Campbell v. United States, 15–CF–95

• Decision Date: 20 July 2017
• Docket Number: No. 15–CF–95,15–CF–95
• Parties: James Allen CAMPBELL, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

163 A.3d 790

James Allen CAMPBELL, Appellant,

v.UNITED STATES, Appellee.

No. 15–CF–95

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Submitted February 11, 2016

Decided July 20, 2017

Vincent A. Jankoski was on the brief for appellant.

Vincent H. Cohen, Jr., Acting United States Attorney at the time the briefs were filed, with whom Elizabeth Trosman, Elizabeth H. Danello, Laura Crane, Lindsey Merikas, and Kristina L. Ament, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee.

Before Beckwith and McLeese, Associate Judges, and Belson, Senior Judge.

Beckwith, Associate Judge:

Appellant James Campbell challenges the sufficiency of the government's evidence that he violated the District of Columbia's open-container law when he was found sleeping in a parked vehicle on a grassy median between two church parking lots with a half-empty bottle of vodka in close reach. Mr. Campbell contends that the evidence was insufficient to establish that he possessed an open container of alcohol (POCA) in "[a] vehicle in or upon any street, alley, park, or parking area," D.C. Code § 25–1001(a)(2) (2012 Repl.),¹ because the meaning of "parking area" did not encompass the location in which he was arrested. We agree that Mr. Campbell's vehicle was not in a "parking area" within the meaning of the statute and reverse his conviction for POCA.

As Mr. Campbell has waived his argument—based on the same statutory issue underlying his sufficiency claim—that the trial court should have suppressed the fruits of the search incident to his unlawful arrest for POCA, we affirm his convictions for first-degree theft and unauthorized use of a vehicle. With respect to Mr. Campbell's conviction for receiving stolen property, the government has filed in this court a consent motion seeking to vacate that conviction, and we now grant that motion.

I.

According to the government's evidence at trial, at around 3 a.m. on June 9, 2014, Metropolitan Police Department Officer George Poor came across a black Infiniti sedan parked on an unmarked grassy median between two parking lots just south of Mount Carmel Baptist Church at Third and I Streets, Northwest. Officer Poor testified that the vehicle was not running, its lights were off, and a towel was draped in place of a missing right rear window. Because the area was known for prostitution and because the vehicle's missing window and its location on the grass between two parking lots struck him as "odd" and "unusual," Officer Poor proceeded to investigate.

Officer Poor testified that he pulled his cruiser behind the Infiniti, turned on his emergency lights, and approached the vehicle on foot with a flashlight. From outside the driver's door, Officer Poor saw a man—whom he identified at trial as Mr. Campbell—reclined in the driver's seat, semiconscious or unconscious, and a half-empty bottle of Absolut vodka in the vehicle's center console. The officer rapped on the driver's window several times, roused Mr. Campbell, and had him step out of the vehicle. According to Officer Poor, when he asked Mr. Campbell whether he had been drinking, Mr. Campbell responded that he had "a couple of sips." Officer Poor testified that he also recovered a screwdriver that was wedged between the driver's seat and the center console, but the car's ignition was intact.

Officer Poor placed Mr. Campbell under arrest for possessing an open container of alcohol in a vehicle. In a search incident to that arrest, Officer Poor found two watches and the key to the Infiniti in Mr. Campbell's pocket and also found paperwork in the vehicle indicating that Mr. Campbell was not the car's owner. Another search of Mr. Campbell after he was taken to the First District police station uncovered four shards of glass in his pocket that, according to another officer's testimony, appeared to match the broken glass found inside the vehicle. Jose Zavala, the actual owner of the Infiniti—who was contacted by police and then came to the church—informed Officer Poor that the Infiniti was his car, that it had been stolen earlier that evening, and that the two watches also belonged to him. Mr. Zavala testified that he did not keep any alcohol or a screwdriver in the Infiniti.

At the close of the government's case, the trial court denied Mr. Campbell's suppression motion, which the parties had agreed would be resolved on the basis of the testimony at trial, and also denied his motion for judgment of acquittal. The jury began its deliberations on the afternoon of November 4, 2014, and on the following afternoon delivered its verdicts acquitting Mr. Campbell of destruction of property (as to the vehicle) and second-degree theft and receiving stolen property (as to the watches), but convicting him of first-degree theft and receiving stolen property (as to the vehicle), unauthorized use of a vehicle, and POCA.

II.

