Baker v. U.S.

• Decision Date: 26 January 2006
• Docket Number: No. 04-CF-260.,04-CF-260.
• Parties: Jesse C. BAKER, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

Page 208

891 A.2d 208

Jesse C. BAKER, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.

No. 04-CF-260.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued September 20, 2005.

Decided January 26, 2006.^*

Patrick T. Hand, appointed by the court, Washington, for appellant.

Thomas S. Rees, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Kenneth L. Wainstein, United States Attorney, John R. Fisher, Assistant United States Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and Elizabeth Trosman, Roy Austin, and Jeannie Rhee, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee.

Before FARRELL and REID, Associate Judges, and KING, Senior Judge.

KING, Senior Judge:

Jesse C. Baker was charged with stalking, threatening to injure a person, assault, obstructing justice, criminal contempt, and two counts of destroying property. Following a jury trial, Baker was acquitted of assault, but convicted on the remaining counts. He now appeals claiming that his convictions for criminal contempt and destruction of property should be reversed. We affirm.

I.

Baker had a romantic relationship with complainant Inti Boggs. Shortly after the couple began dating in May 2001, Baker and Boggs started living together at Boggs' home in Laurel, Maryland. Baker was physically abusive throughout the relationship and Boggs filed several reports detailing that abuse with Maryland police. Although Boggs left Baker a number of times, the two eventually would reconcile. By August 2003, the relationship had soured beyond repair.

On August 20, 2003, Baker began sending threatening messages to Boggs on her cellular phone, calling her between six and twelve times that day. Each message became increasingly more threatening. Boggs played the messages to a co-worker at Ozio's Cigar Bar and Lounge, located at 1813 M Street, N.W., which included statements that Baker knew where to find Boggs and that he planned to kill her. Later that evening, Boggs played the same message for Officer Anthony Baker, a member of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). On that same date, Boggs' manager, Frank Vinueza, noticed Baker drive past the establishment approximately twenty times during the evening.¹

Based on the threatening messages from Baker, MPD Detective Williams contacted Boggs and requested that she press charges, but she indicated that she did not wish to do so. Detective Williams then informed her that she would need to complete paperwork at the station whether she pressed charges or not. While Boggs was on her way to the station, Baker phoned her, instructing her to "undo" whatever she had done, or he would "make [her] life a living hell." That same afternoon, Vinueza discovered obscene and slanderous phrases regarding Boggs that had been spray-painted across the exterior walls of 1813 M Street, the lettering extending to the building next door.² At trial, Boggs identified the spray-painted lettering as Baker's distinctive handwriting.

On August 22, 2003, a day when Boggs was not working, Ozio's security staff noticed Baker inside the bathroom of the restaurant and they asked him to leave. He refused. The security staff restrained Baker until the police arrived³ and placed him under arrest. After he was arrested, a black marker pen was removed from his pocket. A staff member returned to the bathroom and discovered language, similar to that which had been spray painted on the bar's exterior walls, written in two places in the bathroom.⁴ On August 25 Boggs sought a restraining order against Baker in the District Court of Prince George's County, Maryland and the court issued a stay-away order.

Sometime during the morning of August 29, Boggs filed threats charges in the District of Columbia against Baker. That evening while Boggs was at work, Vinueza noticed Baker's white Lexus drive by the restaurant. Later, an employee saw Baker go into the nearby garage where Boggs had parked her car. Police were summoned, and they discovered Baker inside the garage holding a can of spray paint. The officers found obscene and slanderous phrases written in black spray paint all over Boggs' vehicle.⁵

On August 30, 2003, Baker was charged in the District with threatening to injure/kidnap persons in violation of D.C.Code § 22-1810 (2001).⁶ On September 2, an amended complaint was filed, charging Baker with destruction of property in excess of $200.⁷ At that time, the government dismissed the felony threats charge. The trial court then conducted a pre-trial detention hearing, and held Baker without bond. At the government's request, the trial court preventively detained Baker under D.C.Code § 23-1322(b)(1)(C) and orally ordered Baker "to have no contact whatsoever directly or indirectly" with Boggs. Subsequently a ten-count indictment was returned, which included a contempt charge, based on Baker's asserted violation of this order for sending letters to Boggs while he was incarcerated.⁸

Cell phone records admitted into evidence showed that Baker had called Boggs' cellular phone or home telephone a number of times between August 18 and August 30. While incarcerated, Baker also wrote Boggs several letters. Four of those letters were admitted into evidence, which Boggs identified as being in Baker's handwriting. These letters were the basis for the criminal contempt charge.

