Workman v. United States

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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS
No. 18-CF-1218
QUINTON WORKMAN, APPELLANT,
v.
UNITED STATES, APPELLEE.
Appeal from the Superior Court
of the District of Columbia
(CF2-14787-15)
(Hon. Ronna L. Beck, Trial Judge)
(Argued April 13, 2021 Decided July 29, 2021)
William Collins, Public Defender Service, with whom Samia Fam and Jaclyn
S. Frankfurt, Public Defender Service, were on the briefs, for appellant.
Ann M. Carroll, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Michael
Sherwin, Acting United States Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and Elizabeth
Trosman and John P. Mannarino, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the
brief, for appellee.
Before GLICKMAN, THOMPSON, and MCLEESE, Associate Judges.
MCLEESE, Associate Judge: Appellant Quinton Workman challenges his
convictions for firearm offenses, arguing that the trial court erroneously permitted
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the United States to prosecute him on a second indictment after the first indictment
was dismissed without prejudice. We affirm.
I.
Except as indicated, the following appears to be undisputed. Police officers
arrested Mr. Workman in October 2015 and charged him with offenses including
unlawful possession of a firearm. The police swabbed both the firearm and Mr.
Workman’s cheek for DNA. Mr. Workman was preventively detained in this case
pending trial, and he also was detained in a separate case in which he had been on
parole at the time of his arrest in this case.
Mr. Workman’s trial was initially scheduled for early March 2016, but the
originally assigned prosecutor did not submit the DNA evidence for testing until
early February 2016. A newly assigned prosecutor requested a continuance to
complete DNA testing, but the trial court denied that request. The prosecutor asked
the lab to expedite the DNA testing. Two days before the scheduled trial date, the
prosecutor received the DNA results and turned them over to the defense. Mr.
Workman filed a motion to exclude the DNA results on the ground that the United
States had failed to disclose the DNA results to Mr. Workman in a timely manner.
3
At a hearing on the scheduled trial date, the prosecutor stated that the United
States was ready to proceed, with the caveat that some property would arrive later
that day. The trial court granted the motion to exclude the DNA evidence, because
Mr. Workman would be unduly prejudiced by having to choose “between remaining
detained and securing an expert to look at the government’s analysis or going
forward to trial without being prepared to meet the expert’s testimony.”
Following that evidentiary ruling, the trial court asked if the United States
remained ready to proceed. The prosecutor indicated that the United States was no
longer ready to proceed, “because of the lack of property and because of the DNA
evidence not being introduced.” At the trial court’s invitation, defense counsel
moved to dismiss the case for want of prosecution. Defense counsel did not ask that
the dismissal be with prejudice, which would have barred further prosecution.
United States v. Stephenson, 891 A.2d 1076, 1082 (D.C. 2006). To the contrary,
defense counsel appeared to acknowledge that Mr. Workman would likely be
reindicted, stating, “I do think the government is announcing not ready to circumvent
the Court’s order precluding the expert testimony.” The trial court dismissed the
indictment without prejudice, and defense counsel said, “Thank you, Your Honor.”
After the dismissal, Mr. Workman was released in the present case, but he initially
4
remained in detention in his other case pending resolution of his parole status. He
was later released in the other case.
After the United States reindicted Mr. Workman, Mr. Workman filed a motion
to dismiss the second indictment with prejudice, arguing that the United States was
harassing him by circumventing the trial court’s orders denying a continuance and
excluding the DNA evidence. The trial court denied the motion. The trial court
explained that, at the time of the original dismissal without prejudice, the United
States had the DNA evidence in hand, but the trial court had determined that it would
be unduly prejudicial to continue to hold Mr. Workman and require him to choose
between a delay in the trial or proceeding to trial without adequate time to respond
to the DNA evidence. The trial court further found that the United States had not
acted in bad faith. The trial court also noted that the consequence of its initial
dismissal had been that Mr. Workman was released in the present case. When
defense counsel pointed out that Mr. Workman had initially remained detained in
the parole matter, the trial court stated that it had no control over the parole matter.
