Court Opinion

ID: 9710509
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:10:59.09872+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:57.265453
License: Public Domain

TERRY, Associate Judge,
concurring in part and concurring in the result:
For the most part, I join in Judge Schwelb’s opinion for the court and in its reasoning. I specifically agree with the central holding in the ease: that in order to convict someone as an accessory after the fact of murder, the government must prove that the victim died before the defendant committed the acts that make him an accessory after the fact. Since the crime of murder is not complete until the victim dies, no one can be an accessory after the fact of murder until that death occurs.
My qualms about this case relate to the question of whether Little was properly charged as an accessory after the fact (AAF) in the first place. I am not fully convinced that Little was an accessory after the fact to any crime—either murder or assault with a dangerous weapon—as distinguished from a principal. This court held in Williams v. United States, 478 A.2d 1101, 1105-06 (D.C.1984), that the driver of a getaway car was a principal, not an AAF, and reversed her AAF conviction for insufficient evidence. Drivers of getaway cars have traditionally (and, I think, correctly) been charged as aiders and abettors, i.e., principals.1 See, e.g., Bailey v. United States, 128 U.S.App. D.C. 354, 359, 389 F.2d 305, 310 (1967) (affirming robbery conviction of fourth defendant, even though he was never identified as a participant in the actual robbery, because he was waiting behind the wheel of the getaway car while the other three defendants committed the crime); Long v. United States, 124 U.S.App. D.C. 14, 20-21, 360 F.2d 829, 835-36 (1966) (affirming felony murder conviction of getaway driver because he aided and abetted the two gunmen in leaving the scene of the crime). I am puzzled by the government’s decision to depart from these established precedents and charge Little as an AAF (even though it also charged him alternatively as a principal in another count of the indictment). The Williams case, in particular, appears to be plainly inconsistent with that decision and with our holding here today.
On the other hand, perhaps I am seeing phantoms that are not really there. Judge Schwelb, in footnote 15 of his opinion, ante at 715, strives to reconcile Williams with the case at bar. Although I am not entirely persuaded by his reasoning, I cannot say that it is clearly wrong or unreasonable, and on that basis I join in the court’s decision to remand with directions to reduce the conviction from AAF-murder to AAF-assault with a dangerous weapon. The question that troubles me was barely mentioned in Little’s brief and was not briefed at all by the government (it does not affect Bailey), and there may well be a ready answer to it that I have not thought of. Someday, I think, we will have to reconcile the Williams decision (and Bailey and Long as well) with our holding in *717the instant ease. For the moment, though, I am content to let this particular sleeping dog remain a little longer in the arms of Morpheus.

. D.C.Code § 22-105 (1996) provides that "all persons ... aiding and abetting the principal offender shall be charged as principals and not as accessories....”