Edwards v. United States

483 A.2d 682, 1984 D.C. App. LEXIS 534

• Court: District of Columbia Court of Appeals
• Decided: November 8, 1984
• Docket: 82-1592
• Status: Published

Opinions

NEBEKER, Associate Judge:

Convicted by a jury of possession of a controlled substance, heroin, D.C.Code § 33-541(a) (Supp.1984) appellant was sentenced to a one year term, suspended, and two years of probation. His appeal now before us charges error in regard to the remedy administered by the trial court when a government witness failed to produce, under 18 U.S.C. § 3500 (1982), notes made during the course of apprehending the appellant, and error in regard to the admission of certain testimony from an expert witness. We perceive no error and affirm.

I

According to testimony from prosecution witnesses, Officer Allen, posing as a potential narcotics purchaser, was approached by Francis Forman, one of appellant’s code-fendants. Forman offered for sale and Allen expressed interest in the purchase of narcotics. Negotiations ensued, climaxed by an exchange of thirty-nine dollars for one “quarter” (teaspoon) of white powder, understood by seller and buyer to be heroin. In the process of the negotiations and sale, Officer Allen met appellant and all three of his codefendants. Directly after Allen and the four parted company, Allen broadcasted a description of each codefend-ant¹ to an arrest team. At the receiving end of the broadcast, Officer Hassell, a member of the arrest team, jotted down notes on the descriptions. The three code-fendants were apprehended directly thereafter. Appellant was arrested within one half hour of the sale. Officer Allen, who had met up with the arrest team after they apprehended the three codefendants, saw appellant walking on the street, identified appellant to the team and directed the team to arrest him. With the arrests, the police seized from appellant’s codefendants, inter alia, thirty-nine dollars, whose serial numbers matched those of the bills held by Officer Allen prior to the sale, one packet of white powder, later tested to contain heroin, and nine other packets of white powder, also later tested to show heroin content.

Several prosecution witnesses were called at trial. Salient for our purposes, Officer Hassell testified but her testimony was stricken from the record, upon the request of defense counsel for appellant and codefendant Middleton,² because she was unable to produce at trial the notes she had made before the apprehension of the defendants. Also at trial, testimony was admitted from two expert witnesses regarding, inter alia, the manner in which seized evidence, suspected of being a controlled substance, is safeguarded from tampering between the time of seizure and that of trial, and the manner of testing such substances to determine constituent parts, particularly heroin.

II

Appellant first challenges the sanctions imposed by the trial court for the violation by the government of 18 U.S.C. § 3500 (1982) (the so-called Jencks Act), i.e.: Officer Hassell’s failure to produce her notes. At trial she testified that she heard Officer Allen’s broadcast description and made some notes based on it. Her testimony then turned to the identification of one of the codefendants, Miss Middleton. At this time counsel for codefendant For-man objected. The trial court conducted a Jencks hearing, with the jury excused. As a result of the hearing and with the concurrence of appellant’s counsel, the trial court ruled that Officer Hassell’s notes were Jencks material, failure to produce them at trial constituted gross negligence, and, pursuant to requests initiated by counsel for codefendant Middleton, the following sanctions were ordered: striking all of Officer Hassell’s testimony regarding appellant’s identification; and giving the jury the missing evidence instruction.

Appellant, having agreed with the trial court’s findings that the notes were Jencks material and that gross negligence was committed, now charges that the appropriate sanction for this Jencks Act violation was to go beyond his request at trial and strike Officer Allen’s testimony. Appellant further argues that the sanctions imposed by the trial court were inadequate and constituted an abuse of the court’s exercise of discretion, under United States v. Jackson, 450 A.2d 419, 427 (D.C.1982) (per curiam). Although the government suggests that there is a lack of support in the trial record for the findings regarding whether the notes were Jencks material and whether their loss was a result of gross negligence,³ its primary argument is that the trial court properly exercised its broad discretion in fashioning the sanction imposed.

Whatever force is carried by appellant’s abuse of discretion argument, it is overcome by his failure to request at trial the sanction he now seeks on appeal. Trial counsel for codefendant Chichester asked for very broad sanctions: the Jencks violations warranted dismissal of all the defendants’ cases. Counsel for appellant did not join in that position and later stated no objection to or dissatisfaction with the sanctions as they were announced to the defendants.

