Jackson v. State
| Decision Date | 18 June 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 498,498 |
| Parties | JAMES POLK JACKSON v. STATE OF MARYLAND |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Circuit Court for Montgomery County
Case No. 132117C
UNREPORTED
Meredith, Berger, Salmon, James P. (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), JJ.
Opinion by Salmon, J.
*This is an unreported opinion, and it may not be cited in any paper, brief, motion, or other document filed in this Court or any other Maryland Court as either precedent within the rule of stare decisis or as persuasive authority. Md. Rule 1-104.
Appellant, James Polk Jackson ("Jackson"), was indicted in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, Maryland, and charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery. Following a jury trial, where he was tried along with his co-defendant, Ruben Ortiz, appellant was convicted of the lesser included offense of second-degree murder.1 After he was sentenced to thirty years' imprisonment, he timely appealed and asks us to answer the following questions:
For the following reasons, we shall affirm.
On the evening of May 27th into the morning of May 28, 2017, Shanee Cox ("Cox") and her boyfriend2, Ruben Ortiz ("Ortiz"), were selling marijuana in downtown SilverSpring, Maryland. After exchanging phone numbers with a group of potential buyers, Cox and Ortiz went to the grounds of the Days Inn ("the hotel") on 13th Street in Silver Spring to complete the sale of marijuana to those prospective purchasers. When Ortiz displayed the marijuana, the group of "purchasers" told him to walk into an alley. While in the alley, the "purchasers" grabbed the marijuana and punched Ortiz in the face. Ortiz ran down the alley, away from his attackers. The attackers also fled, and Cox ran inside the hotel to call the police. After the police arrived, Ortiz emerged from the alley bleeding. He was missing both his shoes as well as the outer shirt he had been wearing over a T-shirt.
When the police left, Ortiz called his brother, Antonio, to tell him he had just been assaulted. Ortiz and Cox then walked back to the hotel because Ortiz wanted to confront his attackers and to recover what had been stolen. En route, they met with several other friends who offered their assistance. One of those friends was appellant.
Near the hotel, Ortiz saw one of the men who attacked him, standing outside a room while smoking a cigarette. The two began fighting. The other individuals with Ortiz and Cox rushed up to assist, and the first man ran back into his hotel room. As Ortiz's friends, including appellant, began banging on the hotel door, someone in the Ortiz group threw a stick through a window, shattering the glass. The Ortiz group did not get into the room, however, and eventually most of them left the hotel area when the police arrived. Nevertheless, the Ortiz group left someone to wait and watch the room until the police left.
Ortiz, appellant and others next entered into a plan to go back to the room that was occupied by the people who had stolen the marijuana, to get Ortiz's belongings.
After the police left the scene for the second time, Cox went to use the bathroom in a nearby restaurant. She returned to the hotel and saw appellant across the street, in the hotel's parking lot, talking to the man who was later murdered ("the victim"). While Cox stood with Ortiz and his brother, Antonio, Cox learned from Antonio that the victim told appellant he would return Ortiz's belongings. Nevertheless, Ortiz "was still upset" and "still wanted to fight."
Cox testified that she watched as the victim went back inside the hotel room, and then emerged with Ortiz's shoes and money, which he then proceeded to hand over to appellant. In response, appellant dropped the items and hit the victim in the face. Cox and the two Ortiz brothers then ran across the street and the Ortiz brothers joined appellant in attacking the victim.
During the fight, the victim fell down and Ortiz started trying to take the victim's shoes. At the same time, as Antonio Ortiz was kicking the victim, both Ortiz and appellant were punching the victim while he was down. The victim was not fighting back at that point and was "breathing heavily[.]" Cox saw the victim grab appellant's shirt in a failed attempt to get up and saw that the victim's face was covered in "a lot of blood." Appellant then "like yanked at [the victim's] hand to get him off his shirt . . . ." Cox explained that appellant was "like you know, like get off me, like nah, you're not getting up, type of thing." She then saw appellant punch the victim twice more in the face, before the victim managed to get up. But when the victim did so, he was bleeding and "struggling to breath[e]." As the victim walked towards his hotel room, Cox and her group left the scene.
