Jenkins v. United States

• Decision Date: 12 September 2013
• Docket Number: No. 06–CF–1455.,06–CF–1455.
• Citation: 75 A.3d 174
• Parties: Raymond JENKINS, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

75 A.3d 174

Raymond JENKINS, Appellant,
v.
UNITED STATES, Appellee.

No. 06–CF–1455.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued Sept. 27, 2011.
Decided Sept. 12, 2013.

[75 A.3d 176]

Lee R. Goebes, Public Defender Service, with whom James Klein and Alice Wang and Jessica Brand, were on the brief, for appellant.

Amanda Winchester, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Ronald C. Machen Jr., United States Attorney, Roy W. McLeese III, Assistant United States Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and John P. Mannarino and Michael Ambrosino, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee.

Before BLACKBURNE–RIGSBY, THOMPSON, and OBERLY, Associate Judges.

OBERLY, Associate Judge:

Appellant Raymond Jenkins was convicted of first-degree murder while armed, first-degree burglary while armed, attempt to commit robbery while armed, two counts of first-degree felony murder while armed, and possession of a prohibited weapon, all in connection with the June 1999 stabbing death of Dennis Dolinger. In this appeal, appellant seeks reversal of his convictions on the ground that his rights under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment were violated when the trial court permitted the government to present the entirety of its DNA evidence through the testimony of a single expert witness without making available for cross-examination the laboratory analysts who performed the underlying serological and DNA laboratory work.

While this case was pending on appeal, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Williams v. Illinois, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 2221, 183 L.Ed.2d 89 (2012). We asked the parties to brief the question of “what impact, if any, the plurality and concurring opinions in Williams v. Illinois should have on resolution of the Confrontation Clause issues raised in this case[.]” We now hold that the splintered decision in Williams, which failed to produce a common view shared by at least five Justices, creates no new rule of law that we can apply in this case. Accordingly, we apply pre-Williams case law—both the Supreme Court's and our own—and conclude that the testimony and reports of the government's expert witness, Dr. Frank Baechtel, were admitted in violation of the Confrontation Clause. We further conclude that the error was not harmless,

[75 A.3d 177]

and we therefore reverse the judgment of the Superior Court and remand the case for a new trial.

In addition to his Confrontation Clause claim, appellant argues that the trial court abused its discretion when, denying a defense discovery motion, it declined to compel the government to determine and report the number of “pairwise matches, at 9 or more loci” in the FBI and Virginia State DNA databases. We affirm the denial of the defense's discovery motion.

I. Background

Dennis Dolinger was murdered in the basement of his house on Potomac Avenue, S.E., on June 4, 1999.¹ He sustained twenty-five stab wounds to his head and neck and was already dead when emergency responders arrived. A Metropolitan Police Department (“MPD”) Mobile Crime Unit technician, who arrived to collect evidence from the house, testified without objection that he “discovered patterns of blood throughout the house,” including on a pair of jeans lying near Dolinger's body; on a bath towel and a sink stopper found in the basement bathroom (suggesting to police that “someone had gotten injured during the attack and attempted to wash their hands in the bathroom”); on a bannister or railing leading to the second floor of the house; and on a gray pullover shirt found in a dressing room on the second floor, in which there was a chest of drawers “that it appeared ... somebody had rambled through.” ² The technician collected blood samples from several locations in the house but agreed that he did not “take swabbings of all the blood ... observed in the house.” The medical examiner testified at trial that Dolinger's stab wounds were consistent with having been inflicted by a Phillips screwdriver.

Shortly after the murder, the MPD learned that a man identified as Stephen Watson had made several purchases using Dolinger's credit card. Police officers executed a search warrant at Watson's residence and recovered a black backpack (which Watson said he had found discarded near the King Street Metro station) and a wallet containing Dolinger's credit, identification, and bank cards. MPD officers initially arrested Watson for Dolinger's murder, but subsequent DNA testing excluded Watson as a suspect.

On November 16, 1999, the MPD received information that caused appellant to become a “person of interest.” As we explained in an earlier opinion in this case reversing the trial court's pretrial order excluding the introduction of DNA evidence, United States v. Jenkins, 887 A.2d 1013 (D.C.2005):

Seeking further assistance, on November 16, 1999, the government contacted the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (“DCJS”) requesting that DCJS run the profile of the unknown person [whose blood DNA was found in Dolinger's house] through Virginia's DNA database of 101,905 previously profiled offenders. Using only eight of the thirteen loci profiled by the FBI, the DCJS reported that the evidence sample was consistent with the eight-loci profile of Robert P. Garrett, a known alias of [appellant] Raymond Anthony Jenkins. At that point, the MPD investigation focused solely on Mr. Jenkins.

