Court Opinion

ID: 9445548
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:32:38.563236+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:19.058226
License: Public Domain

BAZELON,
Circuit Judge (dissenting).
The case against appellant consisted of the testimony of three witnesses. Mr. Wing testified that Mrs. Young entered his restaurant alone on the night of December 13, 1953, held him up at gunpoint, took his money, left the restaurant, entered an automobile driven by a man, and rode off. A waitress at the restaurant testified to the same effect. Neither of these witnesses, however, identified appellant as the man in the automobile. Mrs. Young’s testimony agreed with theirs, except In one respect. She said there were two men in the automobile, one of them being her lover, Vic Osborne, and the other the appellant. Appellant is thus linked to the crime by Mrs. Young’s testimony alone.
The testimony of an accomplice, if true, is as probative of the facts of a crime as any other evidence would be. If we look askance at accomplice testimony, it is because we recognize that it is less likely than other evidence to be true. For that reason juries are instructed to receive such testimony with caution and scrutinize it with care. It does not follow, however, that the giving of such an instruction is in all cases adequate to discharge the duty of the court to assure that justice be done.
It would be difficult to conceive of a more unreliable witness than Mrs. Young.1 But how much credence to place *35in her is for the jury to decide. The most significant parts of her testimony, moreover, could well be disbelieved in the absence of further explanation.2 But that too is the jury’s province. If appellant complained only that Mrs. Young is unreliable and her testimony incredible, I would not be disposed to interfere with the jury’s conclusion.
Appellant’s conviction, however, suffers from the following additional infirmities:
(1) Mrs. Young’s testimony that appellant, as well as Osborne, was in the car with her is not only completely uncorroborated, but conflicts with the testimony of the disinterested witnesses that they saw only one man in the car.
(2) This discrepancy takes on added significance in the light of the fact that, in her earlier story to the police, Mrs. Young had agreed with the other witnesses that there was only one man in the automobile. She had then named appellant as the one man who was with her. When it was later discovered, despite her efforts at concealment,3 that Osborne had been with her in the automobile, she nevertheless clung to her story about appellant, revising it, however, to include two men.
(3) Beyond placing appellant in the automobile, Mrs. Young tied him to the crime only by equivocal generalities.4
*36Except for the incident referred to in note 2 supra, it does not appear from her testimony that he said or did any specific thing marking him as a participant in her crime.5
For all of the foregoing reasons, I would reverse the conviction. I would hold that it was error for the trial court not to have granted appellant’s motion for judgment of acquittal, because “the evidence [was] such that reasonable j ti-rymen must necessarily have [had a reasonable] doubt * * Curley v. United States, 1947, 81 U.S.App.D.C. 389, 392,160 F.2d 229, 232. Even if Mrs. Young’s credibility was for the j’ury to determine, I think her uncorroborated testimony was too indefinite and equivocal for submission to the j'ury.6 This is especially true where her testimony conflicted with testimony of disinterested witnesses and she is shown to have had a motive to lie.

. She has confessed the commission of two robberies in addition to this one. She is *35an extreme alcoholic, having once committed herself to a hospital for treatment for alcoholism and delirium tremens. She has attempted suicide “as a result of a nervous breakdown” and spent some months under hospitalization for that condition. On occasion, Osborne, the man with whom she was living, would find her so drunk that he had to put her under the shower to sober her up. As for the source of the great quantities of whiskey she required, she said, “ * * a lot of times the bottle was bought for me,” sometimes by Osborne, sometimes by Osborne’s brother, and “sometimes some other men, too.” She also admitted receiving money from “other men.” On the day of the crime, Mrs. Young did what she “always” does — ■ she started drinking whiskey in the morning, continued drinking in the afternoon, was drinking around suppertime, stopped for some drinks en route to the scene of the crime, took a couple of bottles along in the car, and immediately upon reaching home, “went into the bedroom to take a drink of whiskey.”

. The one piece of her testimony the Government relies on most heavily relates to an alleged incident before she, Osborne and the appellant drove downtown. She said they stopped somewhere in Maryland where Osborne got out of the ear and she asked appellant where Osborne had gone. Appellant replied, according to her, that Osborne had gone to rob a place. In a few minutes, she said, Osborne returned saying ho had not robbed the place because there were too many witnesses present. However, by Mrs. Young’s own story, there had been no agreement to commit a robbery before the three left the house to go on their drive and, since sbe sat between the two men in the car, Osborne could not have told appellant he was going to commit a robbery without Mrs. Young also hearing it. Her testimony could be true only if Osborne and appellant had planned a robbery and concealed their purpose from her. There was no evidence that such was the case. But, even if that were the case, it would be hard to understand how she, who was not party to the plan, turned out to be the actual robber. When asked why it was she who did the actual robbery, she said she did not know.

