Court Opinion

ID: 9481274
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:12:56.094104+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:11.245398
License: Public Domain

SILBERMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I concur with the majority opinion except with respect to Part II. I respectfully dissent from the reversal of the district court’s determination that D.C. law would not authorize the conviction of Edmond for first-degree murder as an aider and abettor of a principal defendant who was convicted only of murder in the second degree.
I would have thought it unquestioned that we are obliged under prior precedent to follow the D.C. Court of Appeals’ interpretation of D.C. law as if it were the highest court of a state. Hall v. C & P Tel. Co., 793 F.2d 1354, 1358-59 (D.C.Cir.1986), reh’g denied, 809 F.2d 924 (D.C.Cir.1987). And when we read and apply opinions of the D.C. Court of Appeals — whatever our own views of their merits — it is incumbent upon us to do so respectfully. Otherwise, we are not paying full deference to the deliberations of a sister court whose determinations on such questions are binding upon us. Examining the D.C. Court of Appeals’ opinion in Morriss in that spirit, I think it yields an interpretation correctly followed by the district court.
Morriss is an application of D.C.Code § 22-105 which authorizes aiders and abettors to be charged as principals (although the D.C. Court of Appeals never actually mentioned the section). The majority refers to this statute as using plain language which dictates the result it reaches. But one should note that the words of the statute are actually silent on the question before us — whether an aider or abettor can be convicted of a more serious crime than a principal. The Supreme Court in Stande-fer, interpreting a similar federal statute, decided that the aider and abettor could be convicted even when the principal has been acquitted. I quite agree with my colleagues that if Standefer controlled this case there would be little question but that the district court should be reversed. But Standefer does not control, Morriss does, and whatever the Supreme Court’s reserved authority to reject a D.C. Court of Appeals decision on D.C. law, we have no such latitude.1 Therefore, if the D.C. Court of Appeals rejects or modifies Stan-defer we are obliged to honor the position of the court of appeals.
I think, as did the district court, that the court of appeals refused to apply the logic of Standefer in Morriss. There, the court reversed the convictions of the principals because the inculpatory statement of the aider and abettor (Morriss) was improperly (in the court’s view) admitted without adequate efforts to edit the statement so that it would not be prejudicial to the principals. There was absolutely no question as to the propriety of the statement’s admissibility against Morriss. Nevertheless, the court of appeals reversed his conviction as well. *272The court explained: “We do not think, therefore, that under the case as presented by the government, Morriss’ conviction can fairly stand in the wake of trial error in the convictions by the same jury of the primary participants_” Morriss v. United States, 554 A.2d 784, 790 (D.C.1989) (emphasis added). These words seem to me to reflect discomfort with the notion that the aider and abettor’s actions should be judged wholly independently of the principal’s guilt or innocence. To be sure, the court of appeals cited Standefer, seemingly approving its holding that an acquittal of the principal does not prevent conviction of the aider and abettor, but the court seemed unwilling to extend the Standefer reasoning to the case before it. The authority upon which the court of appeals relies in reversing Morriss’ conviction is not — at least not explicitly — its interpretation of § 22-105, but rather D.C.Code § 17-306 (1981) giving the court authority to issue orders “just in the circumstances,” Mor-riss, 554 A.2d at 79, which means, I take it, that the court is relying on a general equitable authority to shape its application of § 22-105.
The majority suggests, drawing upon a footnote in the opinion, that the court of appeals may have been concerned with an “evidentiary” difficulty regarding Morriss’ conviction. Maj.Op. at 265. Actually, the footnote stating that the court could not “tell how the jury interrelated factors in determining the guilt of each of the three defendants,” Morriss, 554 A.2d at 790 (emphasis added), seems to ascribe to the jury the same potential concern that the court apparently felt — doubts regarding the fairness of convicting an aider and abettor if the principal were not convicted (or were convicted of a lesser charge). Since the only evidentiary problem in the case was the inadmissibility of Morriss' statement vis-a-vis the principals, it is absolutely impossible for the court to have “thought the jury might somehow have misused Mor-riss’ statement in finding him guilty.” Maj.Op. at 266 (emphasis added). The majority speculates, Maj.Op. at 265-266, that the jury might have found Morriss guilty because the principal was guilty, but that is merely another way of phrasing the same issue — whether the guilt of the aider and abettor can and should be judged wholly independently of the guilt of the principal.2