At trial, the United States introduced evidence that Mr. Workman was stopped
for driving a car with stolen tags; that a revolver was in the car’s center console; that
Mr. Workman could not be excluded as a source of DNA on the revolver; and that
5
the chance of randomly selecting an unrelated person who could not be so excluded
was at most one in twenty-two quintillion. The parties stipulated that Mr. Workman
had a prior conviction for an offense punishable by more than a year of
imprisonment, did not have a license to carry a pistol in the District of Columbia,
and had no valid firearm registration in the District of Columbia. The jury found
Mr. Workman guilty of two firearm offenses.
II.
Super. Ct. Crim. R. 48(a)(2) requires leave of the court before the government
may dismiss an indictment. Relying on that provision, Mr. Workman argues that the
trial court erred in allowing the United States to prosecute him under the second
indictment. The United States argues, however, that Rule 48(a)(2) does not apply,
because that rule applies to government motions to dismiss, and this case involves
defense motions to dismiss. Mr. Workman responds by arguing that the United
States failed to preserve this point in the trial court and that, in any event, the United
States in effect moved to dismiss on the original trial date, by declaring that it was
not ready to proceed with trial. We need not decide the latter two issues. Instead,
we assume without deciding that this case is governed by Rule 48(a)(2). We
similarly assume that Mr. Workman adequately preserved an objection in the trial
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court, although Mr. Workman moved for dismissal of the original indictment
without explicitly asking that the dismissal be with prejudice and did not explicitly
object at the time to dismissal without prejudice.
Given those assumptions, it appears to be undisputed that we review the trial
court’s ruling for abuse of discretion. Cf., e.g., Rinaldi v. United States, 434 U.S.
22, 32 (1977) (per curiam) (reviewing trial-court ruling under Fed. R. Crim. P. 48(a)
for abuse of discretion); Martin v. Santorini Cap., LLC, 236 A.3d 386, 393 n.3 (D.C.
2020) (when interpreting local rule, court looks to federal decisions interpreting
similar federal rule for guidance); Ferrell v. United States, 990 A.2d 1015, 1020 n.4
(D.C. 2010) (relying on federal cases interpreting Fed. R. Crim. P. 48(a), because
“federal Rule 48(a) functions in a manner similar to our local rule”). We see no
abuse of discretion in this case.
As previously noted, Rule 48(a)(2) permits the government to dismiss an
indictment with leave of the court. “Such a dismissal is without prejudice unless
otherwise stated.” Super. Ct. Crim. R. 48(a)(2). Ordinarily, the government can
reindict the defendant after a dismissal without prejudice. E.g., United States v.
Hector, 298 A.2d 504, 504-05 (D.C. 1972). The trial court has the responsibility,
however, to prevent dismissals without prejudice and subsequent reindictments that
7
constitute “harassment” of a defendant. United States v. Kennedy, 220 A.2d 322,
323 (D.C. 1966); see also, e.g., 3B Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal
Practice and Procedure § 801 (4th ed. 2021) (under Fed. R. Crim. P. 48(a), trial
court should deny motion to dismiss without prejudice if motion is made for
“improper purpose, such as harassment of the defendant”).
A.
Mr. Workman argues for a flat rule that the government engages in
impermissible harassment any time it dismisses an indictment in the hope of later
reindicting the defendant under more favorable circumstances. There is support for
that view. See, e.g., United States v. Pitts, 331 F.R.D. 199, 204 (D.D.C. 2019)
(“[T]he government is not free to indict, dismiss, and reindict solely to achieve a
more favorable prosecutorial posture.”); cf. Kennedy, 220 A.2d at 323 (stating
generally that “[t]he purpose of Rule 48(a) was to prevent the harassment of a
defendant caused by charging, dismissing and recharging him without placing him
in jeopardy”). For several reasons, however, we conclude that the flat rule advocated
by Mr. Workman would be both unwarranted and contrary to the weight of authority.
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First, as a textual matter, Rule 48(a)(2) provides that dismissals on a
government motion will be without prejudice unless the trial court states otherwise.
Super. Ct. Crim. R. 48(a)(2) (“Such a dismissal is without prejudice unless otherwise
stated.”). That default seems incompatible with Mr. Workman’s position that the
government is flatly barred from dismissing a case without prejudice in the hope of
possibly resuming prosecution later under more favorable circumstances.
