.C.1989), the decision which the majority purports to apply in this case, the police questioned the appellant immediately after she had stabbed her husband to death. In a highly detailed statement in which she described all of the events of that day, she explained that she had “warned her husband that she would stab him if he continued to harass her mother or break up the furniture.” Id. at 80; see id. at 74. At trial, however, she explained that she had stabbed her husband because she was afraid that he would kill her. In his closing argument, the prosecutor contrasted the defendant’s trial testimony with her statement on the night she killed her husband that failed to mention such fear. Id. at 79. In undertaking a plain error review — which enabled the court to skip over whether or not the government had properly proffered (and the trial court had properly ruled on) whether there was a material omission in the defendant’s pretrial statement to the police — the court concluded that “a reasonable assessment of [appellant’s] pretrial statement and trial testimony compels the conclusion that there was at least a threshold inconsistency with respect to the role of fear as [appellant’s] dominant motivation [for stabbing her husband].” Id. at 80. Thus, there was no plain error requiring reversal.
In contrast with Hill, Ford, and Dixon, in this case Hunter, after arrest, did not volunteer a full statement of the events surrounding his assault of Stevenson with a broomstick and his use of Stevenson’s car. Rather, after initially exercising his right to remain silent, he waived that right in order to obtain information about his friend who had also been arrested. He then made a one sentence statement excul-*154paring his friend, a one sentence statement claiming that he had paid a gentleman forty dollars for the car, refused to answer Officer Fluck’s question about the name of the gentleman, and then — in response to a single question “out of the blue” — admitted that he had hit Stevenson with a broomstick. This brief exchange (which is all we have in the record) is far less substantial than the detailed conversations the defendants in Hill, Ford, and Dixon had with the police, in which they purported to relate their versions of events. Furthermore, unlike the defendants in Hill, Ford, and Dixon, who had reason to know of the possible charges against them at the time they gave their statements to the police, in this case there is no evidence the police had informed appellant of the robbery charge before Officer Fluck’s minimal questioning.5 Because of these differences, I believe the facts of this case are more in line with those in Beale, Sampson, Martin, and our most recent case, Outlaw, in all of which this court concluded that the government had failed to show a threshold inconsistency between a defendant’s (or other witness’s) prior omission and the testimony at trial.
The majority attempts to distinguish these cases by noting that “the prosecutor sought to cross-examine the defendant with an allegedly inconsistent omission from a pretrial statement.” Ante at note 11. True enough. But the majority then acknowledges that “each decision turned on the incontestable principle that, absent a threshold inconsistency [between a pretrial statement and trial testimony], there is nothing to cross-examine the defendant about.” Id. If it is “incontestable” that the prosecutor shall not cross-examine about a defendant’s pretrial omission unless the judge has ruled that the jury could reasonably find the omission was inconsistent with trial testimony, I see no basis for allowing the prosecutor to stress that omission later, in closing argument, unless the judge has made the kind of threshold ruling that Judge Schwelb acknowledges is required to allow cross-examination on the subject. The impact of closing argument about a defendant’s allegedly inconsistent statement is likely to be even greater on the jury than earlier cross-examination eliciting the supposed inconsistency.
Our cases have established that a defendant’s failure to tell the government all the details of his or her story before trial is not per se impeachable. Thus, when a defendant tells his or her full story at trial, providing details that were not included in a pretrial statement to the police or to the prosecutor, there is not necessarily a “difference”. (as the majority would call it, ante at note 10) the prosecutor can exploit to impeach the defendant in cross-examination or closing argument. Only a material “difference” has any relevance to a defendant’s credibility. According to the Supreme Court: “If the government fails to establish a threshold inconsistency between silence at the police station and later exculpatory testimony at trial, proof of silence lacks any probative value and must therefore be excluded.” Hale, supra note 1, 422 U.S. at 176, 95 S.Ct. at 2136.
Three members of this court have recently noted that “[t]he problem with drawing inferences from inaction [such as a pretrial omission] is that in many cases there are plausible explanations for a defendant’s failure to act that do not indicate consciousness of guilt.” Allen v. United States, 603 A.2d 1219, 1231 (D.C.1992) (en banc) (Rogers, C.J., concurring) (citing cases). It is highly prejudicial for the government to argue that a defendant’s silence in the face of government accusations is proof of incredibility and therefore guilt. See Allen, at 1231. “In such contexts, the court has established special standards to guide the trial court in deciding whether to permit the government to raise such an inference.” Id. at 1232 (citing Ford, 487 A.2d at 585-87). In the case of an alleged pretrial omission, the trial judge must make an *155evidentiary ruling on whether such omission is material and thus can properly be used by the prosecutor to impeach the defendant. Such an evidentiary ruling is what trial judges do and hardly requires the “metaphysical distinction” the majority erroneously assumes. See ante at note 10.
IY.
