Court Opinion

ID: 9762858
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:32:58.672262+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:38.142419
License: Public Domain

NEBEKER, Associate Judge
(dissenting):
The accused’s failure to move for judgment of acquittal at the end of the trial is not raised as a bar to asserting evidentiary insufficiency. In addition, since the lack of sufficient corroboration was urged on the judgment of acquittal motion at the end of the government’s case, and counsel again reminded the trial court of the weakness of this proof at argument on the content of the jury charge, I agree that we *417may look to and resolve the sufficiency question. My reading of the record convinces me that there is manifest error in permitting this conviction to stand. See Richardson v. United States, D.C.App., 276 A.2d 237, 238 (1971), where we acknowledged the bar to review of an unpreserved sufficiency contention except in cases of manifest error.
I sense that the government was somewhat uneasy in urging that the evidence was sufficient as to corroboration. Its brief treats the essential facts in an almost offhanded and certainly in a cryptic fashion. It also fails to address the very specific assertions of inconsistency raised on behalf of the accused.
The court reaches the merits of the sufficiency of corroboration question and decides that, though rank with inconsistency, the testimony of the 10-year-old is “more than sufficient to support the conviction”. I cannot accept that conclusion any more than I can agree that corroboration evidence ne.ed show merely that a sexual molestation took place. Corroboration in this type' of case must be of the testimony or “account” of the complainant. See Coltrane v. United States, 135 U.S.App.D.C. 295, 298-99, 418 F.2d 1131, 1134-35 (1969). Our holdings in Moore v. United States, D.C.App., 306 A.2d 278 (1973) and Evans v. United States, D.C.App., 299 A.2d 136 (1973), are the same and do not permit the present mutation in the rule. I also note that the government does not argue that independent evidence can be so inconsistent with the complainant’s version. It relies on the recent Circuit Court case of United States v. Gray, 155 U.S.App.D.C. 275, 276, 477 F.2d 444, 445 (1973), as stating that such evidence must corroborate “the victim’s account” of what happened.
It is to be hoped that this rather strange way of viewing the evidence as sufficient is not intended to be a new rule for this jurisdiction. I can, however, understand the selection of these words for the court’s opinion for I' share with my colleagues the inability to describe how the 10-year-old’s testimony can be deemed as corroborating the event described by the 6-year-old in the way precedent requires.
A brief description of the testimony will suffice to show that the two little girls were fatally and mutually inconsistent as to what they saw or did. When given a choice by a question phrased to permit an alternative answer, the 6-year-old said the accused’s pants were down. She nonetheless steadfastly adhered to the fact that the accused never had his penis out of his pants, and that she touched it only through his clothing. She also insisted that her pants were never down. The 10-year-old described a different event in which the accused was exposed (his zipper was down and his penis was out of his pants). She said the younger girl held it in her hand. She also related that the younger girl’s pants were down.
It is important to note that both girls were describing a brief unitary event. The older child was not viewing a different episode or the end of a multi-phased one. Corroboration of the accused’s presence in the hallway with the 6-year-old was all the 10-year-old supplied. That is not enough.
The record reveals mutually inconsistent allegations of a sex crime as told by two young girls, the younger being a highly suggestible child who was nonplussed by the whole confrontation that occurred after the 10-year-old told one adult what she had seen — that report ultimately filtering down to the mother of the then-sleeping 6-year-old. Thereafter, even into trial, the child agreed with the adults’ suggestions that the accused was indecent with her.
We know from the lessons of the past that all too frequently such complainants have an urge to fantacize [iic] or even a motive to fabricate, while typically the innocent, as well as the guilty, have only their own testimony upon which to rely. [Coltrane v. United States, supra 135 U.S.App.D.C. at 298-99, 418 F.2d at 1134-35 (footnotes omitted).]
*418I view this cause thus and would not apply the corroboration rule to it in such an elastic fashion as to allow these pervasive inconsistencies of near infants to permit conviction. The judgment of conviction should be reversed and a judgment of acquittal entered.