Overwhelming Evidence Overcomes Evidentiary Errors In Robbery, Witness Tampering Case

US v. Walker: Walker was the organizer/leader of a group of men who robbed a jewelry store and cellphone store in North Carolina. Firearms were used in both robberies, although Walker did not brandish or otherwise use them. After his arrest, and while incarcerated, Walker “tried to get word out on the street” that one of his confederates, Sparks, was an informant. He also wrote a letter to another party, which was intercepted at the jail, where he referred to Sparks as a “lying rat” and a “snitch.” Walker was eventually convicted at trial of conspiracy, robbery, firearms, and witness tampering charges and sentenced to 411 months in prison.

 On appeal, the Fourth Circuit affirmed Walker’s convictions. He made four arguments regarding evidentiary issues at trial, two of which he prevailed on. First, the court agreed with Walker that the district court should not have permitted the employee victims of the robberies to testify about how the robberies impacted them in the long term. The court distinguished testimony about their feelings during the robbery (relevant to whether they were put in fear/threatened) and afterwards, which were more in the vein of victim impact statements appropriate at sentencing. Second, the court agreed with Walker that a police officer who listened to some phone calls Walker made while in jail should not have been allowed to testify as to the meaning of certain terms as a lay expert witness. The court agreed that because the officer was not part of the conversations and his conclusions were not based on “his contemporaneous understanding of the language used but instead the result of his putting the pieces together based on what he discovered during the investigation,” the testimony was the kind of “post-hoc assessments” that Rule 701 does not permit. In spite of prevailing on those issues, Walker’s convictions were still affirmed, as he “has not demonstrated that the district court’s evidentiary errors effected the trial’s outcome” as the Government “presented such a strong case” against Walker. 

On two other evidentiary issues, the court found no error on the part of the district court. First, the district court correctly allowed the employee victims of the first robbery to testify as to their conclusion that Walker was acting as “the decoy guy” to help setup the robbery. That testimony was based on their “observations at the time of the robbery” and were appropriate. Second, the district court correctly allowed the admission of screenshots of the letters Walker allegedly sent about Sparks and Sparks’ own testimony that Walker was a “dangerous person.” Finally, the court affirmed Walker’s witness tampering conviction, concluding that it was irrelevant that the final letter was never actually delivered, as “to result in a conviction, the alleged witness tampering need not be successful.”