Second, it therefore should not be surprising that decisions of this court and
many other courts have frequently used much narrower language when describing
the kinds of government dismissals that should be prohibited under Rule 48(a). See,
e.g., Ferrell, 990 A.2d at 1015 n.4 (citing with approval case explaining that “the
principal purpose of the leave of court requirement of Fed. R. Crim. P. 48(a) is to
protect a defendant from the government’s harassing him by repeatedly filing
charges and then dismissing them before they are adjudicated”) (emphasis added and
internal quotation marks omitted); District of Columbia v. Weams, 208 A.2d 617,
618 (D.C. 1965) (prosecutor may not dismiss information “in a manner that is
scandalous, corrupt, or capricious and vexatiously repetitious”) (internal quotation
marks omitted); United States v. Fokker Servs. B.V., 818 F.3d 733, 742 (D.C. Cir.
2016) (“A court thus reviews the prosecution’s motion under Rule 48(a) primarily
to guard against the prospect that dismissal is part of a scheme of prosecutorial
9
harassment of the defendant through repeated efforts to bring—and then dismiss—
charges.”) (internal quotation marks omitted); United States v. Jones, 664 F.3d 966,
973 (5th Cir. 2011) (dismissal permitted unless prosecutor is motivated by
considerations “clearly contrary to manifest public interest”; trial court must start
with presumption of good faith) (internal quotation marks omitted); United States v.
Palomares, 119 F.3d 556, 558 (7th Cir. 1997) (“key factors” in evaluating Rule 48(a)
motion to dismiss are “government’s reasons and good faith”).
Third, focusing on outcomes rather than language, a number of appellate
decisions have upheld trial-court orders refusing to dismiss reindictments with
prejudice in circumstances that would be foreclosed under the flat rule that Mr.
Workman advocates. See, e.g., Jones, 664 F.3d at 973 (trial court did not abuse its
discretion by refusing to dismiss reindictment where United States dismissed
original indictment without prejudice in order to add other defendants and charges,
and to move prosecution to different division nearer to location of charged offenses);
United States v. Hayden, 860 F.2d 1483, 1488 (9th Cir. 1988) (trial court did not
abuse discretion in refusing to dismiss reindictment with prejudice where United
States dismissed original indictment without prejudice in order to investigate
additional information provided by cooperating witness and potentially bring
additional charges against defendant); United States v. Feldhacker, 849 F.2d 293,
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295 (8th Cir. 1988) (trial court did not abuse discretion in refusing to dismiss
reindictment with prejudice where United States dismissed original indictment
without prejudice after trial court suppressed evidence, weakening United States’s
case); United States v. Strayer, 846 F.2d 1262, 1264-66 (10th Cir. 1988) (trial court
did not abuse discretion in refusing to dismiss reindictment with prejudice where
United States dismissed original indictment without prejudice in order to fix defects
in indictment); cf. United States v. Goodson, 204 F.3d 508, 512-16 (4th Cir. 2000)
(where United States was unprepared for trial due to absence of essential witness,
trial court abused discretion by denying United States’s motion to dismiss under
Rule 48(a) and instead granting defendant’s motion to dismiss with prejudice; trial
court was required to grant United States’s motion in absence of bad faith, which
was not present).
In sum, we hold that the second indictment in this case was not precluded
simply because, at the time of the dismissal of the original indictment without
prejudice, the United States hoped to prosecute Mr. Workman later under more
favorable circumstances.
Turning to the particular circumstances of this case, we conclude that the trial
court exercised its discretion permissibly. We first consider the trial court’s initial
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decision to grant a dismissal without prejudice. The United States had provided Mr.
Workman with critical DNA evidence just before trial. Appropriately, the trial court
was unwilling to require Mr. Workman to start trial without having an adequate
opportunity to respond to that DNA evidence. The trial court also understandably
was reluctant to grant the United States’s motion for a continuance, given that Mr.