. Mrs. Young says she was trying to protect Osborne who was at that time awaiting trial for another crime in Maryland.

. By Mrs. Young’s story, when she left home the night of the crime with Osborne and appellant, it was not for the purpose of committing a crime. She testified:
Well, we had finished dinner and we were sitting around just talking about first one thing and then another.
* * » * •
And after a while Vic got up and went in the bedroom and got his coat. And he came back out. I asked him where he was going. He said he and Bishop were going out for awhile just for a ride.
I said, can I go along. He says, “Yes, if you want to.” So I went in and got my coat and we went out and got in the car.
All three sat in the front seat, with appellant driving and Mrs. Young in the middle. As they were driving downtown, Osborne handed her a gun. She did not testify that appellant saw or could see this in the darkened car or that any*36thing was said about it in bis presence. They stopped at Wing’s restaurant and she got out, appellant saying, “I’ll wait.” She did not testify that she had told appellant that her purpose was to rob the place or that anything was said by anyone else as to that purpose. Someone (she does not remember who) said, “Well, that looks like a good spot.” There is nothing to suggest that appellant suspected she would do anything other than purchase some food to take home. Indeed, when she entered the restaurant, that is what she pretended to be doing.
As for the agreement to rob Wing’s restaurant, Mrs. Young testified: “In the meanwhile, we had decided to rob this place.” Asked how that decision had been made, she said, “Well, it was decided that I would go in and rob the place and they would wait in the car.” Prompted by the prosecutor, she agreed that the decision was “reached as a result of conversation between [her] and the other occupants of the car.” As to what conversation there had been about a robbery, she said, “Nothing except that I would go in and rob the place and they would wait in the car for me.” This seeming agreement is negated somewhat by Mrs. Young’s testimony that she did not know how it happened that she rather than Osborne went in to do the actual robbery. Furthermore, she admitted that she did not hear appellant discuss robbery when they stopped for drinks at a tavern before driving downtown and that he had said “nothing specific” that whole evening about robbing any place and had said nothing about robbing Wing’s restaurant. Some time during the evening, she said, “We were discussing the matter of money and it came up something about ‘only way I know of is to rob a place’ or something on that order.” But she did not remember who said it. Nor did she remember who said, “That looks like a good spot,” when they stopped at Wing’s restaurant, nor whether anyone suggested stopping there, nor what either she or appellant said when she returned to the car.
When she returned to the car after the robbery, Mrs. Young again sat between appellant and Osborne. After they drove off, she took off her jacket and gave it to Osborne, along with the gun and the proceeds of the robbery. Osborne rolled the gun and the money in the jacket and stuffed it under the seat. Nothing in her testimony suggested that appellant, who was driving, saw the gun or the money being thus disposed of or was in any way aware of it. Then they drove home. Later that night she saw Osborne give appellant some money, but she did not know what money it was or the purpose for which it was given.

. Mere presence at the time of the offense, or acquiescence, or failure to make any effort to prevent it, or even approval of the crime will not make a person either a principal, or aider or abettor, or an accessory before or after the fact. Clark & Marshall, Crimes 234-41 (5th ed. 1952).

. Nearly half of the American jurisdictions have adopted statutory safeguards against uncorroborated testimony of accomplices. 7 Wigmore, Evidence 319-20 (3d ed. 1940). In at least two states, corroboration has been required by judicial decision. Watson v. State, 1955, 208 Md. 210, 117 A.2d 549; Witham v. State, 1950, 191 Tenn. 115, 232 S.W.2d 3. A conviction based on the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice may be proper where, as in McQuaid v. United States, 1952, 91 U.S.App.D.C. 229, 230, 198 F.2d 987, 989, that testimony is in “critical respects * * * clear and positive.” If, as in the instant case, the testimony falls far short of that standard, the McQuaid instruction to “receive with caution and scrutinize with care” is inadequate to protect the accused and justice requires that some more effective safeguard be interposed.