U.S. v. Edmonds

• Decision Date: 04 December 1975
• Docket Number: No. 72-1988,72-1988
• Citation: 524 F.2d 62,173 U.S.App.D.C. 241
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. Earlie EDMONDS, Jr., also known as Earlie Edmund, Jr., Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

Page 62

524 F.2d 62

173 U.S.App.D.C. 241

UNITED STATES of America v. Earlie EDMONDS, Jr., also known as Earlie Edmund, Jr., Appellant.

No. 72-1988.

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

Submitted Without Argument May 22, 1973.

Decided Dec. 4, 1975.

John M. Steadman and Sherman L. Cohn, Attys., Washington, D.C., and Warren E. Connelly and Alan D. Gordon, Student Counsel, were on the brief for appellant.

Harold H. Titus, Jr., U. S. Atty., at the time the brief was filed, and John A. Terry, Brian W. Shaughnessy and Julius A. Johnson, Asst. U. S. Attys., were on the brief for appellee.

Before ROBINSON and WILKEY, Circuit Judges, and KAUFMAN, ^* United States District Judge for the District of Maryland.

SPOTTSWOOD W. ROBINSON, III, Circuit Judge:

Appealing from jury-trial convictions of armed rape ¹ and assault with a dangerous weapon, ² appellant contends solely, and on constitutional grounds principally, that the District Court erred in admitting, for purposes of impeaching his testimony, evidence of his conviction at age of 16 of a burglary allegedly committed in North Carolina. ³ The appeal has been successively held in abeyance pending our disposition of a series of other cases presenting substantially the same constitutional arguments, ⁴ and our decision in the last group of those cases has stripped appellant of his federal claims. ⁵ Remaining to be answered, however, is the question whether the North Carolina conviction is encompassed by the statute authorizing conviction-impeachment in trials of District of Columbia offenses. ⁶ We hold that it is. ⁷

Shortly before appellant's rape trial began, the prosecutor stated that should appellant testify, he intended to introduce the burglary conviction in an effort to impeach. Over objection by defense counsel, ⁸ the trial judge held that the conviction might be offered to that end. ⁹ Thereafter, early on direct examination, appellant acknowledged that he had been so convicted, ¹⁰ explaining his youthfulness and other surrounding circumstances, and later the judge instructed the jury as to the limited purpose which that information permissibly could serve. ¹¹ Appellant now complains that the ruling prompting this line of testimony was erroneous because "North Carolina . . . failed to provide the kind of enlightened treatment of juveniles which Congress intended would exist in the District of Columbia before impeachment by means of prior convictions would be permitted. . . ." ¹² Put somewhat differently, appellant, as a 16-year-old, might not have been subjected to criminal prosecution in the District as an adult, ¹³ and thus might have been spared the conviction utilized for impeachment in this case. While this contrast between District and North Carolina procedure cannot be doubted, ¹⁴ we find the conclusion drawn therefrom unacceptable.

All charges on which appellant was standing trial were grounded on provisions of the District of Columbia Code. ¹⁵ Consequently, resort to the District's impeachment statute was entirely in order. ¹⁶ The statute enables impeachment of a witness by proof that he "has been convicted of a criminal offense" meeting stated conditions. ¹⁷ Indisputably, the conviction in question satisfied the statutory specifications unless exempted by the age-based difference in treatment of juveniles accused of crime in the District and North Carolina, respectively. ¹⁸ We are satisfied that the dissimilarity cannot serve to remove the North Carolina conviction from the ambit of the District statute.

To be sure, had the episode leading to the conviction transpired in the District, the ruling on its admissibility could have been diametrically opposite. Because appellant was only 16 years old, ¹⁹ he could not have been tried in the District as an adult unless juvenile jurisdiction over him was waived. ²⁰ A waiver would have involved a discretionary determination, upon "full investigation," that the criminal process should be substituted for juvenile proceedings and disposition. ²¹ Of course, such a determination as to appellant may or may not have been made, and if not the juvenile disposition could not have been used for impeachment. ²² We are told that by statute in force in North Carolina, when the burglary prosecution occurred, persons 14 years or older who are charged with felonies punishable by more than ten years' imprisonment must be prosecuted as adults. ²³ Since, as appears, the maximum punishment for the burglary for which appellant was indicted exceeded the ten-year limit, ²⁴ treatment as an adult was mandatory.

