Fields v. US

• Decision Date: 14 August 1997
• Docket Number: 93-CF-522,No. 93-CF-492,96-CO-738.,93-CF-492
• Parties: Maurice L. FIELDS, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

698 A.2d 485

Maurice L. FIELDS, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.

Nos. 93-CF-492, 93-CF-522, 96-CO-738.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued June 5, 1997.

Decided August 14, 1997.

W. Douglas Wham, appointed by the court, Washington, DC, for appellant.

Stuart G. Nash, Assistant United States Attorney, for appellee. Eric H. Holder, Jr., United States Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and John R. Fisher, Carolyn K. Kolben and Christine E. Sykes, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief for appellee.

Before STEADMAN and KING, Associate Judges, and GALLAGHER, Senior Judge.

STEADMAN, Associate Judge.

Appellant Maurice L. Fields was convicted of multiple offenses arising out of two armed carjackings that occurred in February 1991. A photo array introduced as an exhibit was stored at the back of the courtroom during the overnight period following the first day of jury deliberations. The next day the photo array was gone. Fields contends that his due process right to a fair trial was violated by this loss of the photo array. We reject this argument, as well as all the other more conventional issues raised before us, and affirm.

I.

A. The February 18 Incident

On February 18, 1991, as Allen Tayman was removing a briefcase from the trunk of his car, two men robbed him at gunpoint and drove away in his car. About ten days after the robbery, Tayman viewed a photographic array at the United States Attorney's office. The Assistant United States Attorney then prosecuting the case laid the photos on the desk in front of Tayman one at a time and asked him if he recognized any of them. After viewing several photos, Tayman picked one of Fields and identified him as the gunman. He then viewed the photos a second time in order to be certain, and again selected the same photo. The photo array was mounted on a posterboard for trial and admitted without objection in the government's case-in-chief. Tayman also made an in-court identification of Fields as the gunman.

Additionally, phone records introduced into evidence at trial showed that on the night of the robbery phone calls were made from Tayman's car phone to the phone numbers of Doreen Kelly and Patricia Ashe. Tayman did not know either Ms. Kelly or Ms. Ashe, but Ms. Kelly was an acquaintance of Fields and Ms. Ashe was Fields' girlfriend and the mother of his son. Although Fields took the stand at trial, he said nothing about the February 18 charge and presented no evidence with respect to it by way of alibi or otherwise.

B. The February 20 Incident

Just after midnight on February 20, 1991, as Harold Shelby was getting into his car four men approached him, two from the front of the car and two from the rear. The shorter of the two men at the front of the car, later identified as Fields, pointed a gun at Shelby and demanded his car keys. Shelby gave the keys to the taller man. Shelby was also robbed of several personal items. The taller man got into the driver's seat, while the men at the rear got into the back seat. Eventually, the gunman got into the front passenger seat and the car drove away.¹

Several hours later, at about 3:00 a.m., Shelby's car was stopped by the police for a routine traffic violation. At that time Fields was driving the car, a taller man named Maurice Ryans was sitting in the front passenger seat, and a young woman was riding in the back seat. Fields was arrested for driving without a permit, and Ryans was arrested after a police officer saw him kick something in the floorboard under the front passenger seat. Under the seat the police discovered a loaded Smith & Wesson .38 caliber handgun.

About an hour later, at a police showup in a parking lot, Shelby identified Fields as the gunman and Ryans as the taller accomplice who drove his car. Additionally, some of Shelby's stolen property was discovered where Fields had been sitting in the back seat of a police car. Shelby also made an in-court identification of Fields at trial, indicating that there was "no doubt in his mind" that Fields was the gunman.

Fields testified in his own defense at trial with respect to the events of February 20. He indicated that he got Shelby's car from Ryans and believed that Ryans had rented it from a "pipehead," a crack cocaine user who would rent his car for money to purchase drugs. He also indicated that he was unaware of the gun found under the passenger seat until after his arrest.

C. The Missing Exhibits

At about 4:15 p.m. on the next to last day of trial, the court completed final jury instructions, and the jury began deliberations. At that point, all the exhibits in evidence except the bullets were sent back to the jury room. The jury deliberated for about one-half hour, and the trial court dismissed the jury for the day. The oversized exhibits, including the photo array, were taken out of the jury room and stored for the night against the wall at the back of the courtroom by the courtroom clerk.

