Court Opinion

ID: 9464150
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:26:23.776446+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:29.187327
License: Public Domain

MacKINNON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I join the majority’s disposition, in Part II of its opinion, of the issues of probable cause for appellants’ arrest and sufficiency of the evidence to support appellant Jackson’s conviction of assault with intent to rape, but disagree with its conclusions regarding the district court’s jurisdiction over the robbery count.
I
In a nine-count indictment returned by a grand jury in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, appellants were charged with the following:
(1) Possession of an unregistered firearm in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d) (1970).
(2) Possession of a firearm not identified by serial number in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 5861(i) (1970).
(3) , (6) Assault with a dangerous weapon with intent to carnally know (rape) Kathy M. Kirch and Dari R. Tritt in violation of D.C. Code §§ 22-501, -3202 (1973) (2 counts).
*801(4), (7) Assault with intent to carnally know (rape) Kathy M. Kirch and Dari R. Tritt in violation of D.C. Code § 22-501 (1973) (2 counts).
(5), (8) Assault of Kathy M. Kirch and Dari M. Tritt with a dangerous weapon in violation of D.C. Code § 22-502 (1973) (2 counts).
(9) By force and violence and against resistance and by putting in fear, stealing and snatching a purse and its contents from Marliese T. Nakamura, in violation of D.C. Code § 22-2901 (1973).
Both defendants Jackson and Johnson were charged together as defendants in all nine counts. The District Court, however, granted defendants’ motions to sever the Ninth Count charging stealing by force and violence.
In the first trial the jury acquitted Johnson on all counts but found Jackson guilty of the federal firearms violations and of two counts of assault with intent to commit rape while armed with the illegal firearm, a “sawed-off rifle.”
After the first trial of the federal and D.C offenses charged in the first eight counts, the trial court ruled that it had jurisdiction to try the remaining robbery count, a single D.C. offense. In the jury trial that followed both appellants were found guilty as charged. The principal question presented on appeal is whether, under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and the statutes enacted by Congress for the trial of crimes committed in the District of Columbia, the federal crimes and the D.C. charges arising out of the earlier assaults were properly joined in one indictment with the successive crime of robbery by force and violence. One subordinate issue is whether the two defendants can properly be joined in all the offenses charged. The validity of the separate trial in the U.S. District Court of the D.C. offense of robbery by force and violence depends upon the answers to the foregoing questions.
The robbery was committed about 10 minutes after the first offenses ceased. It was committed at exactly the same place where the first offenses began. The defendants used the same gold Chevrolet car as a staging ground for both offenses. The offenses were similar in that they both involved forcible assaults upon women and the grand jury alleged that the same two defendants jointly committed all nine alleged offenses.
The court’s opinion states that joinder of offenses under Fed.R.Crim.P. 8 is normally construed broadly, and that in this case it presents a “close” question. It concludes, however, that because the jurisdiction of the U.S. District Court depends on the propriety of the joinder, the rules on joinder should be read more narrowly out of deference to the claimed intent of Congress to have D.C. offenses tried in the D.C. courts. In my view we should give Rule 8 the normal reading that it is given in all other instances, and we should not overlook the clearly expressed intent of Congress that when federal and D.C. offenses may properly be joined neither the defendants nor the Government should be subjected to separate trials in the United States and D.C. courts. This is an important case because of the large number of criminal cases we have where the offenses violate both federal and D.C. statutes.
II
In my opinion, it was proper to join the D.C. robbery offense with the federal and D.C offenses. D.C. Code § 11-502 (1973) provides:
In addition to its jurisdiction as a United States district court and any other jurisdiction conferred on it by law, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia has jurisdiction of the following:
(3) Any offense under any law applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia which offense is joined in the same information or indictment with any Federal offense.
*802Act of July 29, 1970, Pub.L. 91-358, § 111, 84 Stat. 477 (emphasis added). The language of this statute is unequivocal. See United States v. Shepard, 169 U.S.App.D.C. 353, 358, 515 F.2d 1324, 1329 (1975). It confers jurisdiction on the United States District Court of crimes against the District of Columbia when they are “joined in the same . . . indictment with any federal offense” (emphasis added). The court’s opinion asserts that the term “joined” in section 11-502(3) means “properly joined under Fed.R.Crim.P.” (Maj. op. at-of 183 U.S.App.D.C., at 793 of 562 F.2d. I agree. The offenses must be properly joined. I believe they were.
