Covington v. United States
| Decision Date | 07 July 2022 |
| Docket Number | 19-CF-814 |
| Citation | 278 A.3d 90 |
| Parties | Camille COVINGTON, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee. |
| Court | D.C. Court of Appeals |
Nancy E. Allen for appellant.
Sharon A. Sprague, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Michael R. Sherwin, Acting United States Attorney, and Elizabeth Trosman, Chrisellen R. Kolb, Nicole McClain, and Janani Iyengar, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee.
Before Beckwith and Deahl, Associate Judges, and Thompson,* Senior Judge.
Opinion by Associate Judge Beckwith, dissenting, at page 100.
Camille Covington was convicted of aggravated assault while armed after she used a knife to stab and slash Rosario Sanchez repeatedly in her face and neck. After the attack, Sanchez was transported to Howard University Hospital's emergency room where trauma surgeons acted quickly "to stop the bleeding," and then, to "repair" the damage. On appeal, Covington argues that there was insufficient evidence to support a finding that Sanchez suffered a "serious bodily injury." The government counters that it proved the "serious bodily injury" element of aggravated assault in two alternative ways: (1) that Sanchez suffered a "protracted and obvious disfigurement," and (2) that Sanchez endured "extreme physical pain."
We agree with the government on the first point and do not reach the second. Of the five cuts to Sanchez's face that required stitches, two were particularly prominent. One was about six centimeters in length, ran from Sanchez's right eyebrow up to her hairline, and required fourteen stitches. The deeper cut was about twelve centimeters, or twice the length of the first, ran from Sanchez's upper lip across her left cheek, and required stitches "in multiple layers" to ensure "that the scarring w[ould] be much less." The evidence as to those facial disfigurements was sufficient for reasonable jurors to conclude that they were protracted and obvious, so as to constitute a serious bodily injury. We therefore affirm.
Rosario Sanchez and Camille Covington both had young children who attended Truesdell Elementary School in Northwest D.C. The two women did not know each other personally, but they occasionally saw one another while dropping their children off at school in the morning. According to Sanchez's testimony, a few weeks prior to the attack, Covington bumped into her as they passed on the sidewalk outside of the school. Sanchez told Covington to "please say excuse me," and after that incident Covington gave Sanchez "dirty looks" and laughed at her when they saw each other. On the morning of the attack, Sanchez was walking away from the school after dropping off her son, and Covington was walking toward it with her child. As their paths crossed, Covington again bumped Sanchez, knocking her off the sidewalk and into the grass. Sanchez told Covington to "look where she was walking," which made Covington "very upset." Sanchez, a Spanish speaker who testified through an interpreter, did not understand everything that Covington said, but testified that Covington responded by "yelling," "screaming," and "gesturing" at her. The two women then continued on their separate ways—Sanchez to her bus stop, and Covington toward the school.
About five minutes later, while Sanchez was waiting for her bus, she felt someone come up from behind her, pull her hair, punch her in the stomach, and then begin to deliver "blows" to her face. She recognized her assailant as the same woman who bumped into her, whom she would later identify as Covington. At first, Sanchez did not realize that she was being attacked with a knife, only that the blows were "breaking her face." Her "eyes filled with blood" streaming from her forehead, and she had to wipe her eyes so that she was able to see. Sanchez testified that she was "left ... breathless" from the initial punch to her stomach and had to "hold[ ] onto [Covington's] shoulders" to avoid falling to the ground. Sanchez also testified that during the attack, Covington repeatedly said that she "did not like Hispanic women."
As the attack continued, Antonio Guzman and his brother, Roberto Guzman, drove by in their truck. They saw Covington attacking Sanchez, who was crying out for help, and heard Covington "saying, get out of my face," about six times. The brothers parked and exited their car, and Roberto yelled for Covington to stop, warning that he would call the police. Covington stopped attacking Sanchez and began walking away from the scene, while Antonio followed her and Roberto stayed at the scene and called 911. When Covington noticed that Antonio was following her, she brandished a knife at him and said "don't follow me, motherfucker." Covington eventually got into the front passenger's seat of a car that was stopped at an intersection. The man in the driver's seat briefly exited "to try to scare" Antonio away, and then got back into the car with Covington and drove off. Antonio captured the car's license plate number and the driver was later identified as Matthew Brooks, Covington's next door neighbor.
