Coles v. US

• Decision Date: 10 October 2002
• Docket Number: No. 00-CF-1570.,00-CF-1570.
• Citation: 808 A.2d 485
• Parties: Paul COLES, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

808 A.2d 485

Paul COLES, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.

No. 00-CF-1570.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Submitted April 11, 2002.

Decided October 10, 2002.

Brenda C. Wagner, Washington, DC, appointed by the court, filed a brief for appellant.

Roscoe C. Howard, Jr., United States Attorney, and John R. Fisher, Elizabeth Trosman, and Janet E. Albert, Assistant United States Attorneys, filed a brief for appellee.

Before SCHWELB and RUIZ, Associate Judges, and KING, Senior Judge.

SCHWELB, Associate Judge:

After a jury deadlocked at his first trial, Paul Coles was retried on charges of armed robbery¹ and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence (PFCV)² relating to the robbery at gunpoint of Redoduane Abderrafe. The jury at his second trial found Coles guilty on both counts, and he now appeals. Coles' primary contention is that the trial judge committed reversible error by restricting Coles' cross-examination of a prosecution witness. We disagree and affirm.

I. THE EVIDENCE

At Coles' trial, the prosecution presented evidence which, if credited, established that late at night on July 30, 1997, two men robbed Abderrafe at gunpoint as he walked down a street in Georgetown shortly after he completed his work shift as a waiter at a local restaurant. After the robbers took the tips that Abderrafe had earned, one of the men ordered him to "[g]o—don't turn your back. Just go straight." The two men then fled on foot. Abderrafe continued to walk as instructed, but almost immediately he encountered Officer Joseph Thomas of the Metropolitan Police Department. Abderrafe told Officer Thomas that he had been robbed, and he described one of the two robbers to the officer as "not too tall, not too short" and as wearing "tan military pants and [a] white shirt." Based on this information, Officer Thomas broadcast a lookout over the police radio.

Several police officers working in the Georgetown area monitored the broadcast. After pursuing several other leads, they spotted and began to chase a man who discarded a "speed loader," a wallet, a black stocking cap, and some personal documents shortly before he was apprehended. The man turned out to be Paul Coles, the appellant in this case. Officers also recovered a handgun which Coles had allegedly dropped earlier in the chase.

On July 22, 1998, a grand jury returned a nine-count indictment against Coles, charging him with involvement in three separate robberies, one of which was the robbery of Mr. Abderrafe. Coles' first trial was held before Judge Rhonda Reid Winston from October 5 to October 21, 1999. The jury found Coles guilty of unlawful possession of ammunition in connection with the Abderrafe robbery, but dead-locked on the armed robbery and PFCV charges.³ We affirmed the conviction for ammunition possession in Coles v. United States, No. 99-CV-1017, Memorandum Opinion and Judgment (D.C. March 6, 2001).

From October 11 to October 13, 2000, a second jury trial was held before Judge Natalia M. Combs Greene with respect to the charges of armed robbery and PFCV. The jury at the second trial found Coles guilty on both counts. This appeal followed.

II. THE ATTEMPTED IMPEACHMENT FOR BIAS

The only issue raised by Coles on appeal which merits plenary consideration is whether the trial judge erred by limiting the cross-examination of Kurt Goodwine, a witness for the prosecution.⁴ We discern no legal error or abuse of discretion. In our view, the limitation of which Coles complains pertained to a matter of very little, if any, probative value, and its exclusion was justified by its potential for distracting the jury from the issue at hand. At the very least, the trial judge could reasonably so conclude.

A. Background.

During the prosecution's case-in-chief, Goodwine testified that he had sold defendant Coles a Smith and Wesson handgun, as well as ammunition and a speed loader, when the two men were employed by the Department of the Navy approximately five years before the trial. Goodwine identified Government's Exhibit No. 2, by its serial number, as the weapon that he had sold to Coles. Exhibit No. 2 was the handgun that Coles had allegedly dropped during the officers' pursuit of him. On cross-examination, Goodwine acknowledged that he had no documentation of the sale of the handgun to Coles, and he was unable to recall either the precise date of the transaction or the exact amount paid to him by Coles.