To determine if they were properly joined requires reference to Fed.R.Crim.P. 8, which relates to joinder of offenses and defendants. This rule provides:
(a) Two or more offenses may be charged in the same indictment . if the offenses charged . . . are based on . two or more acts or transactions connected together constituting parts of a common scheme or plan.
(b) Two or more defendants may be charged in the same indictment . if they are alleged to have participated . in the same series of acts or transactions constituting ... offenses. .
(Emphasis added.) The majority has difficulty fitting the offenses and defendants here within the language of Rule 8 and also has difficulty disengaging the offenses from that Rule. Its exposition of the case law is well done, but, in my view, the majority does not correctly discern or apply all the relevant facts of the present case.
The majority agrees with the weight of authority, despite the facial language of the rule, that joinder of offenses against one defendant is governed by Rule 8(a), while 8(b) controls joinder of offenses against multiple defendants. It concedes, however, that “Rule 8(b)’s phrase, (the same series of acts or transactions,’ may be essentially coterminous with the wording employed in the last portion of Rule 8(a), ‘two or more acts or transactions connected together or constituting parts of a common scheme or plan.’ ” Maj. op. at ----of' 183 U.S.App.D.C., at 796 of 562 F.2d, quoting 1 C. Wright, Federal Practice & Procedure § 144, at 332 (1969) and citing 8 J. Moore, Federal Practice 18.06[1] at 8-24, H 8.06[2] at 8-37 (2d ed. 1976). Whichever language is preferred, contrary to the majority opinion here, I conclude that the D.C. robbery offense was properly joined with the other federal and D.C. counts.
First, take subsection (a) of the Rule. Are the acts involved in the crime of robbery by force and violence, as charged in count 9, “parts of [the] common scheme and plan” alleged in counts 1 to 8 of the indictment? Six of the first eight counts charge assaults upon women which began outside the Pier 9 restaurant. Initially the occupants lay in wait in the car and then drove around the area until they reached an advantageous location from which their intended victims could be accosted (Tr. 304, 376). This obviously permitted them to conceal the sawed-off rifle from their intended victims until they were reasonably close to them. Then, Jackson emerged from the gold Chevrolet brandishing a 23-inch sawed-off rifle, the possession of which is the basis for the two other counts. So all of these eight offenses were clearly related. When Jackson emerged from the passenger side of the car it became obvious, particularly when the facts in connection with the robbery are considered, that another person was in the driver’s seat.
Four of the first eight counts charge an “intent to carnally know” the female victim; but two counts (5 and 8) do not allege an intent to rape and only charge simple assaults with a dangerous weapon. These latter two counts obviously refer only to the initial assaults that were committed outside the Pier 9 restaurant in which Jackson hit Ms. Kirch in the face, eye and nose, knocking her to the ground with her nose bleeding (Tr. 87). Thereafter the victims were forced to go a short distance to the river bank where Jackson’s sexual motivation first manifested itself. At the river bank one of the intended victims kicked Jackson *803in the shins, wrested the sawed-off rifle from him and he ran from the river toward Pier 9 (Tr. 119).
Then, within the short space of about 10 minutes (cf. Tr. 304, 376) from the time he ran from the river bank, while Johnson was driving the gold Chevrolet, as the majority opinion states, the car
approached slowly. A man [Jackson] in the passenger seat of the Chevrolet reached out the car window and grabbed Ms. Nakamura and her purse. The young woman was dragged approximately ten feet before she let go of her handbag.
Maj. op. at - of 183 U.S.App.D.C., at 791 of 562 F.2d. The Chevrolet then sped away with Johnson driving. Jackson and Johnson were arrested shortly thereafter in the gold Chevrolet in front of one of their homes. A sock with 55 rounds of ammunition that fit the sawed-off rifle was found on the front seat of the car between the driver and the passenger seats.
It is submitted that these facts show a common scheme and plan to use the Chevrolet as a staging platform to wantonly assault women with force and violence as they emerged from the Pier 9 restaurant. The only reason the sawed-off rifle was not used in the assault that resulted in the robbery was because Ms. Kirch had taken it away from Jackson — but he carried on as best he could without the rifle by grabbing Ms. Nakamura with “force and violence and against resistance,” count 9.
