A D.C. Court of Appeals has reversed a man’s conviction connected to a shooting in which the two victims did not identify the man as the shooter in his first trial but did in his second one.
A three-judge panel overturned Darryl Woodard’s conviction on a conspiracy charge, in an opinion issued Thursday.
Woodard and Edward McCoy were charged in connection with a 2002 shooting in which shots were fired from one car into another in the Third Street Tunnel.
At Woodard and McCoy’s first trial, the victims said they did not see Woodard with a gun, but one of the victims, Michael Cary, said he saw McCoy shooting out of the sunroof of a vehicle. A jury convicted both Woodard and McCoy of conspiracy and assault with a dangerous weapon, but the appeals court overturned Woodard’s convictions.
At Woodard’s retrial, evidence was presented that Cary saw Woodard in the passenger seat of the vehicle firing at him, the opinion stated. When asked why he had previously said he didn’t know whether Woodard had shot him, Cary said “I don’t know.”
The other victim, Ebony Byrd, said she saw Woodard firing out of the sunroof. When asked about her earlier testimony, she said “I didn’t want to tell you nothing because I felt threatened for my life so I didn’t say — I was told not to say nothing. My mother told me don’t say nothing.”
In closing arguments, the defense said there was nothing to support the victim’s claim of being threatened.
A prosecutor’s rebuttal argument, however, implied that Cary and Byrd held back information because they were afraid of identifying the shooter while he was present, according to the appeals ruling. Jurors convicted Woodard of conspiracy, though they couldn’t agree on the assault with a dangerous weapon charge.
A three-judge panel stated the jury could have reasonably deduced from the prosecutor’s comments that in the first trial, Cary had identified no one as the shooter face to face, when in fact he had identified McCoy while he was there.
The appeals court decision also said the trial judge made a mistake by not allowing the defense to introduce additional evidence or giving the jury a note and instruction about McCoy’s presence at the first trial.
“We cannot exclude the reasonable and realistic likelihood that the misleading argument as to Cary’s credibility affected the jury’s decision to convict,” the decision stated.
