Prosecutors Charged With Misconduct In D.C.

The District of Columbia Disciplinary Counsel has filed charges alleging that two Assistant United States Attorneys violated multiple ethics rules in handling Brady evidence involving a government witness.

The Court of Appeals reversed the conviction in a 76-page opinion issued on July 3, 2014.

Both [defendants]  were charged in connection with an incident at the D.C. Jail in which a group of men attacked a fellow inmate, Deon Spencer, and a corrections officer who came to that inmate‟s aid, Sergeant Charles White. The victims could not identify Mr. Morton and Mr. Vaughn; but the incident was recorded by multiple cameras, and, although these recordings were not exactly movie-quality, two corrections officers said they could identify Mr. Morton and Mr. Vaughn in the footage. The government presented the testimony of these corrections officers in conjunction with the recordings to the jury, and the jury convicted. But unbeknownst to the defendants, one of these identifying witnesses, introduced by the government as “Officer” Angelo Childs, had a significant credibility issue.

Six months earlier, Officer Childs had filed reports accusing a different inmate (“Inmate A”) of assault, thereby providing a potential justification for his use of a chemical agent on the inmate. His accusations were investigated by the Department of Corrections (DOC) Office of Internal Affairs (OIA). The DOC OIA determined in a “Final Report,” that, among other things, video footage of this incident did not show the alleged inmate assault.

The OIA Officer who wrote the OIA Final Report about the Inmate A incident stated in a sworn affidavit (submitted by the government during post-trial proceedings in this case) that he sent the OIA Final Report to the DOC Office of the Director, the entity in charge of disciplinary action, and he was later informed that the DOC Office of the Director demoted Officer Childs from Lieutenant to Sergeant after it received the report. In addition, this OIA Officer, who also assisted the government in the investigation of the Spencer-White attacks, stated in his affidavit that he “notified the U.S. Attorney‟s Office for the District of Columbia of the Investigative Report concerning Lieutenant Childs and his subsequent demotion” on September 15, 2009, approximately two months before Mr. Vaughn and Mr. Morton‟s trial.

The government did not disclose this favorable impeaching information to the defense. Instead, a week before trial, the government filed a motion in limine to preclude the defense from questioning Officer Childs about the misconduct detailed in the OIA Final Report. In that motion, the government provided a “summary” of the OIA Final Report that gave no indication that the OIA had investigated a potentially false allegation of an inmate assault by Officer Childs and others and determined that this allegation was false; the government also did not reveal Officer Childs‟s resulting demotion. Rather, the government‟s summary focused exclusively on only a portion of the OIA Final Report that considered whether Officer Childs (1) had properly used a chemical agent on the accused inmate, who the government (quoting the very portion of Officer Childs‟s Incident Report the OIA had discredited) indicated had been acting aggressively, and (2) had falsely indicated in a report that the inmate was unrestrained. Portraying this investigation with skepticism, the government argued that it had little to do with Officer Childs‟s credibility because the OIA had determined Officer Childs had only “suggest[ed]” that the inmate was unrestrained.

The difference between the government‟s summary of the OIA investigation and the actual OIA Final Report almost certainly would have come to light had the government provided the trial court with the full copy. It did not. Along with its summary, the government submitted to the trial court ex parte what it said was the OIA Final Report, but in fact was only the first five pages of the ten-page report (and included none of the documents in the appendix, 76 pages in all). The first five pages of the OIA Final Report contain “background” information, investigative notes, and a full reproduction of Officer Childs‟s account of an inmate assault in his Incident Report without any indication that that account was being questioned; the findings adverse to Officer Childs begin on the sixth page.

The court found a Brady violation that prejudiced one of the two defendants

Based on the record before us, whether the government had an obligation to accurately and completely disclose the contents of the OIA Final Report and the DOC‟s consequent decision to demote Officer Childs should not have been a hard call for the government. And had the defense been able to impeach Officer Childs with the DOC‟s determination of his prior false reporting and consequent demotion, there is at least a reasonable probability that the jury would have weighed Officer Childs‟s testimony and the government‟s case differently. This concludes our materiality analysis for Mr. Morton. But for Mr. Vaughn, there is a coda. The suppressed impeachment evidence for Officer Childs was material only to the extent that Mr. Vaughn contested Officer Childs‟s identification. But Mr. Vaughn submitted a post-trial affidavit in which he admitted that he was the inmate Officer Childs had identified him to be and argued only that his actions had been misinterpreted—that he had not pushed Sergeant White; he had been trying to help him. This admission negates our materiality determination. In light of Mr. Vaughn‟s affidavit, which the government would be free to use as a party admission, we see little chance of a different result were Mr. Vaughn to be given a new trial. Thus, the government‟s Brady violation is reversible only with respect to Mr. Morton.

Associate Judge Easterly authored the court’s opinion. 

The junior charged attorney is admitted in Tennessee and was practicing before the D.C. courts pursuant to local rules.  (Mike Frisch)