The majority opinion attempts to differentiate the assault that occurred in connection with the robbery from the other assaults by asserting: “At most a technical assault occurred, and no charge of assault, independent of the robbery count, was entered against appellants.” Maj. op. at-n. 4 of 183 U.S.App.D.C., at 794 n. 4 of 562 F.2d. The offense, as charged in the indictment, cannot be minimized into being merely “a technical assault.” It alleged that Johnson and Jackson used “force and violence . . . against resistance [resulting in] putting [the victims] in fear . .” (Count 9). And the “force and violence as proved by the evidence at trial was principally that of a moving car dragging a female victim held by the arm of one of the defendants against the car’s side. That is every bit as much force as that used in the other assaults and there is nothing “technical” about it. The force was actual. As for the assertion that no assault charge “independent of the robbery count, was entered against appellants,” no independent count was necessary — the assault was adequately charged in connection with the robbery, and that count clearly encompassed a simple unlawful assault (D.C.Code § 22-504) as a lesser included offense. The use of the car in connection with the assault would also, in my opinion, embrace the offense of assault with a dangerous weapon (D.C.Code § 22-502).
Robbery by force and violence and against resistance was charged in the indictment. Assault is an essential element of the offense of robbery. “Some violence or intimidation (both of which involve an assault) must be used in the taking, or it is merely larceny.” J. Miller, Criminal Law 393 (1934), and cases cited at n. 14. A robbery is a form of aggravated assault, and no valid distinction can be drawn between this “assault” and that alleged in six of the other counts.
When one recognizes that the robbery and six of the eight remaining counts did involve assaults on women originating from the gold Chevrolet at the Pier 9 restaurant, the common scheme and plan- — to lie in wait in the Chevrolet and make wanton assaults on women — is obvious. The majority opinion recognizes that the Commentary to the ABA Standards on Joinder and Severance state that “[i]t is common to permit joinder of offenses committed at approximately the same time and place.” Maj. op. at-of 183 U.S.App.D.C., at 795 of 562 F.2d. However, the majority considers that it is unable to apply that rule here because it states it is “confronted with dissimilar and apparently unconnected crimes.” Maj. op. at--of 183 U.S.App.D.C., at 795 of 562 F.2d, (emphasis in original). However, when note is taken that the robbery is *804basically an “assault,” as the majority admits, and that Jackson used the Chevrolet to mask his approach to all the assault victims, and Johnson was alleged to be the driver of the car throughout, the claim that the offenses are “dissimilar” completely disappears. They are similar in that all are forcible assaults on women and all began from the Chevrolet at the Pier 9 restaurant with Johnson driving and Jackson assaulting.1 These offenses were therefore properly joined.
Ill
The majority intimates that the standards of Rule 8(b) may be more difficult to satisfy than those of Rule 8(a). Rule 8(b), however, differs on its face from the former only in that it does not permit joinder based solely on “similar” acts. See United States v. Roselli, 432 F.2d 879, 898 (9th Cir. 1970). Rather, joinder under 8(b) depends upon a showing that the offense charged in the indictment grew out of “the same series of acts constituting . . . offenses.” What does the same “series” of acts require? A “series” is defined as:
a group of . three or more . events standing or succeeding in order and having a like relationship to each other: a spatial or temporal succession of persons or things .
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 2073 (1963) (emphasis added). The majority recognizes that Rule 8(b) presents the “question . . . whether mere temporal and spatial proximity can justify characterization of the assault and robbery as different parts of ‘the same series of acts . . Maj. op. at- of 183 U.S.App.D.C., at 794 of 562 F.2d. But having correctly stated the question, the majority both overstates the answer and erroneously applies the rule to the facts of this case.
The majority relies upon decisions that have suggested that the term “series” in the context of Rule 8(b) contemplates something “[more than] mere temporal and spatial proximity.” For example, in King v. United States, 355 F.2d 700, 704 (1st Cir. 1966), The First Circuit stated that “[w]here . . . there are no presumptive benefits from joint proof of facts relevant to all the acts or transactions there is no ‘series’ ” within the meaning of Rule 8(b). Similarly, the Seventh Circuit in United States v. Isaacs, 493 F.2d 1124, 1159 (7th Cir. 1974), permitted joinder of dissimilar counts against multiple defendants where “[t]he evidence to establish the counts in question was pertinent to proof of other counts.”
