Dixon v. U.S.

• Decision Date: 18 October 1989
• Docket Number: No. 86-1480.,86-1480.
• Citation: 565 A.2d 72
• Parties: Evelyn L. DIXON, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

Page 72

565 A.2d 72

Evelyn L. DIXON, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.

No. 86-1480.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued March 8, 1989.

Decided October 18, 1989.

Bruce Clarke, Public Defender Service, with whom James Klein, Public Defender Service, was on the brief, for appellant.

Kevin A. Forder, Asst. U.S. Atty., with whom Jay B. Stephens, U.S. Atty., Michael W. Farrell, Asst. U.S. Atty. at the time the brief was filed and Helen M. Bollwerk, and G. Paul Howes, Asst. U.S. Attys., were on the brief, for appellee.

Before STEADMAN and SCHWELB, Associate Judges, and MACK, Associate Judge, Retired.^*

SCHWELB, Associate Judge:

Evelyn Dixon appeals from her conviction by a jury of voluntary manslaughter while armed, in violation of D.C.Code §§ 22-2405, 22-3202 (1989). Her prosecution followed the stabbing death of her husband, Charles Dixon, after Mr. Dixon, apparently under the influence of alcohol and PCP, had swung a steel pole in a destructive and allegedly threatening manner. Ms. Dixon acknowledged at trial that she had stabbed her husband. She denied intending to kill him, however, and contended that she had acted in self-defense.

Ms. Dixon's sole claim on appeal is that she was denied a fair trial as a result of alleged prosecutorial misconduct. Several of her contentions are made for the first time in this court. The trial judge, who was in the best position to assess the dynamics of events in the courtroom as they unfolded, and who candidly revealed that he would have voted for acquittal if he had been the trier of fact, found the prosecutor's performance at the trial, as well as that of defense counsel, to be exemplary.¹ We conclude that if anything was said or done in the heat of battle that would better have been left unsaid or undone, Ms. Dixon was not thereby denied a fair trial. Accordingly, we affirm her conviction.

I THE EVIDENCE

This case presents a particularly poignant illustration of the consequences of drug abuse on citizens of this community. As a result of irrational and assaultive conduct following his ingestion of PCP and alcohol, a young father is dead at the hands of his pregnant wife. Sadly, the life of a young mother with a previously spotless record has been interrupted by incarceration and by tragedy from which she will doubtless find it difficult ever to recover. Any humane judge can sympathize with Ms. Dixon in view of the tragedy that has befallen her and her children. The issue before us, however, is not sympathy. Rather, we must decide whether Ms. Dixon's conviction was secured in violation of her rights.

A. The government's case

Although different witnesses gave different accounts of exactly what occurred as the events leading to Charles Dixon's death unfolded, the government adduced evidence which, if believed by the jury, established the facts described below. In the afternoon of October 19, 1985, Mr. Dixon, having used both PCP and alcohol, became agitated and began to behave in irrational fashion. He accused his wife of having an affair with a neighbor's 22-year-old brother. In furtherance of these accusations, he apparently punched Ms. Dixon in the mouth and subjected her to other physical abuse. Ms. Dixon denied the accusation of infidelity. She eventually requested residents of a nearby apartment to come home with her and to support her denials. Two of the neighbors accompanied Ms. Dixon, and several other people, who had been "partying" nearby, joined the group at the Dixon apartment after they heard some commotion. Ms. Dixon's mother, Lossie Hart, was also there.

Ms. Dixon asked one of the neighbors to tell her agitated husband that she had not had an affair. Mr. Dixon, however, reacted by ordering the neighbor out. He produced a steel pole from behind the door. He held the pole like a baseball bat and then began to wave it about, knocking off the corner of a coffee table. He next swung the makeshift weapon in the direction of Ms. Dixon and her mother. The mother picked up a chair, but Mr. Dixon promptly knocked the chair out of her hand with the pole. Although precisely what happened next is sharply disputed, there was government evidence that Ms. Dixon, who had previously picked up a butcher knife, warned her husband not to "do anything to make me have to hurt you." Mr. Dixon continued to swing the pole at the furniture, however, and his wife lunged at him and stabbed him through the heart. She inflicted a wound five to six inches deep, and Mr. Dixon died shortly thereafter.

