Hill v. US, No. 93-CF-160

• Docket Nº: 93-CF-336.
• Citation: 664 A.2d 347
• Case Date: August 31, 1995
• Court: Court of Appeals of Columbia District

664 A.2d 347

Reginald HILL, a/k/a Ronald Johnson, and Eddie B. Ellis, Jr., Appellants,
v.
UNITED STATES, Appellee.

Nos. 93-CF-160, 93-CF-336.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued October 19, 1994.

Decided August 31, 1995.

664 A.2d 348

Eli Gottesdiener, Public Defender Service, with whom James Klein and Jo-Ann Wallace, Public Defender Service, were on the brief, for appellant Ellis.

William T. Morrison filed a brief for appellant Hill.

Stacey L. Sovereign, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Eric H. Holder, Jr., United States Attorney, and John R. Fisher and Leslie Ann Gerardo, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee.

Before FERREN and STEADMAN, Associate Judges, and PRYOR, Senior Judge.

STEADMAN, Associate Judge:

On towards midnight of the evening of December 20, 1991, appellants Reginald Hill and Eddie Ellis killed one man and wounded another in a street confrontation near Columbia Road and 14th Street, N.W. Several

664 A.2d 349

hours later, at approximately 3:00 a.m., the police, without a warrant but through a ruse, entered the apartment of a female acquaintance of appellants, Katrina Harrell, and seized both appellants. The principal issue on appeal is whether the trial court correctly ruled that the appellants lacked standing to challenge the warrantless entry into the apartment.¹ We affirm

I.

At the suppression hearing, the government introduced evidence of the post-shooting events that led to the police entry. Shortly after the shooting, the wounded man and an eyewitness gave police officers a rather detailed description of the two assailants, and the eyewitness further identified them as "Reggie" and "Eric." Sometime thereafter, slightly before 3 a.m., a male caller, who remained anonymous, identified the assailants as "Reggie" and "Eddie" and stated that he had just seen them enter apartment 514 at 1400 Fairmont Street. Several detectives thereupon left to visit that address.

In a seemingly unrelated incident, at approximately 2:40 a.m., Katrina Harrell, a resident of apartment 514 at 1400 Fairmont Street, phoned police, complaining that there was a man outside her apartment with a gun. Officers Hill and Hines responded to the call, but found no one outside of Harrell's apartment. They knocked on the door, and Harrell let them in. Officer Hill testified that Harrell told him that the person outside of her door earlier was John Brown and that he hung out in apartment 318. Officer Hill noticed that there was a man, who was holding a baby, and two other women (besides Harrell) in the apartment.

Officer Hill testified that he spoke with John Brown outside of apartment 318 and Brown told them "there are two dudes in that apartment referring to apartment 514 that killed my best friend tonight." Brown said that the incident had occurred at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Columbia Road. The officers then escorted Brown out of the building without incident. Officer Hill testified that he returned to Harrell's apartment to inform her of Brown's departure and that he saw the same people in the apartment.

When the group of detectives investigating the homicide arrived at the address, they encountered Officers Hines and Hill, who related the events following Harrell's telephone call. Officer Hill gave a description of the male that he had seen in Harrell's apartment, to which one of the detectives responded, "That's him, that's the shooter."

Officers Hill and Hines, accompanied by several detectives, thereupon returned to Harrell's apartment. In response to a knock, Harrell asked who was at the door, and Officer Hill identified himself and said that he had forgotten to ask her something. She opened the door, and Officer Hill entered, followed by the others.²

Once in the apartment, the officers approached the man who was still sitting on the couch (who was later identified as appellant Ellis) and frisked him. The officers asked Harrell if anyone else was in the apartment (the other two women were still in the front room). Harrell said yes, and led them to the back room, where appellant Hill was lying on a bed, wearing street clothes (including his shoes) and pretending to be asleep. Appellants matched the previous descriptions of the assailants,³ and Ellis identified himself as "Eddie"; Hill said his name was "Ronald Johnson," but the women in the apartment identified him as "Reggie." The appellants were then placed under arrest.