A closer look at these decisions, however, reveals that these courts do not require that the facts in each count be absolutely probative of the other. Rather, they simply require a sufficient logical connection between the counts that the added convenience from their joinder offsets the potential prejudice to the defendants. “Rule 8(b) is not limited to situations in which proof of the other criminal transaction would be admissible in a separate trial. It goes beyond, to others, the excuse being the benefit to the court.” King, supra, 355 F.2d at 704. Rule 8(b) thus permits joinder based on “a series of many occurrences dependent not so much upon the immediateness of their connection as upon their logical relationship.” Isaacs, supra, 493 F.2d at 1159, quoting Moore v. New York Cotton Exchange, *805270 U.S. 593, 610, 46 S.Ct. 367, 371, 70 L.Ed. 750 (1926) (emphasis added). Accord, United States v. Laca, 499 F.2d 922, 925 (5th Cir. 1974); United States v. Gill, 490 F.2d 233, 238-39 (7th Cir. 1973); United States v. Daddano, 432 F.2d 1119, 1125 (7th Cir. 1970); (“even if each set of events [a Hobbs Act violation and subsequent perjurious statement to a grand jury] be deemed a separate transaction, we think the relationship is close enough that they may be deemed a ‘series’ under Rule 8(b)”).
The events in the present case, far from being “dissimilar,” as the majority characterizes them, were striking in their similarities:
(1) These offenses all began at the same place —outside the Pier Nine Restaurant.
(2) The same automobile was used in connection with both offenses.
(3) The robbery followed the assaults within ten minutes of their termination.
(4) The same principals were involved.
(5) Both offenses involved similar victims —women who had just left the Pier Nine restaurant.
(6) All offenses, except the two Federal firearms offenses, involved assaults and the firearm was used in some of the assaults. Counts 3 through 8 alleged assaults, four with intent to rape, and two with a dangerous weapon and the ninth count charged stealing by seizure and snatching “by force and violence and against resistance and putting in fear.”
(7) It is a reasonable conclusion from all the facts that all offenses involved some coordinated activities by each defendant. Johnson drove the car and Jackson assaulted the women.
(8) It was also part of the common scheme and plan that Jackson and Johnson would keep the gold Chevrolet ready and available as a get-away car with extra ammunition readily available for the rifle in case they needed it. This latter facet of the plan was frustrated when Ms. Kirch took the rifle away from Jackson. The ammunition on the front seat also links the car to the first eight offenses and there is no doubt about its relationship to the robbery.
Not only do these events, closely connected in time and place, fit within the dictionary meaning of the word “series,” but the facts surrounding each offense were probative of the other offenses. In particular, the interrelationship of all of the facts alleged in the indictment tends to prove the identity and extent of involvement of appellant Johnson, whose participation was apparently limited to driving the car that figured centrally in each event. The car was not only driven during the commission of the robbery, but also conveyed Jackson to the scene when he made his first assaults that led to the attempted rapes. Jackson got out of the car from the “passenger side” to accost Ms. Kirch and Tritt (Tr. 304-05, 364). The testimony of Ms. Nakamura tended to prove that Johnson was in fact the driver of the car at that time. Being in the car had permitted Jackson to conceal the sawed-off rifle with which Jackson threatened the women and this in part explains both the presence of the weapon and Johnson’s complicity in the firearms and subsequent violations. The factual inference is obvious that Johnson was the driver and waited in the car for Jackson because following the short fifteen minutes (cf. Tr. 304, 376) between the time Jackson first assaulted Ms. Kirch and Tritt and the time he had returned from the river bank and assaulted Ms. Nakamura in the robbery, Johnson turned out to be the driver during the robbery. The facts of the series of crimes are thus closely interrelated and the prosecution thus would have benefited greatly “from joint proof of facts relevant to all the acts or transactions . . . .” 355 F.2d at 704, and the events should be considered a “series” within the meaning of Rule 8(b), even as construed by the King court. Johnson probably owes his acquittal on all counts at the first trial to the trial court’s decision to sever the robbery count from the others for trial.