Workman had already been preventatively detained for more than the one hundred
days ordinarily permitted. D.C. Code § 23-1322(h)(1) (2012 Repl.). In our view,
the trial court could permissibly have addressed the situation by granting a
continuance and ordering that Mr. Workman be released in this case pending the
continued trial date. See, e.g., Super. Ct. Crim. R. 16(d)(2)(B) (remedies for
discovery violation include granting of continuance); Ashby v. United States, 199
A.3d 634, 646-47 (D.C. 2019) (trial-court decision regarding discovery sanctions
reviewed for abuse of discretion; “[T]he range of available sanctions is extremely
broad, with the only real limitation being that a sanction must be just under the
circumstances.”) (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted); Moctar v. United
States, 718 A.2d 1063, 1065 (D.C. 1998) (“[T]he grant or denial of a continuance
rests within the sound discretion of the trial judge.”). Instead, the trial court went
one step further to protect Mr. Workman’s interests, by dismissing the original
indictment without prejudice. The parties and the trial court appear to have
understood that dismissal without prejudice would permit the United States to
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reindict and to use the DNA evidence in Mr. Workman’s prosecution, after Mr.
Workman had an adequate chance to prepare to respond to that evidence. By
dismissing the indictment, rather than simply releasing Mr. Workman in this case
pending trial, however, the trial court placed on the United States the additional
burden of obtaining a new indictment. The trial court also made it possible for Mr.
Workman to be released from custody if Mr. Workman could resolve his parole
matter. Finally, we note the absence of a clear contemporaneous objection from Mr.
Workman to the trial court’s decision to dismiss the original indictment without
prejudice. See, e.g., Inmates of Suffolk Cnty. Jail v. Eisenstadt, 518 F.2d 1241, 1243
(1st Cir. 1975) (in determining whether trial court abused discretion, court of appeals
considers absence of specific objection). In sum, we see no abuse of discretion in
the trial court’s initial ruling.
Our conclusion that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by dismissing
the original indictment without prejudice is very important to our further conclusion
that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by declining to dismiss the new
indictment with prejudice. Nothing of significance had changed since the trial
court’s initial ruling. Rather, the United States had simply done what the trial court
and the parties understood, at the time of the initial dismissal without prejudice, that
the United States could do. In the absence of changed circumstances, the trial court
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was not required to retroactively convert the initial dismissal without prejudice into
a dismissal with prejudice.
We are not persuaded by Mr. Workman’s remaining arguments to the
contrary.
First, Mr. Workman argues that the new indictment was an attempt to
circumvent the trial court’s rulings excluding the DNA evidence and denying a
continuance. We disagree. The trial court’s ruling excluding the DNA evidence
was explicitly tied to the particular circumstances at the time of the ruling. In
addition, the trial court did not deny a continuance because it had decided that it was
critical that the matter be tried immediately, without the DNA evidence. Rather, the
trial court thought it would be unfair to make Mr. Workman choose between going
to trial when he was not ready to meet critical evidence and remaining detained in
this case during a continuance. The trial court thus picked a different path:
dismissing the indictment without prejudice, which obviously permitted the United
States to introduce the DNA evidence at a later trial if the United States reindicted
Mr. Workman. In sum, the trial court reasonably did not view the United States’s
conduct as an end run around the trial court’s earlier rulings.
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Second, Mr. Workman argues that the trial court impermissibly considered
the prosecutor’s subjective good faith. We conclude otherwise. Numerous courts
have held that the presence or absence of good faith is important in determining
whether dismissal without prejudice and prosecution on a new indictment are
permissible. See, e.g., Palomares, 119 F.3d at 558 (“key factors” in evaluating Rule
48(a) motion to dismiss are “government’s reasons and good faith”); United States
v. Salinas, 693 F.2d 348, 352 (5th Cir. 1982) (presuming good faith and discussing
prosecutor’s motivation).