664 A.2d 350

Ellis's attorney then called Harrell as a witness. Defense counsel asked her, "on December 20th and 21st, 1991, who lived in your apartment apart from you on a permanent basis?" Harrell replied "Reggie and Eddie. They was like staying there, not really leaving living? but they were staying." After further questioning, however, she indicated that only her children stayed with her every day, and when asked by defense counsel who was staying with her "on a less than permanent basis from time to time," she replied "Larissa Carr, sometimes Reggie and sometimes Eddie." She also testified that the appellants were staying with her the night of the 20th through the 21st of December, and that they had stayed with her the previous night (i.e., the night of the 19th). She further testified that when the police entered, Ellis was on the couch holding one of her twin daughters and that Hill was awake in the back room, watching television.

On cross-examination, Harrell acknowledged that Ellis was living with his grandmother. She further testified:

Ellis was just spending the night down at my house, you know. He wasn't living with me, they would just spend the night sometimes.

The court repeated "Sometimes," and the witness replied "Uh-huh." The government then asked about Harrell's relationship with Ellis:

PROSECUTOR: Was Eddie your boy-friend?

HARRELL: Something like that, not really.

THE COURT: Something like that.

HARRELL: We were good friends.

At the close of the hearing, the trial court found that the appellants lacked standing to challenge the search of Harrell's apartment under the Fourth Amendment. The trial court found several facts⁴ that led to the conclusion that the appellants were not overnight guests and therefore did not have standing. First, the appellants had just entered the apartment minutes before the police arrived at approximately 3 a.m. The trial court also stated that it "totally disbelieved" Harrell's testimony that the appellants were overnight guests on the night in question. Moreover, the court found that Hill was not in the room in which he would have been sleeping had he been spending the night, and that he was feigning sleep while fully dressed and still wearing his shoes. Finally, the court noted that both appellants lived nearby. The trial court therefore concluded that appellants did not have standing:

These two individuals had no standing because ... they did not meet their burden of proof that they were overnight guests within the meaning of Minnesota versus Olson.

II.

Before turning to the merits, we address appellants' claim that the trial court erred in declining to admit Harrell's grand jury testimony when the defense attempted to introduce it after she had testified at the suppression hearing. That grand jury testimony was considerably more expansive on the frequency and duration of appellants' overnight stays at the apartment and on the relationship of appellant Hill to Larissa Carr, who sometimes lived in the apartment with Harrell. As we read the suppression hearing transcript, appellants' theory of admission was that of a prior consistent statement, and the trial court ruled on that basis.

Our review of this issue is limited, for "the trial judge has broad discretion with respect to the admission or exclusion of prior consistent statements." District of Columbia v. Bethel, 567 A.2d 1331, 1336 (D.C. 1990). Moreover, "ordinarily, prior out-of-court statements consistent with a witness's trial testimony are inadmissible in a criminal prosecution on the theory that repetition does not imply veracity." Prophet v. United States, 602 A.2d 1087, 1093 (D.C.1992). As

664 A.2d 351

we further explained in that case, "an exception to this rule permits the introduction of a prior consistent statement to rehabilitate a witness whose credibility has been undermined by a specific suggestion of fabrication or of a motive to lie." Id. (quotation marks omitted). However, "when used for a rehabilitative purpose, a prior consistent statement must be directed only at the particular impeachment that occurred and must support the particular testimony that has been impeached. Finally, the statement must have been made at a time when, considering all the circumstances, the witness did not have a motive to fabricate." Id. (citations omitted); see also Mitchell v. United States, 609 A.2d 1099, 1110 n. 20 (D.C.1992) ("Prior consistent statements are inadmissible except to meet the force of impeachment and to rebut a charge of recent fabrication.")

We see no basis to find an abuse here by the trial court of its broad discretion, particularly where it itself was the finder of fact. Although the government had attempted to impeach Harrell's testimony by alleging she was biased because of her friendship with Ellis, her prior consistent statement would not tend to show that she was unbiased, but only that she had previously testified in the same way.⁵ The trial court noted that its assessment of Harrell's veracity would not be swayed by the fact that Harrell had previously testified consistently with her suppression hearing testimony. Specifically, the court found that "if she wanted to lie about it, she could have lied back then just like now." He later remarked, "If I let it in, it would still be up to me as to whether to believe or disbelieve whatever the testimony is here or at the grand jury."⁶ See Williams v....