On appeal, Mr. Campbell challenges (among other things² ) the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his conviction for possessing an open container of alcohol. He contends, in particular, that his conduct does not fall within the POCA statute's prohibition on possession of an open container of alcohol in "[a] vehicle in or upon any street, alley, park, or parking area," D.C. Code § 25–1001(a)(2), because the POCA statute does not, in his view, prohibit possession of an open container of alcohol on private property and because the only evidence on the subject at trial indicated that the area between two church parking lots where he was found and arrested was private land. The government counters that Mr. Campbell did not preserve the sufficiency challenge to his POCA conviction that he presses now on appeal and that in any event, "the POCA statute extended to the place where the car was stopped, because it was a ‘parking area,’ as that term ordinarily is defined."

A. Preservation of the Sufficiency Challenge

The government argues, as a threshold matter, that Mr. Campbell neglected to preserve his appellate challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence by failing to argue, in support of his motion for judgment of acquittal (MJOA), "that the location in which he was found in the vehicle with the bottle could defeat the POCA charge." As the government points out in its brief, Mr. Campbell's MJOA argument as to the POCA charge focused solely on Mr. Campbell's constructive possession of the container of alcohol, and when the trial court denied the motion it stated specifically that the evidence permitted a reasonable inference that the vodka bottle was open and that Mr. Campbell possessed it.

It is settled law in the District of Columbia that in a jury trial, "a general motion for acquittal ... is deemed ‘sufficient to preserve the full range of challenges' to the sufficiency of the evidence." Newby v. United States , 797 A.2d 1233, 1238 (D.C. 2002) (quoting United States v. Hammoude , 51 F.3d 288, 291 (D.C. Cir. 1995) ); see also Abdulshakur v. District of Columbia , 589 A.2d 1258, 1264 (D.C. 1991) (stating that the grounds for an MJOA "need not be stated with specificity unless the prosecutor so requests"). What is somewhat less settled is what sort of review this court applies where instead of a general MJOA, a defendant presents a specific argument in support of an MJOA in the trial court but raises a different challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence on appeal. While it is not clear why, if a general MJOA is sufficient to preserve all arguments challenging the sufficiency of the evidence, the addition of specific arguments in support of the motion should operate to un-preserve other arguments, cf . Newby , 797 A.2d at 1238 & n.2 (describing as "decidedly murky" "the reason for treating jury trials differently from bench trials in this respect," where in a bench trial, a mere plea of not guilty automatically preserves all sufficiency challenges), many courts, including most federal courts, have held that if a defendant specifies the grounds for an MJOA, "he may not later contend that there were other areas upon which his motion for judgment of acquittal would lie." E.g. , State v. Kreps , 4 Haw.App. 72, 661 P.2d 711, 714 n.1 (1983) ; see also United States v. Spinner , 152 F.3d 950, 955 (D.C. Cir. 1998).³ And although this court has explicitly left the question open, see Abdulshakur , 589 A.2d at 1264 ; Porter v. United States , 826 A.2d 398, 404 n.6 (D.C. 2003), we also held in one case that an appellant did not preserve his venue claim when he moved for judgment of acquittal on specific grounds without contesting venue. See Davis v. United States , 367 A.2d 1254, 1268–69 (D.C. 1976).

In this case, we need not resolve the question whether this rule of forfeiture extends beyond the context of a challenge to venue. Preserved or not, Mr. Campbell's sufficiency claim—like the sufficiency claim in (Ronald ) Wynn v. United States that "turn[ed] on a question of law and statutory construction" and that we reviewed de novo "in order to avoid affirming a conviction for conduct that was not a crime," 80 A.3d 211, 216–17 (D.C. 2013) —is the type of claim we have consistently afforded de novo review. Id. ; see also (Cotey ) Wynn v. United States , 48 A.3d 181, 187–88 (D.C. 2012) (conducting de novo review of a sufficiency claim where "[a]t bottom, we are called upon to determine the reach of the statute which prohibits obstruction of justice"); Jeffrey v. United States , 892 A.2d 1122, 1128 (D.C. 2006) (applying de novo review to an unpreserved sufficiency claim "[d]ue to the importance of the statutory interpretation issue").⁴ We therefore turn to the question whether D.C. Code § 25–1001, correctly interpreted, criminalized the conduct that the government proved Mr. Campbell engaged in. See ( Cotey ) Wynn , 48 A.3d at 188 ("We review issues of statutory construction de novo .").

B. The Meaning of "Parking Area" Under D.C. Code § 25–1001(a)(2)

Section 25–1001 of the D.C. Code makes it unlawful to "possess in an open container an alcoholic beverage in ... [a] vehicle in or...