The law is replete with procedural devices that require timely assertions by litigants. E.g., Super.Ct.Crim.R. 12. These requirements are designed to avail the court of the parties’ positions and reasoning before rulings are made and possible harm results, see United States v. Miranda, 593 F.2d 590, 594 (5th Cir.1979), while these prods also, it is hoped, minimize “sandbagging.” Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 89, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 2507, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977). In this case appellant’s counsel responded by moving only to strike Officer Hassell’s testimony, interestingly in juxtaposition to another counsel’s very drastic motion to dismiss. Moreover, assuming, arguendo, that Officer Allen’s testimony with regard to the broadcast identification of appellant should have been stricken, any such error was harmless. See United States v. Bundy, 153 U.S.App.D.C. 191, 192, 472 F.2d 1266, 1267 (1972); Ninth Annual Review of Criminal Procedure, 68 Geo.L.J. 279, 613 n. 2630 (1979). Officer Allen’s identification of the appellant at his arrest was made independent of any knowledge by Allen of Officer Hassell’s notes, thus rendering harmless any possible error. Hardy v. United States, 316 A.2d 867, 870-71 (D.C.1974); Jones v. United States, 343 A.2d 346, 352-53 (D.C.1975).

Ill

Appellant also contests the admission of testimony from an expert witness, Caroline Cerini, a forensic chemist from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Cerini was certified by the trial court as an expert witness. She testified that she conducted several tests on the powder, notably a gas chromatography mass spectrometry analysis. The graphic results of this analysis were compared with standard graphs she commonly used to identify heroin. From this testing, she concluded that the powder sold contained 5.8 percent pure heroin and the powder seized from a codefendant’s car contained 6.0 percent heroin. Appellant argues that since the standard charts were not introduced into evidence, her opinion was based on hearsay, or alternatively, it lacked the requisite factual basis in the evidence. The short answer to appellant’s charge in this regard is found in Jenkins v. United States, 113 U.S.App.D.C. 300, 304, 307 F.2d 637, 641 (1962), which holds that reports customarily relied upon by experts but not entered into evidence can lay the foundation for an expert’s testimony. See Brown v. United States, 126 U.S.App.D.C. 134, 142, 375 F.2d 310, 318 (1966), cert. denied, 388 U.S. 915, 87 S.Ct. 2133, 19 L.Ed.2d 1359 (1967); Fed.R.Evid. 703. Cf. Lee v. United States, 383 A.2d 360, 362 (D.C.1978) (expert testimony not stricken despite minimal factual basis in the record). - Moreover, we are aware of our deferential standard on review regarding trial court expert testimony rulings. Ibn-Tamas v. United States, 407 A.2d 626, 632 (D.C.1979). We see no error in this regard.

We perceive no error by the trial court and, accordingly, affirm.

Affirmed.

1 . At trial Allen remembered having described the appellant as wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans; it was June 21, 1982.

2 . The jury was also instructed with the following standard missing evidence instruction:

The following instruction is given to you with respect to missing witness or missing evidence. It relates to the Government’s failure to produce Officer Hazel's [sic] notes, and to Defendant Middleton’s failure to produce either a witness or prescription regarding the Valium.

If evidence material to, or a witness who would have given material testimony on an issue in this case was peculiarly within the power of one party to produce but was not produced or called by that party, and its absence has not been sufficiently accounted for or explained, then you may, if you deem it appropriate, infer that the evidence or testimony would have been unfavorable to the party who failed to produce it or call the witness. However, no such inference should be drawn by you with regard to evidence which, or a witness who, was equally within the power of either party to produce, or whose testimony would have been merely cumulative or immaterial. [TR Oct. 12, 1982 at pp. 66-67; see Criminal Jury Instructions for the District of Columbia, No. 2.41 (3d ed. 1978).]

3 . From our review of the record, it appears that the trial court may have erred in finding the notes were Jencks material. Moore v. United States, 353 A.2d 16, 18 (D.C.1976) ("must be a continuous, narrative recording rather than mere selective notations or excerpts"); see Strickland v. United States, 389 A.2d 1325, 1328-29 (D.C.1978), cert. denied, 440 U.S. 926, 99 S.Ct. 1258, 59 L.Ed.2d 481 (1979); Fields v. United States, 368 A.2d 537, 542 (D.C.1977); United States v. Anderson, 366 A.2d 1098, 1109 (D.C.1976). But cf. United States v. Jackson, supra, 450 A.2d at 425 ("mere fact that the notes are ‘rough’ does not defeat a Jencks claim"; inquiry should focus on content and circumstances of the writing). We need not resolve that issue, however.