Arthur v. US

• Decision Date: 17 January 1992
• Docket Number: No. 90-381.,90-381.
• Citation: 602 A.2d 174
• Parties: Morris ARTHUR, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

602 A.2d 174

Morris ARTHUR, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.

No. 90-381.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued November 13, 1991.

Decided January 17, 1992.

Richard C. Goemann, appointed by this court, for appellant.

David L. Smith, Asst. U.S. Atty., with whom Jay B. Stephens, U.S. Atty., and John R. Fisher, Thomas J. Tourish, Jr., and Heidi M. Pasichow, Asst. U.S. Attys., were on the brief, for appellee.

Before TERRY, FARRELL and KING, Associate Judges.

TERRY, Associate Judge:

Appellant Arthur was convicted of assault on Kathleen DeGrace with intent to kill her while armed with a dangerous weapon, namely, a shod foot,¹ and of simple assault² on her son, Jeremi DeGrace. On this appeal he challenges only the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the conviction of assault with intent to kill while armed, for which he received a sentence of seven to thirty years in prison. We affirm.³

I

In August 1989 Kathleen DeGrace was living with three of her five children in Room 377 of the Capital City Inn, which until its recent demolition was leased by the District of Columbia government to house homeless families. Appellant Arthur, with whom she had previously lived and who was the father of two of her children, resided in another room. On August 11 Arthur received a paycheck, and shortly after 6:00 p.m. he went to Room 377 with the intention of taking his daughter Deanna shopping. However, when Ms. DeGrace told him that Deanna was ill and should not leave the room, Arthur decided to stay and play with Deanna, who was then seven months old.

Arthur remained in Room 377 for dinner with Ms. DeGrace, her sons Christopher (five) and Jeremi (ten), and the baby Deanna. When dinner was over, Jeremi went outside to play, and Arthur went out to purchase some liquor. After both of them returned, Jeremi went to sleep in a bed alongside his younger brother and sister, and Arthur, after playing with the baby for a while, fell asleep in a chair.

Some time later Arthur awoke to discover Ms. DeGrace going through his pockets. Fearing that she was stealing his money to buy drugs, he arose in anger, grabbed Ms. DeGrace, and threw her to the floor. This awakened the children, who began screaming and crying. Then, after she told Jeremi to "call security," Arthur began stomping repeatedly on Ms. DeGrace's head. Arthur was wearing white sneakers as he stomped, and he admitted at trial that he used "a lot of pressure" in the stomping.

After a few moments Arthur stopped assaulting Ms. DeGrace and turned to leave, saying, "I hope she's dead. I hope she's dead." When she started "breathing real hard," however, he exclaimed, "She ain't dead," and went back over to where she lay on the floor. Arthur tried to step on her again, but because Jeremi was kneeling beside her, trying to pick her up, Arthur stepped instead on the back of Jeremi's head. Jeremi, weeping and angry "because he had no right to step on my mother," moved back out of the way, and Arthur resumed his abuse of Ms. DeGrace.

As the stomping continued, thirteen-year-old Sean Williams heard noises coming from Room 377 and went to investigate. When he looked inside the room through the partially open door, he saw Kathleen DeGrace lying on the floor, next to the bed, and Arthur "over top of her, stomping on her face ... going up and down with his foot, stomping." Blood was coming from the side of Ms. DeGrace's mouth. Jeremi and Deanna were also in the room, and both of them were crying. Arthur apparently saw Williams watching, went and closed the door, and returned to his assault on Ms. DeGrace. Williams, in the meantime, notified others at the Capital City Inn of the assault in progress and asked a woman in another room to call the security guard.

When Arthur finally ceased his attack on Ms. DeGrace, he left Room 377 and went to the security desk in the front lobby of the Capital City Inn. There he was met by Cornell Chappelle, a Department of Human Services social worker assigned to the shelter. In an office adjacent to the security desk, Arthur said to Chappelle, "I just stomped my old lady." Almost immediately a group of residents burst into the office and tried to attack Arthur, but Chappelle and a security guard "managed to get most of the folks off of him and out of the office." The police arrived shortly and placed Arthur under arrest.

Meanwhile, an ambulance was summoned, and when it arrived, the paramedics found Ms. DeGrace unconscious, her face bloody and extremely swollen. After assessing the extent of her injuries, they took her to the MedStar shock-trauma facility at the Washington Hospital Center. There she was met by a team of trauma specialists led by Dr. Grace Rozycki. The doctor testified that Ms. DeGrace's injuries were "severe," "critical," and "immediately life-threatening."⁴ Ms. DeGrace was later transferred to the intensive care unit of the hospital, where she was further diagnosed as suffering from "severe blunt trauma."