At the close of evidence during the trial, the court questioned whether the contempt instruction should contain language that Baker's disobedience of the court's order must have caused an obstruction to the orderly administration of justice. Defense counsel argued that In re Gorfkle, 444 A.2d 934 (D.C.1982), controlled and requested that the jury instructions contain language stating that Baker must have committed a willful act that "show[ed] disrespect for the court or to disrupt its proceedings." The trial court ruled, however, that Grant v. United States, 734 A.2d 174 (D.C.1999), was more apposite, distinguishing between a disruption or interference committed in the presence of the court as was the case in Gorfkle, and disobedience of a court order outside the presence of the court which occurred in Grant. Although the trial court noted that Grant did not perfectly apply to the instant circumstances, it determined the principles set forth in Grant could be extrapolated to Baker's case.⁹ Defense counsel did not object, but later moved for judgment of acquittal on the basis that the letters were not "contemptuous." The trial court denied the motion and Baker was convicted of stalking, threats, contempt, and both counts of destruction of property. In this appeal, he only challenges the convictions for contempt and destruction of property.

II.

In challenging the conviction for criminal contempt, Baker sets forth three grounds for reversal. First, Baker contends that once the trial court ordered him preventively detained, it lacked authority to issue a no-contact order because such orders are authorized by the pretrial release statute¹⁰ only as a condition of release. The government responds that Baker failed to raise a timely challenge to the validity of the order and contends that Baker should have sought a stay and appealed its issuance. The government also argues that the trial court's "inherent power" over pretrial detention and release, predating the District's bail reform statute, authorized the trial court to issue the no-contact order in this case. We need not decide whether the order was validly issued under the bail statute, or whether the trial court possessed inherent authority,¹¹ to issue the no-contact order because: (1) Baker did not challenge or appeal the order below;¹² and (2) the trial court's no-contact order was not patently unauthorized under In re (Iris) Banks, 306 A.2d 270 (D.C.1973).

Compliance with court orders is required until they are reversed on appeal or are later modified. Kammerman v. Kammerman, 543 A.2d 794, 798-99 (D.C. 1988). Court orders must be respected and "disobedience of them is contempt of its lawful authority, to be punished." Howat v. Kansas, 258 U.S. 181, 190, 42 S.Ct. 277, 66 L.Ed. 550 (1922). Thus, even assuming for the sake of argument that the trial court's no-contact order was invalid, Baker's conviction for contempt must be upheld for his failure to comply with that order. See In re (Simon) Banks, 805 A.2d 990, 1001-02 (D.C.2002); In re Marshall, 445 A.2d 5, 7 (D.C.1982); Walker v. City of Birmingham, 388 U.S. 307, 320-21, 87 S.Ct. 1824, 18 L.Ed.2d 1210 (1967).

Here, the record demonstrates that Baker contacted Boggs several times even after a Maryland court issued a stay-away order.¹³ Concerned for the safety of the complainant, the trial judge here denied bail and ordered Baker "to have no contact directly or indirectly" with Boggs. Baker neither objected to that order nor requested a stay or challenged the validity of the order in any way once it was issued. Without such a challenge, Baker's refusal to obey the no-contact order was undertaken at his own peril. See also In re Evans, 411 A.2d 984, 993 n. 10 (D.C.1980) (appellant could be prosecuted for contempt when he failed to pay a $500 court-ordered fine, even though the statute authorized a maximum fine of $300). Consequently, this claim fails.

Nor can Baker's conviction for criminal contempt be challenged on the ground that the no-contact order was patently unauthorized under (Iris) Banks, supra, 306 A.2d at 274. In Banks, the trial court judge ordered a juvenile to remain in the temporary custody of social worker Banks, rather than detain the individual until suitable custodians were located. Id. at 272. The social worker immediately objected, refusing to take custody of the juvenile after the trial judge was asked but declined to reconsider his order. As a consequence, the trial court adjudged Banks in criminal contempt and sentenced her to serve eight hours in the custody of the United States Marshals.¹⁴ On appeal, we held that since Banks could in no way be considered a "custodian" under the...