Court Opinion

ID: 9459124
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:11:27.222683+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:01.990299
License: Public Domain

*1268LEVENTHAL, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the affirmance of appellant’s conviction. However, I think it appropriate to add my thoughts concerning a police officer’s obligation to keep his rough notes of what he hears on the street from eyewitnesses.
A.
Appellant protests the trial judge’s denial of the defense motion to strike the testimony of Mr. Calan, the victim who identified him, on the ground that the Jencks Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3500(e) (2), required production of the notes taken by Officer Brown. The majority holds, correctly, that any error committed in denying the motion was harmless. Officer Brown, who subsequently left the D. C. police force, was unavailable at trial. The prosecutor was apparently not aware of the existence of any notes until Mr. Calan testified at trial that he recalled seeing Officer Brown writing as he spoke.
Theoretically the notes might have permitted the defense to undercut Cal-an’s lineup and in-court identification of appellant by showing appellant’s actual appearance differed from Calan’s initial description to Officer Brown, as indicated by the notes. But immediately after talking to Calan, Officer Brown put a description of appellant out over the police radio that was transcribed and is available. The broadcast description matched appellant in person, and indeed resulted in his arrest within minutes.
B.
I now turn to the majority’s declaration that an eyewitness’s initial description of the offender is crucial evidence, that the policeman’s notes of this description must be available in order to determine whether their production is required under the Jencks Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3500 (1970) and Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), and that the Court “will not countenance avoidance of [its prophylactic] rule that original notes be preserved unless the harmlessness is as self-evident as it is in this case.”
1. The problem of unavailability of an investigator’s “rough notes” is a recurring one. In the past it has been the practice of some law enforcement agencies, notably the FBI, to destroy notes *1269taken during an interview as a matter of administrative routine once a formal report based on the notes has been prepared. That practice has been condemned as “ill-advised” because it impedes impeachment of the report itself, United States v. Missler, 414 F.2d 1293 (4th Cir. 1969), cert. denied, 397 U.S. 913, 90 S.Ct. 912, 25 L.Ed.2d 93 (1970); United States v. Johnson, 337 F.2d 180 (4th Cir. 1964), aff’d 383 U.S. 169, 86 S.Ct. 749, 15 L.Ed.2d 681 (1966).
I join in that condemnation, but do not believe this case is the appropriate vehicle for consideration of an across-the-board rule that it is automatically “error” — though possibly the error may be “harmless” — to receive a witness’s testimony if the original notes were destroyed in the course of preparing another report, cf. Killian v. United States, 368 U.S. 231, 82 S.Ct. 302, 7 L.Ed.2d 256 (1961). See also United States v. Au-genblick, 393 U.S. 348, 89 S.Ct. 528, 21 L.Ed.2d 537 (1969).
In affirming this conviction, it is our premise that when rough notes are taken in a fast-moving street situation and incorporated into a simultaneous radio lookout, or maybe an officer’s report (PD 251) filed promptly, there is indication of the reliability of the reporting process. The record does not focus on the possibility that there may be administrative reasons justifying or excusing lack of preservation of rough notes, at least in some situations, or in particular circumstances.
My own inclination is to think that in general administrative considerations are not likely to be substantial enough to outweigh the interest of justice that would be furthered by requiring preservation of rough notes. In that spirit, I join the majority’s approving reference to the recently promulgated police regulation establishing a departmental policy of preservation of all potentially discoverable material.
I should like to add, however, that this case does not require consideration of the appropriate sanction in the event that the majority’s rule of preservation is violated in a particular case. One alternative, of course, would be a “prophylactic” Jencks-type sanction of exclusion of testimony. That might be appropriate, for example, if there appeared to have been some official misbehavior in failing to preserve the notes, or if other circumstances showed a strong likelihood that the notes would have undercut the witness’s in-court testimony. I am not clear whether that can or should be an invariable sanction. In some circumstances, and particularly in the face of a general routine of preservation, such as the D.C. police have established, the absence of notes may be the kind of mishap best handled by instructing the jury with an adaptation of the kind of instruction used in case of a missing witness, that the jury is free to infer that the missing original notes would have been different from the testimony at trial and would have been helpful to defendant. The need for such an intermediate approach may be heightened if a situation arises when the court cannot call on its supervisory power to exclude testimony, see 18 U.S.C. § 3502 (identification testimony by an eyewitness).
The trial judges will surely be interested in maximum reasonable “rough note” preservation, and will be in a better position to determine what the circumstances of a particular case requires.