Later in the evening of the stabbing, Ms. Dixon gave a detailed statement to a homicide detective. She described her husband's false accusations of adultery, his substance abuse, and his assaultive conduct towards her on the day in question and on previous occasions. She gave the following description of the events immediately preceding the stabbing:

Then I told my mother about he threw me in the hallway by the closet and [she] told him not to put his hands on me again.

That's when he went over behind the door and grabbed this iron pole that was in the corner and started to swinging it at me and my mother. That is when I went into the back and got the kitchen knife.

He was standing by the window in the living room with the pole held back as if to hit my mother. And I told him if he hit her I was going to stab him with this knife.

So he went over by the door with the pole and asked Hope to leave. Hope said she thought he wanted to ask her something and he kept telling her to leave. And I told her she didn't have to leave because I was the one that told her to come up there.

And he took the pole and tore off the end of my coffee table. Me and my mother both told him to stop going around tearing up stuff. So he started swinging the pole again at me and my mother. And instead of hitting us, he put holes in the wall, tearing up the dining table and chairs.

Then he swung at my mother again and missed and hit the wall. Then I went up to him, standing with the knife pointed in his face, and told him if he hit my mother or tear up anything else in the house, I was going to stab him just as sure as my name is what it is tonight.

After describing further unsuccessful efforts by some of those present to calm her husband down, Ms. Dixon continued as follows:

Lee-Lee, Hope's sister, told him to give her the pole because he did not need the pole, but he wouldn't give it to her. He wouldn't give it to her.

Then he took the pole and hit my coffee table. That's when I went over — that's when I went over there and stuck the knife in him.

She related that at the time when she stabbed Mr. Dixon, "he was holding the pipe down because he had just hit the table with it."

B. The defense case

At trial, Ms. Dixon testified in her own defense. She described how her husband had thrown her against the wall, a closet door, and the bed, and had torn off two of her buttons. Subsequently, during the confrontation that led to the stabbing, her husband threatened, while swinging the pole, to "bust" her head and her mother's head. Although Mr. Dixon never hit her or her mother, he only missed by an inch with three separate blows. Indeed, Ms. Dixon thought that a swing with the pole that struck a table was intended for her. Afraid that her husband was going to kill her,² she stabbed him with a knife. She denied that she had intended to kill him. On cross-examination, Ms. Dixon admitted putting the knife next to her husband's face and threatening to stab him "as sure as my name is what it is tonight" if he hurt her mother or broke up the furniture. She also admitted not having told the police that Mr. Dixon had swung the pole at her and missed by an inch immediately before the stabbing.

II LEGAL DISCUSSION

A. The legal standard

Ms. Dixon's appeal being predicated entirely on her allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, we outline the applicable legal principles. We must first determine whether the prosecutor's words or acts constituted misconduct. Hammill v. United States, 498 A.2d 551, 554 (D.C. 1985); Sherrod v. United States, 478 A.2d 644, 655 (D.C. 1984). If misconduct has occurred, then, viewing the events in context, we must consider the gravity of the misconduct, its relationship to the issue of guilt, the effect of any corrective action by the trial judge, and the strength of the government's case. Hammill, supra, 498 A.2d at 554. Where the defendant has properly preserved her objections, we must determine

whether we can say with fair assurance, after all that has happened without stripping the erroneous action from the whole, that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error.

(Philip) Dyson v. United States, 418 A.2d 127, 132 (D.C. 1980); Hammill, supra, 498 A.2d at 554. Where the defendant has failed to object, on the other hand, we will reverse her convictions only if the misconduct so clearly prejudiced her substantial rights as to jeopardize the fairness and integrity of her trial. Sherrod, supra, 478 A.2d at 655; Watts v. United States, 362 A.2d 706, 709 (D.C. 1976) (en banc). The Supreme Court has cautioned that reversal for plain error in cases of alleged prosecutorial misconduct should be confined to "particularly egregious" situations. United States v. Young, 470 U.S. 1, 15, 105 S.Ct. 1038, 1046, 84 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985).³

We must also bear in mind that an appellate court's assessment of the dynamics of a trial is limited to what can be discerned from a cold record. As we recognized in Smith v. United States, 315 A.2d 163, 167 (D.C.), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 896, 95 S.Ct. 174, 42 L.Ed.2d 139 (1974):

It is peculiarly within the knowledge of the trial judge whether remarks of counsel during the trial tend to prejudice the cause of a party. The courtroom atmosphere, prior remarks which have provoked the questioned statements, and other factors which cannot be appraised by a reviewing court may render remarks of counsel innocuous, although they may appear viciously...