English v. District of Columbia

651 F.3d 1
CourtCourt of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
DecidedJuly 1, 2011
DocketNo. 09-7150
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 651 F.3d 1 (English v. District of Columbia) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
English v. District of Columbia, 651 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2011).

Opinion

Opinion for the Court by Circuit Judge ROGERS.

ROGERS, Circuit Judge:

A jury found for the District of Columbia government and a detective of the Metropolitan Police Department (“MPD”) (together, “the government”), in this case [3]*3alleging a section 19831 claim for the use of excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment and common law claims for assault and battery. Appellant, as personal representative of her brother’s estate, sued to recover damages for the shooting death of her brother by the detective, and she contends on appeal that she did not receive a fair trial. The principal issue concerns the district court’s rulings on the inadmissibility of portions of an internal MPD report regarding the altercation between the detective and appellant’s brother. A related issue involves a violation of the pretrial disclosure requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26.

Specifically, appellant contends that the district court’s evidentiary rulings allowed the government to maintain a “contrived” defense that the detective’s actions were constitutionally permissible while denying her the ability to refute it. Appellant’s Br. 29. We find no abuse of discretion by the district court. The record reveals that it properly excluded those parts of the report likely to confuse the jury and unfairly prejudice the government. We conclude that the government failed to comply with Rule 26(a)(2)(E) by not supplementing the medical expert’s disclosure to reflect an interview with the detective on which the expert intended to rely at trial, but that the violation was harmless and so the district court’s refusal to strike the expert’s testimony was not an abuse of discretion. Accordingly, because appellant’s other claims of error and her bias claim are unpersuasive, we affirm.

I.

According to Detective Kevin McConnell’s testimony at trial, late on the night of August 3, 2007 he was driving on Good Hope Road in Southeast Washington, D.C. when he observed an altercation inside a carry-out restaurant. As he pulled over to the curb, he saw a man pulling on the door separating the customer area from the kitchen. McConnell, dressed in plainclothes but displaying his badge on a chain around his neck, entered the carry-out and announced, “Police.” Tr. Nov. 16, 2009 p.m., at 85. The man — who turned out to be Jason L. Taft — walked up to McConnell “aggressively,” prompting McConnell to push Taft backwards. Id. at 86. Taft responded: “Why did you hit me, Officer?” Id. at 40. McConnell told him he was under arrest, after which a lengthy and violent struggle ensued during which the two men “went down to the ground several times,” id. at 87, took turns attempting to gouge each other’s eyes out, and exchanged bites. Then McConnell put Taft in a “Full Nelson” hold, from which Taft managed to break free, and Taft began to run for the door. McConnell attempted to grab him by the collar, but Taft ducked, and McConnell flipped over and hit his head on the concrete pavement. By this point — several minutes into the brawl— McConnell was “completely gassed out” and having trouble breathing. Id. at 88. With McConnell still on his knees, Taft approached, placed his arms around his neck, and told him, “I’m going to choke you out, motherfucker.” Id. at 89. Taft placed the full weight of his body on McConnell’s carotid arteries, restricting the flow of blood to his brain, and McConnell began to black out. As McConnell was trying to push Taft off him, McConnell pulled out his nine millimeter service pistol and pulled the trigger. McConnell could not hear anything besides a “click,” and his vision was coming and going. Id. He felt Taft’s weight lift off him, but he thought Taft was “still there,” id. at 90, and squeezed the trigger two more times.

[4]*4An internal MPD investigation by Sergeant Scott Gutherie of the Internal Affairs Bureau Force Investigations Branch concluded that the first shot fired by Detective McConnell — in the midst of a struggle over the gun — was “not only objectively reasonable, but was also in response to an actual attack that could have resulted in the death of Detective McConnell.” The report concluded, however, that the second and third shots — fired while Taft was running away — “were not fired during an actual or threatened attack,” but only during a “perceived attack.” FIT Rpt. 23-24. The report, called the Force Investigation Team Report or FIT Report, summarized findings based on review of statements by Detective McConnell and various witnesses who were present during part or all of the altercation, and the available physical evidence, electronic communications, and medical reports. Based on this review, the FIT Report concluded that at the end of an extended violent confrontation, Detective McConnell began to lose consciousness and shot Taft in the thigh. Taft — whose posthumous toxicology test revealed a bodily fluid alcohol content of 0.12 to 0.21% — then separated himself from Detective McConnell and ran toward the street, at which point Detective McConnell — still disoriented — fired two shots, one of them missing, the other striking Taft in the back. Taft later died from this second gunshot wound. Accordingly, the FIT Report concluded that the two shots, while perhaps “objectively reasonable,” violated an MPD policy allowing the use of deadly force only during an “actual or threatened attack ■ that is imminent.” Id. at 23; see MPD General Order 901.07:V:D. The Use of Force Review Board, to whom Sergeant Gutherie submitted his findings, declined to adopt them and concluded that all three shots were justified. But Inspector Dierdre Porter, the director of MPD’s Disciplinary Review Branch, disagreed with the Board and wrote a referral letter to the assistant chief of MPD’s Professional Development Bureau recommending the termination of Detective McConnell’s employment in view of his policy violation with respect to the use of deadly force against Taft; a final decision on that recommendation was pending at the time of trial.

Prior to trial, the government moved to exclude both the FIT Report and Inspector Porter’s letter. During an in limine hearing on the motion, the district court heard testimony from Sergeant Gutherie and Inspector Porter about the procedures and conclusions of the use of force investigation and recommendations. The district court ruled that it would not allow into evidence either the FIT Report or Inspector Porter’s letter recommending Detective McConnell’s termination, reasoning that the witness statement summaries would not “tell[ ] any different story than the evidence we’re going to hear in this courtroom about exactly what happened,” and because the conclusions about the policy violation were “not involved with deciding the constitutional question of the reasonableness of force.” Tr. Nov. 16, 2009 a.m., at 27. The district court explained that although the FIT Report might “at some minimal level be admissible,” its admission would be “hedged about with jury instructions,” would likely cause confusion between the issues before the jury and those before the MPD’s internal disciplinary trial board, and would result in a “trial within a trial about the whole District of Columbia disciplinary system.” Id. at 28. Appellant could, nonetheless, seek to have parts of the FIT Report admitted into evidence if the door were opened “by some argument or some evidence that is used in the trial.” Id.

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651 F.3d 1, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/english-v-district-of-columbia-cadc-2011.