Howard v. United States

The majority holds that the trial court’s exclusion of additional evidence of appellant’s testimony of the victim’s prior violent acts against him was error of constitutional dimension requiring reversal of his conviction for assault with intent to murder while armed. With this part of the court’s opinion, I must respectfully disagree.1 Even assuming constitutional error, in my view, it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 828, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967); see Bassil v. United States, 517 A.2d 714, 717 (D.C.1986). Since the substance of…