[75 A.3d 178]

Id. at 1017 (footnote omitted). As part of its investigation, the MPD obtained a search warrant to take a sample of appellant's blood, and it submitted the sample to the FBI for analysis. After a first round of testing, the FBI took another sample of appellant's blood to develop a “full 13 loci profile” and compared it to the DNA profiles that the FBI had developed from the unknown-source blood found at the crime scene.

At trial,³ Dr. Frank Baechtel, a forensic examiner and head of one of the FBI's DNA analysis laboratories, testified that the 13–loci DNA profile developed from appellant's blood sample matched at all loci the 13–loci DNA profiles that the laboratory had developed (before appellant became a suspect). ⁴ Dr. Baechtel testified, and his reports indicated, that he found a match between appellant's DNA and the DNA extracted from blood taken from the back of the gray shirt, from inside the pockets of the jeans discovered near Dolinger's body, from the towel and sink (a sink stopper and a swabbing of the sink itself) in the basement bathroom, and from the bannister swabbing. He testified that the likelihood of a merely coincidental match was at least 1 in 26 quadrillion in the African–American population, 1 in 870 quintillion in the Caucasian population, and 1 in 1,000 quintillion in the Southeastern Hispanic population. He further testified that Dolinger's blood also was found on the gray shirt. In conclusion, Dr. Baechtel testified that “the profiles of [appellant] or Dennis Dolinger account for all of the profiles in the blood evidence.” The court did not give the jury an instruction limiting in any way the use of Dr. Baechtel's testimony or reports.

The government also called several other witnesses at trial. James West, who worked at The Fireplace, a bar frequented by appellant, testified that appellant usually wore a grayish-blue pullover shirt and blue jeans. West identified the gray shirt recovered from Dolinger's dressing room as “just like” the shirt that appellant usually wore. Anthony Scott, who knew appellant because they both “hung out” in the Dupont Circle area, also identified the gray shirt as one that appellant “wore all the time” (explaining that appellant “used to wash it in the little fountain” in Dupont Circle).⁵ Scott further identified the black backpack found during the search of Watson's home as the backpack that appellant typically carried and testified that appellant “always” kept a Phillips screwdriver inside.⁶ Scott also testified that on June 5, 1999, the day after Dolinger's murder, he saw appellant in Dupont Circle and observed that he (appellant) was “all scratched up” on his face, hands, and arm (causing Scott to ask, “Man, were you in a cat fight or something?”) and had “little cuts” and “bruises in his hand” as if he had “gripped something real tight.” Appellant was carrying over $1,000 in cash, a diamond

[75 A.3d 179]

ring, and a “bunch of little gold chains.”

Robert Bethea, who, like Scott, knew appellant from frequenting the Dupont Circle area, testified that in early June 1999, he saw appellant on the Metro. Appellant told Bethea that “he was going over to a” “white dude['s]” house “to steal stuff” and would just “fuck him up” if he didn't want to let appellant in. A few days later, Bethea again ran into appellant, who had “several pieces” of jewelry that he was trying to sell, including a diamond ring. Still later, when Bethea once again encountered appellant in Dupont Circle, appellant told Bethea that he had been in a fight with a guy, that he had “fucked him up ... [and] punished him,” and that he did not know if the man was “dead or alive.”

William Martin, a self-styled “jailhouse lawyer,” testified that while he and appellant were incarcerated together in February 2000, appellant asked him “if he could be convicted of dried blood.” When Martin told appellant, “yeah,” appellant appeared “shocked.” On a later occasion, Martin testified, appellant told Martin that he had “robbed a faggot” and had stabbed the “white guy” with a screwdriver and taken “a thousand dollars and some cash and a ring.” Martin said appellant told him that, after the robbery, he left his backpack near the Potomac Avenue Metro station and that he was aware that another “white guy” had found the backpack and had used the credit cards. Appellant stated that he was going to allow the “white guy” to take the charge because that guy “was dying of AIDS anyway.”

Appellant did not testify at trial, but the defense advanced the theory that the “attack was...