Afterwards, Cox saw blood on appellant's shirt. Appellant announced to the group that he hoped the victim "doesn't die and stuff." It was at that point that Cox learned that appellant had stabbed the victim with a knife. Appellant confided to the group that he stabbed the victim "repeatedly," just below his ribcage. Appellant said he planned on going back to the scene because he threw away his knife in the bushes as he had fled. Appellant also admitted to Cox that he took the victim's watch. During her testimony, Cox was shown a surveillance video from the 7-11 convenience store located across the street from the Days Inn. From the video, she identified for the jury the participants in the fight. She also testified that she was originally charged in the subject case with murder but had entered a plea agreement with the State wherein she pled guilty to first-degree assault in exchange for her truthful testimony against Ortiz and appellant.
The State called Morgan Dailey, one of the correctional officers responsible for supervising appellant while he was in pretrial detention awaiting trial in this case. Correctional Officer Dailey testified that appellant, on July 2, 2017, told her that he "stabbed a man and killed him." Appellant then clarified that statement by asserting that he had stabbed the man in the stomach area, multiple times.3 After he stabbed the victim, appellant said that he threw the knife in a bush and ran away but went back to retrieve the knife the next day.
Officer Dailey also testified that appellant told her that she would "make a really good witness," and that he hoped she would not testify against him.
Correctional Officer Stephen Magliaro testified that appellant, on July 16, 2017, while in pretrial detention, told him he went to a hotel in Silver Spring and "stabbed the individual in the abdomen and chest area approximately 30 times." Appellant also told him that he had spoken to Officer Dailey, and that, if the officer were to tell anyone what she knew, "he would send somebody in his family after her."
We shall include additional details as to evidence introduced at trial, infra, as necessary to answer the questions presented.
Montgomery County Detective Dimitry Ruvin testified that when he responded to the scene of the stabbing, he heard over his radio a description of potential suspects. According to Ruvin, "[v]ia the clothing description and the generic description, it matched Antonio Ortiz."
Christopher Morefield, who was incarcerated in the detention center along with appellant, testified that he was on West 22 (the pod in which appellant was jailed) on July 2 and July 16, 2017, and that he did not observe appellant discussing his charges on those days or on any day in July. On cross-examination, Morefield admitted that he was not paying particular attention to any inmate's conversation with correctional officers.
At trial, appellant's counsel contended that Ms. Cox was a biased witness who should not be believed. Her bias was in favor of Ortiz because he was her boyfriend andthe father of her children. According to appellant's counsel, that bias motivated Cox to testify falsely that it was appellant who stabbed the victim. Appellant's counsel also maintained that appellant never confessed that he stabbed the victim to either of the correctional officers.
Appellant contends that the court erred in denying his motion to suppress statements he made to the aforementioned two correctional officers while incarcerated at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility ("MCCF") in Clarksburg, Maryland. He relies on Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966). The State responds that the Miranda decision is inapplicable because appellant was never subject to custodial interrogation and therefore the court properly denied his motion to suppress. At the hearing appellant called no witnesses; the State called two.
Officer Stephen Magliaro testified that at the time of appellant's confession to him, he was a "pod officer" in charge of approximately 64 inmates, but was neither a sworn police officer nor was he affiliated with the Montgomery County Police Department. Appellant was a "pod rep." The job of a "pod rep" is to make sure the "dorm is clean"; they also "give out trays to other inmates when feed-up comes out." In Magliaro's words, pod reps are "almost correctional officer helpers in the pods . . ." and are "out a little bit more than the rest of the inmates."
By July 16, 2017, Magliaro had established "rapport" with appellant, whom he had known for approximately six months at that time, due to a previous detention. In addition, on July 16,...
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