Coles' attorney then attempted to cross-examine Goodwine regarding an employment discrimination complaint that Coles had allegedly filed in January 1999 against Goodwine's superior at the Navy Department. The judge inquired as to the relevance of the question, and counsel proffered that the proposed line of inquiry would demonstrate that Goodwine was biased against Coles. Counsel explained that Goodwine had been called as a management witness by the Department of the Navy in an administrative hearing on Coles' complaint. Subsequently, in January 2000, Goodwine had stated in an affidavit that Coles "had a deleterious effect on morale of the section because none of us could understand his motivation and we could all see where this was heading."⁵

The judge indicated that she did not see how the discrimination complaint provided Goodwine with a motive to fabricate evidence falsely implicating Coles in an armed robbery. She pointed out that if the proposed questioning was permitted, the prosecutor would have the right to bring out the witness' position. Coles' attorney acknowledged that this was so: "Oh, no question." The judge then explained that she did not propose to try what she regarded as a collateral matter (namely, the rights and wrongs of Goodwine's criticism of Coles in connection with the discrimination case):

I'm not going to try that [discrimination] case. I think, you know, bias is always relevant, that is true, but given when this affidavit was given, the circumstances under which it was given, an administrative action where this witness was just called as a witness, that he was not alleged to have been one of the discriminators or that he took any action against your client, I don't see how that is probative of bias in terms of—I'm not going to turn this into some discrimination trial.

Coles' attorney then argued that Goodwine's motive was to "curry favor with his boss." The judge disagreed and declined to permit the proposed cross-examination.

B. Legal Analysis.

A criminal defendant's right to cross-examine prosecution witnesses is protected by the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment. Davis v. Alaska, 415 U.S. 308, 315, 94 S.Ct. 1105, 39 L.Ed.2d 347 (1974); Lawrence v. United States, 482 A.2d 374, 376 (D.C.1984). That right, however, is not unlimited. Reed v. United States, 452 A.2d 1173, 1176 (D.C. 1982), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 839, 104 S.Ct. 132, 78 L.Ed.2d 127 (1983). "[D]espite the Sixth Amendment, the trial court has broad discretion to impose reasonable limits on cross-examination based on concerns about, among other things, harassment, prejudice, confusion of the issues, the witness' safety, or interrogation that is repetitive or only marginally relevant." Grayton v. United States, 745 A.2d 274, 280-81 (D.C.2000) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). "A proposed line of questioning may, and should, be disallowed if the trial court concludes that its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice," id. at 281; see also Mercer v. United States, 724 A.2d 1176, 1184 (D.C.1999),

or if the inquiry may divert the attention of the jury from the issue at hand. The trial judge has "wide latitude insofar as the Confrontation Clause is concerned to impose reasonable limits on cross examination," Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 679, 106 S.Ct. 1431, 89 L.Ed.2d 674 (1986), for she has "the responsibility for seeing that the side-show does not take over the circus." EDWARD W. CLEARY, McCORMICK ON EVIDENCE § 40, at 89 (3d ed.1984).

In the present case, the proposed cross-examination was designed to impeach Goodwine for bias:

Bias is a term used in the "common law of evidence" to describe the relationship between a party and a witness which might lead the witness to slant, unconsciously or otherwise, his testimony in favor of or against a party. Bias may be induced by a witness' like, dislike, or fear of a party, or by the witness' self-interest.

United States v. Abel, 469 U.S. 45, 52, 105 S.Ct. 465, 83 L.Ed.2d 450 (1984). Bias is "always relevant," Hollingsworth v. United States, 531 A.2d 973, 979 (D.C.1987), and "[t]he Supreme Court has established that the refusal to allow any questioning about facts indicative of bias from which the jury could reasonably draw adverse inferences ... is an error of constitutional dimension, violating the defendant's rights secured by the Confrontation Clause." Ford v. United States, 549 A.2d 1124, 1126 (D.C.1988) (emphasis in original) (citing Van Arsdall, supra, 475 U.S. at 678-79,106 S.Ct. 1431). Here, the judge allowed no cross-examination regarding Goodwine's purported bias, which was alleged to have stemmed from Coles' discrimination complaint. But

the party posing the question must proffer to the court some facts which support a genuine belief that the witness is biased in the manner asserted, that there is a specific personal bias on the part of the witness, and that the proposed questions are probative of bias.

Barnes v. United States, 614 A.2d 902, 905 (D.C.1992) (emphasis added) (quoting Porter v. United States, 561 A.2d 994, 996 (D.C.1989)).

"The trial judge ... has discretion in determining whether particular evidence is relevant to bias or motive." White v. State, 324 Md. 626, 598 A.2d 187, 194 (1991) (quoting McCORMICK ON EVIDENCE, supra, § 40, at 87). Indeed, the trial court has "a great deal of discretion" in making this determination. Id. "[T]he burden of showing the relevance of particular evidence to the...