In reviewing for reversible error, therefore, this court should have considered not only the prosecutor’s impropriety in commenting on Hunter’s decision not to talk to the government after indictment, but also the prosecutor’s impropriety in commenting on Hunter’s decision not to tell the police his full story just after his arrest.
It is interesting to note that, as to the first impropriety, the majority agrees that the prosecutor’s argument regarding Hunter’s post-indictment silence “was improper in a fundamental way,” ante at 140, “laden with mischief,” ante at 143, a “vice” approaching a “constitutional question,” ante at 143, indeed, “a significant departure from permissible advocacy” having “significant potential for prejudice” — a “reality known to judges and lawyers who participate in our criminal justice system,” ante at 143-144 (quotation omitted). When we couple this obvious, egregious impropriety with the second impropriety reflecting the prosecutor’s effective repudiation — in closing argument — of the agreement among court and counsel that there was no basis for instructing the jury about prior inconsistent statements, we have a situation where defense counsel’s alleged failure to object at the right moment or in a subsequent motion for mistrial is virtually beside the point.
A principal purpose of the plain error rule “is to permit trial courts fully to consider issues and thereby avoid potential error.” Williams v. United States, 382 A.2d 1, 7 n. 12 (D.C.1978). As the majority indicates, however, the trial court should have been clearly aware of the prosecutor’s transgressions during closing argument and thus should have acted at least by giving cautionary instructions, without need for further prompting by counsel.
The court’s majority, however, affirms after applying the plain error standard because defense counsel did not object “with reasonable specificity” and because this court should not allow litigants to “keep some of their objections in their hip pockets.” Ante at 144. The majority acknowledges a “relaxed” standard for objections in the context of closing argument since it is well known that a jury may take unkindly to a counsel’s interrupting of another’s argument to the jury. But the majority implicitly repudiates this standard and applies a new rule of law. Whereas, under our previous decisions, a motion at the bench had been “sufficient” to preserve a point of objection during the opponent’s closing argument, see Irick v. United States, 565 A.2d 26, 32 n. 13 (D.C.1989), now such a motion may be necessary, not merely sufficient. See ante at 145. Thus, Hunter’s misfortune is not that his counsel failed to object; it is that his counsel did not object strenuously enough.
After settling on the plain error standard, the majority then decides whether it was “unreasonable” for the trial court not to have intervened given “the lack of any reaction from defense counsel,” and whether the trial judge “act[ed] within his discretion” and “could thus reasonably [have] conclude[d] ... that the situation was not extreme enough to warrant his uninvited intrusion into the adversary process.” Ante at 146 (quotation omitted). Hunter’s counsel, however, did react; he registered two objections, the second one of which the trial court summarily “overruled.” Because the prosecutor was talking about Hunter’s credibility in the context of his trial testimony and indictment, surely the government and trial judge should have been on notice that Hunter thought the government was improperly impeaching him.
Under the circumstances, to say that defense counsel objected too few times by failing to register still another objection immediately after the prosecutor completed the sentence to which counsel had objected, or that counsel was required to make a motion at the bench, is cutting the harm*156less error rule awfully fine. “An objection to evidence, once made and overruled, need not be renewed to the same type of evidence subsequently received.” Wilkins v. United States, 582 A.2d 939, 942, n. 7 (D.C.1990) (citing E. Cleary, McCormick on Evidence § 52 at 132 (3d ed. 1984)). Unlike the majority, I would be willing to apply harmless error analysis here, even though counsel — for whatever reason — did not flesh out the objection by adding this particular prosecutorial misconduct to the grounds for mistrial proffered later. The trial court effectively was (or should have been) on notice of the problems.
In his closing, the prosecutor argued, improperly, against Hunter’s credibility because Hunter did not tell the police or government his full version of events until trial. Because each side told a completely different version of events, the most significant determination for the jury was to decide who was most credible: the government’s complaining witness (Stevenson) or Hunter. Just how difficult the decision was for the jury is demonstrated by the fact that the jury found Hunter not guilty of the armed robbery charge but remained deadlocked for two days over the unauthorized use of a vehicle charge. It was only after the court read the jury an anti-deadlock instruction that it was able to return a guilty verdict on that charge. The government substantially relied on its specious argument that Hunter’s trial testimony was incredible because he told neither the police nor the government his full story before trial; whether or not the jury believed Hunter’s story was the critical factor in the jury’s decision. See Outlaw, supra, at 880-881 (when trial court erroneously allows government to impeach witness with prior omission that is not material, and impeachment bears directly on guilt or innocence, even cautionary instruction not enough to rectify error).
Given the substantial prosecutorial misconduct in a case turning on witness— especially the defendant’s — credibility, and further given that the prosecutor had even agreed with the trial court, during discussions about jury instructions, that there was no legitimate basis for claiming Hunter had made a prior inconsistent statement, I think there clearly was plain error affecting Hunter’s substantial rights. I would reverse and remand for a new trial.
Respectfully, therefore, I dissent.

