Court Opinion

ID: 9439212
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 06:25:23.977961+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:26:13.514221
License: Public Domain

SILBERMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I agree with the majority that the trial judge committed error in this case, but I disagree that the error was harmless.
This was a close case. Although the officers testified that appellant was acting *1313as if he had a gun, no one saw appellant with one, and there were no fingerprints on the gun. See Maj. Op. at 1307. Appellant’s flight is neither here nor there with respect to whether he possessed a firearm; flight is equally indicative of appellant’s possession of the illegal drugs he claimed to have. See Maj. Op. at 1311-12. There is a vast difference between using flight as the basis for a reasonable suspicion of some unknown criminal activity, see Illinois v. Wardlow, — U.S. -, 120 S.Ct. 673, 676, 145 L.Ed.2d 570 (2000), and using flight here to link appellant to a gun found in his vicinity. While some evidence was at least suggestive of appellant’s guilt (his behavior, the condition of the gun), it was hardly overwhelming. I find it difficult to believe a jury found appellant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
The majority considers the possibility that the jury did not pay attention to Officer Duncan’s statement with respect to drug users and guns, hypothesizing that the officer’s statement with respect to drug dealers overshadowed it. See Maj. Op. at 1312. But I find that unlikely. If, as we all agree, a statement that “drug dealers commonly carry weapons for protection raises no eyebrows,” Maj. Op. at 1309, it is probable the jury focused on the new information that the same is true of drug users. Since appellant was an admitted drug user' — -he argued as much to the jury — the likelihood that the jury glossed over Officer Duncan’s statement is minuscule. And the prejudicial statement cuts right to the heart of the case: Was this drug user in possession of a gun?
It is particularly troubling that, as the court’s opinion recounts, the first jury to consider this case could not reach a decision, resulting in a mistrial. See Maj. Op. at 1307-08.1 It was only in the second trial, in which Officer Duncan’s prejudicial statement about drug users and weapons was introduced, a statement repeated by the prosecutor during her summation, that appellant was convicted. Since the inquiry we undertake asks whether “with fair assurance, after pondering all that happened without stripping away the erroneous action from the whole, ... the [jury’s] judgment was not substantially swayed by the error,” the original mistrial is undoubtedly relevant. United States v. Schaffer, 183 F.3d 833, 852 (D.C.Cir.1999). The difficulty the first jury had with this case amply demonstrates that we are not considering “an error [that] may be more freely disregarded [because] the evidence of defendant’s guilt was overwhelming, since in such a case the outcome would almost surely have been the same despite the error.” Charles A. Wright, 3A Fed. PRAc. & Proc.CRiM.2d § 854 (1982). If we are willing to take into consideration the length of jury deliberations in our harmless error review, see Dallago v. United States, 427 F.2d 546, 559 (D.C.Cir.1969) (“The jury deliberated for five days, and one would expect that if the evidence of guilt was overwhelming the jury would have succumbed much sooner.”), surely we must consider the import of the hung jury.
Under these circumstances, I would remand for a new trial.

. The majority does not contend-nor could it-that the first trial's hung jury is irrelevant. See Maj. Op. at 1311 n.10. Combined with the weakness of the government’s case it should trouble the majority as much as it does me.