Back at the scene, Sanchez's "head was really hurting" as she waited for an ambulance to arrive. She felt "very weak," knew that she was "losing a lot of blood, too much blood," and asked Roberto "please not to let her die." An ambulance came to the scene and rushed Sanchez to Howard University Hospital. When Sanchez arrived at the hospital, she was classified as on "yellow alert," though the evidence shed little light on what that meant. Sanchez was bleeding from the cuts to her face, of varying depths, and a cut on her neck. She was treated by Dr. Suryanarayana Siram, the head of the hospital's trauma center, who testified at trial. Dr. Siram described five cuts to Sanchez's face that required stitches, and one more superficial cut across her neck that did not. Three of the cuts to Sanchez's face were relatively small—one to two centimeters—though one of those had ruptured a blood vessel and was actively bleeding.
The other two cuts were substantially larger, measuring approximately six and twelve centimeters (or about two-and-a-half and five inches), respectively. The six-centimeter cut ran from underneath Sanchez's right eyebrow, straight up through her forehead, stopping just short of her hairline. The doctors used "[a]round 14" stitches to close up that wound. The deepest and longest cut was about twice as long, measuring roughly twelve centimeters, and it extended from Sanchez's upper lip diagonally and jaggedly across her face to her upper left cheekbone, past the outer corner of her left eye. Dr. Siram explained that it required "multiple layers" of stitches "so that the scarring w[ould] be much less." According to Dr. Siram, Sanchez's wounds were generally "very deep" and could not have been effectively treated at home, as there would have been a "[h]igh chance of infection and ongoing bleeding." Sanchez was discharged from the hospital later the same day. The record does not provide evidence about whether she was prescribed painkillers or other medications, or about any follow-up medical care for her wounds.
Covington was not identified as the assailant until nearly a year later. While police quickly found and questioned her neighbor, the getaway driver, he claimed that he gave an unknown woman a ride because she appeared to be in distress and was being followed by a man. Officers also put together a photo array that included Covington's picture and showed it to Sanchez two days after the attack, but when asked to identify her assailant, Sanchez "started crying" and did not identify anybody. It was not until early in the following school year that Sanchez again saw and recognized Covington at school drop off; she contacted police and subsequently identified Covington as her assailant.
Covington was tried on four charges. In relation to the attack on Sanchez, she was charged with: (1) assault with intent to kill while armed, (2) malicious disfigurement while armed, and (3) aggravated assault while armed, all of which were charged as "bias-related" crimes. Covington was also charged with (4) assault with a dangerous weapon in relation to her brandishing a knife at Antonio, while telling him not to follow her. The trial was focused primarily on the question of identity, as Covington maintained she was not the person who attacked Sanchez. At the close of the government's evidence, defense counsel made a motion for judgment of acquittal (MJOA), stressing that there had been no in-court identification of Covington as the assailant. The trial court denied the motion, highlighting Sanchez's out-of-court identification along with other evidence corroborating it. Aside from challenging the adequacy of the evidence as to her identification, defense counsel did not suggest the evidence was otherwise deficient in any respect as to the aggravated assault or the malicious disfigurement charge.
Defense counsel renewed her MJOA at the close of the defense case, and the trial court denied the motion as to all but the malicious disfigurement charge. As to that final charge, the trial court questioned, sua sponte, whether the government had elicited sufficient evidence of "permanent disfigurement" to support a malicious disfigurement conviction. While the government stressed that the jury could still see the scars on Sanchez's face during her trial testimony—nearly three years after the attack—the court concluded that the government failed to make "a record of any kind whatsoever about the scarring" still visible on Sanchez's face and failed to show "that it was tied to this incident." The court also asked the government what "serious bodily injury" Sanchez had suffered to support the aggravated assault charge, noting that element might be satisfied by "an injury that involves unconsciousness, extreme physical pain, [or] protracted and obvious disfigurement," amongst other things. In response,...
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