. Appellant also contended that the government impermissibly commented on the exercise of his Fifth Amendment right to silence contrary to United States v. Hale, 422 U.S. 171, 95 S.Ct. 2133, 45 L.Ed.2d 99 (1975) and Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610, 96 S.Ct. 2240, 49 L.Ed.2d 91 (1976). This argument has no merit because appellant waived his Miranda rights after arrest when he signed a waiver card and made a brief exculpatory statement to the police. See Hill v. United States, 404 A.2d 525, 530-31 (D.C.1979) (per curiam) (once arrestee begins to explain his or her conduct after being informed of right to remain silent, Hale-Doyle analysis inapplicable), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 1085, 100 S.Ct. 1042, 62 L.Ed.2d 770 (1979).

. Appellant’s first objection during the government’s closing argument appears a few paragraphs earlier in the transcript at the point where the prosecutor began to refer to appellant’s testimony and to discuss the fact that appellant never told his full story before trial.

. Judge Schwelb fails to consider the full context of the prosecutor’s argument when he states for the majority that, even in references to the police, "the prosecutor was obviously talking [only] about Hunter's omissions after his indictment.” See ante at note 8. My colleague is plainly wrong. While criticizing this dissent for a "bizarre reconstruction” of the prosecutor's argument, Judge Schwelb himself has engaged in selective reconstruction by altogether ignoring that (1) police questioning of Hunter occurred before, not after, indictment; (2) the prosecutor’s reference to the police in closing argument was combined with a reference to Hunter's signing a rights card, which, according to Officer Fluck’s testimony, occurred immediately before Hunter gave his brief statement to the police after his arrest — long before indictment; and (3) the prosecutor's argument— "didn’t tell the police” — used a past tense, in contrast with the present tense used to characterize Hunter’s failure to talk after indictment ("doesn’t tell the Government"). Judge Schwelb’s protest to the contrary, the prosecutor's references to Hunter's refusal to sign the rights card clearly reveal that Hunter’s statement to the police, with its alleged material omissions, occurred soon after arrest, not after indictment.

. See Criminal Jury Instructions for the District of Columbia, Nos. 1.06, 2.28 (3d ed. 1978).

. During discussion with counsel over jury instructions, the trial judge stated: "[T]here is no indication that at the time [appellant] made the statement to the detective about the broom stick that he was informed that he had been accused of committing a robbery to get this vehicle. We don't know whether he was or wasn’t, but we don't have any evidence that he was.”