The next morning the oversized exhibits were missing and efforts to locate them proved fruitless.² The government took the position that the jury should be allowed to continue deliberations while further efforts were made to locate the exhibits. Fields' counsel requested that deliberations be suspended, and, alternatively, moved for a mistrial. The trial court denied both requests reasoning that the photo array was the most important missing item and that Fields would not be harmed by its absence because Fields had not argued that the array was suggestive, and the jury had had an opportunity to view the array the day before.

At that point the jury sent out a note that read "jury is here and wants the evidence." The trial court sent a reply note that read "members of the jury, all of the evidence available for your review is being presented to you. You should resume your deliberations." A few minutes later the jury sent out another note reading "may we please have the rest of the evidence?" Fields' counsel renewed his mistrial motion and the trial court denied it for the same reasons as before. After a long discussion, Fields' counsel then drafted a note which the court sent in to the jury. That note read "members of the jury you have received all of the exhibits which will be available to you for the balance of your deliberations."

The jury eventually convicted Fields on all counts. With respect to the February 18 incident, Fields was convicted of armed robbery, possession of a firearm during a crime of violence (PFCV), and unauthorized use of a vehicle (UUV). With respect to the February 20 incident, Fields was convicted of armed robbery, PFCV, UUV, carrying a pistol without a licence (CPWL), possession of an unregistered firearm (UF) and unlawful possession of ammunition (UA).³ Fields now appeals.

II.

Fields' principal contention on appeal is that the loss of the exhibits, in particular the photo array, deprived him of his due process right to a fair trial. The effect on due process of the loss of physical evidence during trial is an issue of first impression in this jurisdiction, but a good starting place for our analysis is the Supreme Court's most recent case on lost evidence, Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U.S. 51, 109 S.Ct. 333, 102 L.Ed.2d 281 (1988). There the Court held that "unless a criminal defendant can show bad faith on the part of the police, failure to preserve potentially useful evidence does not constitute a denial of due process of law." Id. at 58, 109 S.Ct. at 337. We have previously read Youngblood to require defendants to show bad faith when claiming a denial of due process from lost or destroyed evidence. See United States v. Day, 697 A.2d 31, 35-36 (D.C.1997); Cantizano v. United States, 614 A.2d 870, 873 (D.C.1992) (per curiam).

Of course Youngblood, Day, and Cantizano all involved the loss of evidence that occurred before trial, while this case involves the loss of evidence after it has been admitted at trial. Fields argues that Youngblood and its progeny should not govern here because Youngblood is premised on concerns about the speculation inherent in reconstructing the potential effect on a jury's verdict of evidence that was never presented at trial, whereas here no speculation is required because the content of the evidence was actually known to the jury.

Instead Fields argues that the analysis of People v. Ford, 736 P.2d 1249 (Colo.Ct.App. 1986), and People v. Lee, 38 Cal.App.3d 749, 113 Cal.Rptr. 641 (1974), two pre-Youngblood cases where courts confronted the problem of evidence lost during trial, should control. In those two cases the courts considered four basic factors in assessing whether the loss of physical evidence during trial deprived a criminal defendant of due process: (1) whether the evidence was lost or destroyed by the prosecution, (2) whether the evidence was exculpatory, (3) whether the evidence was relevant to the defendant's case, and (4) whether it was reasonably possible that the jury, under the circumstances presented, would have reached a different result had the evidence not been lost. Ford, supra, 736 P.2d at 1250. See also Lee, supra, 113 Cal. Rptr. at 647.

We need not decide whether the Youngblood or Ford/Lee analysis is controlling, however, because under either analysis Fields' due process right to a fair trial was not violated. Here the loss of the evidence was not only not in bad faith, but not even the fault of the prosecution. Rather, as the trial judge recognized, "the court was at fault because it is the court's responsibility to secure the evidence and the court did not do that." Additionally, the photo array was not exculpatory or a key piece of evidence as it served only to corroborate Tayman's prior identification of Fields as the gunman. Although the jury did send out notes about the missing evidence, it never singled out the photo array or suggested that the array was particularly important to its deliberations. Furthermore, the photo array was...