The majority brushes aside the perceived inconsistency between the reversal of Mor-riss’ conviction and the rule of law recognized in Standefer as indicating at most that the Morriss court, “misapplied the settled law of aiding and abetting.” Maj. Op. at 266. It is suggested, in effect, that the Morriss court got it wrong, that is, misinterpreted D.C.Code § 22-105. As the majority puts it, a departure from Standefer would be “totally at odds with [the] plain language [of § 22-105], the manifest intention of Congress, the extensive history of this and other congressional legislation examined in Standefer, and a line of cases construing § 22-105 going back as far as 1907.” 3 Maj.Op. at 266. But it is clearly contrary to precedent to suggest that the Supreme Court’s construction of a federal statute would bind the D.C. Court of Appeals to any particular interpretation of its local statute or that we, who must defer to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals’ construction, are free to reject that reading and substitute the “correct” construction *273of the federal statute or our own interpretation of the D.C.Code.4 Cf. Cole v. Young, 817 F.2d 412, 428-433 (7th Cir.1987) (Easterbrook, J., dissenting) (federal court is not free to ignore state court decision when state court did not explain departure from prior precedent even if construction of state statute is thought wrong). Nor are we free to determine for ourselves whether Morriss is consistent with cases decided by this court before 1971 (the effective date of the D.C. Court Reform Act), which the D.C. Court of Appeals, as a matter of its choice, treats as part of its case law. In any event, as I have said above, the D.C. Court of Appeals did not rest its opinion only on an interpretation of § 22-105, and therefore our construction of that section either before 1971 or now would appear quite irrelevant, The precise reasoning the court of appeals follows may be, as the majority suggests, “obscure,” Maj.Op. at 265, but there can be little doubt that our colleagues declined to apply the Standefer principle in the Morriss case. Under those circumstances, I believe we should recognize that under D.C. law Stan-defer is not given the same scope we would afford it.
That is not to say that I disagree with the majority’s historical exegesis of the law of aiding and abetting or even its implicit criticism of the reasoning of the Morriss court, but for that matter I would not have voted to reverse the Morriss conviction. I do not think that is the question for us, however. Whether we must follow the D.C. Court of Appeals’ opinion in Mor-riss — that is the question.
Even if I were wrong about whethér the Morriss court declined to apply thé reasoning of Standefer and thus departed from our understanding of federal aiding and abetting law, it cannot possibly be denied that Morriss is difficult to interpret. Accordingly, D.C. law is, at the very least, unclear on the point. The question whether an aider and abettor can be tried for first-degree murder when the principal has previously been found not guilty of first-degree murder has never been decided by any District of Columbia court. Under those circumstances, we are bound to defer to the district court’s reading of Morriss, see, e.g., Hull v. Eaton Corp., 825 F.2d 448, 454 n. 9 (D.C.Cir.1987),5 if we do not certify the question to the D.C. Court of Appeals. See, e.g., Nello L. Teer Co. v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Auth., 921 F.2d 300 (D.C.Cir.1990). The one thing we cannot do is to dismiss as aberrations both Morriss and the district court’s reading of it.
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This court has assiduously sought to discourage litigants from attempting to obtain a more sympathetic reading of D.C. law by bringing an .action in the federal court. See, e.g., Delahanty v. Hinckley, 845 F.2d 1069, 1070 (D.C.Cir.1988); Anchorage-Hynning & Co. v. Moringiello, 697 F.2d 356, 360-61 (D.C.Cir.1983). Our district court, to be sure, affords litigants certain structural advantages over the D.C. Superi- or Court. But that is all the more reason *274why we must be careful to withstand efforts to have us put an unwarranted gloss — one the D.C. Court of Appeals would not likely paint — on D.C. law in a case in which we are bound by D.C. law. That self-restraint must govern equally in a case where the federal government is the prosecutor or where the plaintiff is a private litigant. This is a murder case originally appended to a federal drug conspiracy charge, but subsequently severed. It could and normally would have been brought in the D.C. Superior Court. The defendant should not be prejudiced as a matter of substantive D.C. law merely because the case was brought in the federal district court.
I am afraid that the majority’s opinion is redolent of an earlier time, a time when we had supervisory review over the local courts. Congress, however, rejected that old regime and in the interest of the District’s autonomy gave the District of Columbia a judicial structure which approached that which a sovereign state enjoys. It is, in my judgment, unfortunate for us to appear to resist that development by discounting an opinion of the highest court of the District as not authoritative.