*806In my opinion, these factual similarities form a sufficient logical and probative link between the activities upon which the indictment was based that they were properly considered part of the “same series of acts or transactions constituting ... offenses” within the meaning of Rule 8(b). They meet all the requirements of the case law discussed in the majority opinion.
IV
The only remaining question is whether, once the D.C. robbery offense was severed from the counts charging the federal firearms violations and the D.C. rape assault offenses, the District Court retained jurisdiction to try the robbery count, or was required to dismiss the count for possible re-indictment by the D.C. grand jury and trial in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia. However, it is my view that Congress conferred jurisdiction on the United States District Court over such D.C. robbery offense since it was properly “joined in the same . . . indictment with [a] Federal offense.” D.C.Code § 11-502(3) (1973).
To hold that the United States District Court lost jurisdiction when the case was severed imports into the statute considerations which Congress did not see fit to enact. While the Congress created the D.C. court, inter alia, to try D.C. offenses, it also provided that U.S. and D.C. offenses could be joined in one indictment and tried together in the U.S. courts so as to serve the convenience of defendants, the Government, the witnesses, lawyers, and grand and petit juries. The majority’s interpretation requires re-indictment by a grand jury of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and double trials where a great deal of the same testimony will be duplicated — particularly that dealing with identification. Two trials in different courts that substantially overlap are a burden to everybody and, as the majority opinion notes, defendants may frequently benefit from a single trial in the United States courts by receiving concurrent rather than consecutive sentences. Moreover, requiring transfer of D.C. counts to the Superior Court whenever severed from federal counts encourages such severance. This further nullifies the congressional intent in directing joint trials. Such should be the result where the D.C. case is improperly joined but not where cases are properly joined as here.
To my mind the majority relies too much on the intent to create separate court systems and not enough on the intent to authorize joint trials of federal and D.C. offenses that may properly be joined. The serious crime situation in the District of Columbia was at the heart of the legislation, and the authorization of joint trials for federal and D.C. offenses indicated that Congress intended to insure that both types of offenses were prosecuted with the least complications possible. If separate trials in separate courts were required, the staggering criminal docket in this city might compel the U.S. Attorney to settle for half justice in many cases where U.S. and D.C. crimes were concerned. That Congress did not so intend, but instead intended to reduce the staggering burden of prosecuting criminal cases in the District of Columbia by consolidating trials where joinder is proper is discernible from the specific statute authorizing such joint trials and also from the fact that it retained the United States Attorney as the criminal prosecutor in both the federal and D.C. courts. I thus believe that the majority opinion incorrectly concludes that Congress intended that the authority of the grand jury to join offenses should be narrowly construed against joinder whenever so doing would result in the grant to the United States District Court of jurisdiction over a D.C. offense. Instead, it is my view that Congress intended that the joinder rule should receive the same normal construction in such cases that it receives in all cases.
I agree with the majority, however, in not urging pendent jurisdiction as a basis for joint criminal trials in the United States courts. In addition, I would not hold for joint trials or continuing District Court jurisdiction if the severance had been granted *807because the joinder was illegal ab initio, rather than on a discretionary basis, as for alleged improper prejudice.
For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully dissent from Parts III and IV of the majority opinion and the reversal of the robbery convictions.

. This is the obvious theory upon which the counts were joined in the indictment and there were sufficient facts to support such joinder. The propriety of the joinder in the indictment is determinative of the court’s jurisdiction to try all counts joined therein and the fact that Johnson, in a separate trial, was subsequently acquitted on the first eight counts is not controlling. Had all the charges been tried jointly, as they were charged, the facts concerning the robbery would have been placed before the jury in a more meaningful light with the evidence on the first eight counts. Then Johnson’s role as the standby driver of the car he and Jackson had planned to have available if escape became necessary would have been apparent to the jury and could have led to his conviction as an aider and abettor to the first eight counts. The jury could have found that Johnson at the very outset used the car to conceal the 23-inch sawed-off rifle. The cases thus should not have been severed. The prejudice that was discerned from the facts of count 9 was the certainty that Johnson also aided and abetted the first eight counts and that type of prejudice does not justify severance.