After a few days Ms. DeGrace was moved to a step-down unit at the Washington Hospital Center, and several weeks later she was taken to the National Rehabilitation Hospital. There she began rehabilitative therapy with Dr. Warren Lux, director of the hospital's brain injury rehabilitation program. Dr. Lux testified that when Ms. DeGrace first came to the Rehabilitation Hospital, she had trouble walking, getting out of bed, going to the bathroom, and taking care of her basic day-to-day needs. Although she made some progress, Dr. Lux concluded that Ms. DeGrace continued to have "difficulty with some of the higher level kinds of thinking." He opined that Ms. DeGrace would never fully recover from the traumatic head injuries she had received.

The government's final witness was Kathleen DeGrace. She had no memory at all of her encounter with Morris Arthur. She testified, however, that her health had changed: "I can't walk. I can't get dressed. I can't get my children dressed. My left side is slow, and my voice is slow, and I can't—I have no memory, hardly any memory." When asked whether she could previously "do all the things that you say you can't do now," she answered, "Yes."

II

Arthur contends that the government failed to introduce sufficient evidence of the dangerous character of the shoes he wore while perpetrating the assault on Kathleen DeGrace. In order to convict someone of assault with intent to kill while armed, the government must prove inter alia that the defendant, at the time of the assault, was "armed with or had readily available any ... dangerous or deadly weapon...." D.C.Code § 22-3202(a) (1989). We must, of course, view the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, keeping in mind the right of the jury to assess credibility and to draw reasonable inferences from the evidence it has heard. United States v. Hubbard, 429 A.2d 1334, 1337-1338 (D.C.) (citing cases), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 857, 102 S.Ct. 308, 70 L.Ed.2d 153 (1981); Byrd v. United States, 388 A.2d 1225, 1229 (D.C.1978) (citing cases). Moreover, we recognize no legal distinction between direct and circumstantial evidence. Franey v. United States, 382 A.2d 1019, 1023 (D.C.1978) (citing cases); see Holland v. United States, 348 U.S. 121, 140, 75 S.Ct. 127, 137, 99 L.Ed. 150 (1954). Applying these principles, we hold that there was ample evidence that Arthur's shoe was a dangerous weapon.

Arthur does not dispute that a shod foot can be a dangerous weapon if it is used in such a way as to cause death or great bodily injury. Indeed, he cannot, for it has been the law in the District of Columbia for almost forty years that "shoes on feet" are dangerous weapons, "at least when they inflict serious injuries." Medlin v. United States, 93 U.S.App.D.C. 64, 65, 207 F.2d 33, 33 (1953) (citation omitted), cert. denied, 347 U.S. 905, 74 S.Ct. 431, 98 L.Ed. 1064 (1954). He claims instead that the government failed to establish that the shoes he wore during the assault caused any injury more significant than would have been caused by bare feet. He asserts that his actions alone did not indicate an intent to use the shoes as a weapon, and that therefore his conviction should be reversed. We disagree.

This court has traditionally looked to the use to which an object was put during an assault in determining whether that object was a dangerous weapon. "The trier of fact must consider whether the object or material is known to be `likely to produce death or great bodily injury' in the manner it is used, intended to be used, or threatened to be used." Williamson v. United States, 445 A.2d 975, 979 (D.C. 1982) (citation omitted). Similarly, "an instrument capable of producing death or serious bodily injury by its manner of use qualifies as a dangerous weapon, whether it is used to effect an attack or is handled with reckless disregard for the safety of others." Powell v. United States, 485 A.2d 596, 601 (D.C.1984) (emphasis added), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 981, 106 S.Ct. 420, 88 L.Ed.2d 339 (1985); see Scott v. United States, 243 A.2d 54, 56 (D.C.1968) (any object which is "likely to produce death or great bodily injury by the use made of it" is a dangerous weapon (emphasis in original; footnote omitted)). Indeed, as the government points out, the Medlin case itself, which first held in this jurisdiction that shoes on feet can be dangerous weapons, "exemplifies the appropriate test" by limiting its holding to shoes which inflict serious injuries. 93 U.S.App.D.C. at 65, 207 F.2d at 33. This use-oriented approach has also been followed by courts in other jurisdictions to sustain convictions of aggravated assault in cases involving shoes on feet. E.g., People v. Carter, 53 N.Y.2d 113, 116, 423 N.E.2d 30, 32, 440 N.Y.S.2d 607, 609 (1981) ("It is the temporary use rather than the inherent vice of the object which brings it within the purview of the statute"); Smith v. State, 79 Okla.Crim. 151, 155, 152 P.2d 279, 281 (1944) ("The manner of their use...