. The Supreme Court has reserved for itself the power to disregard such a decision when it rests on an "egregious error.” See Pernell v. Southall Realty, 416 U.S. 363, 369, 94 S.Ct. 1723, 1726, 40 L.Ed.2d 198 (1974). But it has never stated that we may do likewise, and it has long been our settled policy to accept fully D.C. law as interpreted by D.C. courts in order to prevent "two courts — neither of which could review the other’s decisions” from independently formulating the District's law. Lee v. Flintkote, 593 F.2d 1275, 1278 n. 14 (D.C.Cir.1979); see also Hall, 793 F.2d at 1358 n. 9.

. The majority has got the D.C. Court of Appeals’ concern about the jury following the district court's instructions backwards. The court was worried that the jury used Morriss' statement against the principals because of inadequate efforts to edit the statement. Morriss, 554 A.2d at 787.

. The line of cases to which the majority refers starts in 1907 with Maxey v. United States, a case decided by the predecessor of this court, and the “line" is by no means as clear as is suggested. For instance, in Maxey (an abortion case), we approved a jury instruction requiring that the jury find the principal, Maxey, guilty before convicting the aider and abettor, Maxey v. United States, 30 App.D.C. 63, 80 (1907), and, in Hackney, the D.C. Court of Appeals only observed that since the defendant under the D.C. statute could be liable as a principal, any error in charging him as an aider and abettor was harmless, Hackney v. United States, 389 A.2d 1336, 42-44. Hackney has nothing to do with Standefer's application or scope. The other cases the majority cites are also all pre-Morriss (indeed, pre-Standefer) decisions.

. This court owes "virtually the same deference to the D.C. Court of Appeals’ construction of [a local statute] as we would accord a decision of the highest court of a State interpreting state law,” even when the statute in question is identical to a federal statute, so long as it is passed as a "local” law. Hall v. C & P Tel. Co., 809 F.2d 924, 925 (D.C.Cir.1987) (per curiam). As we explained, the local statute, even if identical to a federal law, is passed by Congress for a different purpose and under a different constitutional power — that of Art. I, § 8, cl. 17 — which gives Congress plenary authority to provide for the citizens of the District of Columbia as a state provides for the welfare of its citizens. See Hall v. C & P Tel. Co., 793 F.2d 1354, 1358-59 (D.C.Cir.1986), reh'g denied, 809 F.2d 924 (D.C.Cir.1987).

. All circuits, except the Third and Ninth, follow the “rule of deference" — that an appellate court will give special deference to a district court on unsettled questions of the law of the state in which the district court sits. See Coenen, To Defer or Not to Defer: A Study of Federal Circuit Court Deference to District Court Rulings on State Law, 73 Minn.L.Rev. 899, 963-1021 (1989). See abo Woods, The Erie Enigma: Appellate Review of Conclusions of Law, 26 Ariz.L.Rev. 775, 778-81 (1984). The Supreme Court has granted certiorari to resolve the split between the circuits. Salve Regina College v. Russell, — U.S. -, 110 S.Ct. 3269, 111 L.Ed.2d 780 (1990).