Mr. Workman argues, however, that the Supreme Court’s decision in Rinaldi,
434 U.S. at 30, indicates that it is irrelevant whether the government’s dismissal is
in good faith or bad faith. To the contrary, the Supreme Court in Rinaldi explicitly
considered whether the United States was acting in good faith or bad faith when it
sought to dismiss the indictment. Id. (“[T]he record has not disclosed (and we will
not presume) bad faith on the part of the Government at the time it sought leave to
dismiss the indictment . . . .”). The comment upon which Mr. Workman relies was
making a different point: that the relevant issue was not whether the original
decision to prosecute was made in bad faith. Id. (“The salient issue, however, is not
whether the decision to maintain the federal prosecution was made in bad faith but
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rather whether the Government’s later efforts to terminate the prosecution were
similarly tainted with impropriety.”).
Third, Mr. Workman challenges the trial court’s reliance on the fact that the
United States had the DNA results “in-hand” on the day of trial. We agree with the
trial court, however, that it was relevant that this was not a case in which the United
States sought to dismiss charges without prejudice in order to wait “for an indefinite
period of time in the hope or expectation that something will turn up.” United States
v. Poindexter, 719 F. Supp. 6, 11 (D.D.C. 1989) (footnote omitted).
Fourth, Mr. Workman relies on a number of cases that he argues support
reversal. Some of those cases, however, place emphasis on whether the reindictment
at issue was an impermissible end run around a trial-court ruling. E.g., Hayden, 860
F.2d at 1489 (dismissal with prejudice of new indictment could have been
appropriate if “the district judge concluded and specifically found that the
government utilized the Rule 48(a) motion as a pretext to bypass [the district
judge’s] denial of the continuance”). As we have explained, the trial court in this
case reasonably did not view the reindictment as an end run around its earlier rulings.
16
Other cases that Mr. Workman cites involve circumstances quite different
from those of the present case. E.g., Salinas, 693 F.2d at 349-53 (prosecutor
dismissed first indictment after jury selection, without stating reason other than that
superseding indictment would be filed; government reindicted six days later on
virtually identical charges; prosecutor acknowledged that dismissal was based on
desire to go to trial with different jury). In other of the cases, the trial court chose to
exercise its discretion to dismiss a new indictment with prejudice, and the question
on review was whether that ruling was an abuse of discretion. E.g., United States v.
Derr, 726 F.2d 617, 618-19 (10th Cir. 1984). Appellate decisions upholding a given
exercise of discretion do not necessarily establish that a different exercise of
discretion would be impermissible. See Strayer, 846 F.2d at 1266 (“Derr did not
mandate dismissal of subsequent indictments; we merely determined that the trial
court did not abuse its discretion in granting the motion to dismiss.”); see generally,
e.g., Muniz v. United Parcel Serv., 738 F.3d 214, 223-24 (9th Cir. 2013) (“An
appellate decision upholding a particular exercise of trial court discretion does not
mean that the appellate court would not have also upheld a substantially different
decision.”); Rice v. Nova Biomedical Corp., 38 F.3d 909, 918 (7th Cir. 1994)
(“When an issue is governed by a deferential standard of review, such as abuse of
discretion, . . . two district judges who reached the opposite result in identical cases
might both be affirmed.”).
17
In sum, although the authority from courts around the country is not uniform,
in our view the weight of authority supports affirmance in the particular
circumstances of this case.
Fifth, Mr. Workman argues that the trial court erred by relying on a mistaken
belief that Mr. Workman was released from custody as a result of the initial dismissal
without prejudice. The trial court accurately acknowledged, however, that the initial
dismissal without prejudice caused Mr. Workman to be released from custody in this
case but (at least initially) not in the parole matter.
Finally, Mr. Workman argues that the trial court erred in stating that “on this
record it would be an abuse of my discretion to dismiss the case with prejudice here.”
We need not decide whether that statement by the trial court was correct. The trial
court considered the relevant factors and concluded that those factors did not justify
dismissal with prejudice. Even if it would have been permissible for the trial court
to have ruled differently, it is clear that the trial court was not inclined to exercise its
discretion in that manner. We see no basis for remanding to the trial court in such
circumstances. Cf., e.g., Black v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Human Servs., 188
A.3d 840, 851 (D.C. 2018) (although remand is ordinarily necessary when agency
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has not adequately explained its reasoning, “remand is unnecessary if the agency
would doubtless reach the same result”) (internal quotation marks omitted).
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Superior Court is
Affirmed.