Nonetheless, the trial judge ruled correctly on the Government's conditional proffer of the North Carolina conviction as a factor reflecting adversely on appellant's credibility. For nearly three-quarters of a century, Congress has regulated conviction-impeachment in the District with relatively little change in language denoting the types of convictions that might be employed for that purpose. ²⁵ During the long era when the critical legislative expression was "convicted of crime," ²⁶ this court indulged the statutory words a range consistent with the aims and ends of witness-impeachment. Thus it has frequently been held that the "crime" to which the statute referred included not just felonies ²⁷ but also misdemeanors capable of assisting an evaluation of truthtelling, ²⁸ despite the readier assimilation of "felony" with "crime." ²⁹ In like vein, we have left untouched impeachments by conviction under the Federal Youth Corrections Act, ³⁰ despite the similarity of its goals with those of juvenile legislation. ³¹ On the other hand, the very nature of witness-impeachment has outlawed some low-value misdemeanor convictions, ³² as well as some low-level penal adjudications, ³³ although in a sense all could be deemed species of "crime."

By our appraisal, a construction of the impeachment statute which would exclude use of his North Carolina burglary conviction is wholly unwarranted. At the time of the rape trial, the statute permitted, as it now does, impeachment by "evidence that the witness has been convicted of a criminal offense." ³⁴ The legislative history of the current text reveals that the shift in language from "crime" ³⁵ to "criminal offense" was intended, not to constrict, but to broaden the category of convictions usable under the statute. ³⁶ And we have construed even the narrower word "crime" as embracing adult convictions of persons who but for waiver would have been proceeded against only as juveniles. In Luck v. United States, ³⁷ the prosecutor was allowed, over objection, to elicit from the accused on cross-examination that he had previously pleaded guilty to grand larceny. The basis of the objection was that the accused was a juvenile at the time of the larceny, on account of which it was argued that the conviction could not be introduced for impeachment. Juvenile jurisdiction over the accused had been waived as to the larceny charge, however, and he had been tried as an adult in the District Court and sentenced under the Youth Corrections Act. In sustaining the conviction, we said:

Appellant relies in this regard upon the (statutory) provisions which are designed to relieve proceedings in the Juvenile Court ³⁸ from the consequences which customarily accompany conviction of crime in a tribunal of general jurisdiction. The Government points out, however, that that statute is in terms addressed to adjudications made by the Juvenile Court in the exercise of its jurisdiction, and that it has no application when that jurisdiction has been expressly waived by the Juvenile Court. Here, appellant was waived out of the jurisdiction of the Juvenile Court, and the District Court was authorized to, and did, try and sentence him as an adult. Such a conviction, so it is said, carries with it the usual incidents, including subsequent exposure to impeachment by reason of the earlier conviction authorized by (the impeachment statute).

We agree with the Government to this extent, namely, that we find no clear purpose on the part of Congress to withdraw from the reach of this last-mentioned statute convictions of juveniles in the District Court as adults following upon waivers of jurisdiction by the Juvenile Court. Just as more severe sentencing provisions are available for the punishment of those who are waived, so does conviction entail the consequence that the Government may seek to use it to attack credibility in a later proceeding. Such harsher consequences are always arguments against the wisdom of waiver in an individual case, but their very persuasiveness for this purpose rests upon the existence of such consequences. ³⁹

That construction settles the issue here. No more under the present statute than under its forerunner can we discern a congressional purpose to exclude adult convictions of waived juveniles. ⁴⁰ So, had the questioned conviction occurred in the District of Columbia after a waiver, it could have done service as impeachment material notwithstanding appellant's age at the time of the offense. We perceive no difference in legal result from the fact that the adult conviction involved in this case emanates from another jurisdiction in which at that age no waiver was required. ⁴¹ The statutory text suggests none, ⁴² and its legislative history discloses none. ⁴³ We hold that there is none. ⁴⁴

Appellant's conviction of assault with a dangerous weapon is vacated, ⁴⁵ and as thus modified the judgment appealed from is affirmed.

So ordered.

* Sitting by designation pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 292(d) (1970).

1 D.C.Code §§ 22-2801, 22-3202(a) (1973).

2 D.C.Code § 22-502 (1973). See note 7 Infra.

3 At trial, appellant testified that he was 14 years old when the burglary occurred. In their brief on appeal, however, his counsel inform us that appellant was mistaken in that regard, and that he was 15 at the time of the burglary and 16 when convicted on a plea of guilty entered on advice of cou...