Jensen v. State

• Decision Date: 01 July 1999
• Docket Number: No. 893,893
• Citation: 127 Md. App. 103,732 A.2d 319
• Parties: Dagmar Ellen JENSEN v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

732 A.2d 319

127 Md. App. 103

Dagmar Ellen JENSEN v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 893, Sept. Term, 1998.

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland.

July 1, 1999.

Byron L. Warnken (James A. Lanier, Law Offices of Bonnie L. Warnken, Baltimore, Charles F. Lettow, Timothy A. Vogel, L. Burton Davis and Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, Washington, DC, on the brief), for Appellant.

Regina Hollins Lewis, Asst. Atty. Gen. (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Atty. Gen, on the brief), Baltimore, for Appellee.

Argued before MOYLAN, SALMON, and THIEME, JJ.

SALMON, Judge.

On February 18, 1997, Theodore Daniels was murdered in his office in Woodlawn, Maryland. Dagmar E. Jensen, with whom Daniels had a business and romantic relationship, was arrested for the killing on March 27, 1997. She was tried from February 9 to February 11, 1998, before a jury in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County (Brennan, J., presiding). After the State presented its case, Ms. Jensen made a motion for judgment of acquittal that was denied. At the conclusion of the trial, the defense renewed its motion for acquittal, but the motion was again denied.

On February 17, 1998, the jury found Ms. Jensen guilty of the first degree murder of Daniels and the use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence. After appellant unsuccessfully made a motion for a new trial, the court sentenced appellant to life in prison for the murder conviction and five years concurrent for the handgun offense. Appellant filed a timely appeal and raises two issues for our review:

1. Whether limited, wholly circumstantial evidence of criminal agency is sufficient to sustain a conviction when that evidence is entirely consistent with a reasonable theory of innocence.

2. Whether the erroneous admission of prejudicial bad acts evidence constitutes plain error when such evidence not only precludes a fair trial but, in light of the insufficiency of the evidence, is likely the "but for" reason that the jury rendered a guilty verdict.

I. TRIAL TESTIMONY

Because the main issue in this case is whether the State presented sufficient evidence of Ms. Jensen's criminal agency, a detailed recitation of the circumstantial evidence against appellant is necessary.

A. The Relationship Between Dagmar Jensen and the Victim

Theodore Daniels was 57 years old, six feet tall, and weighed approximately 179 pounds at the time of his death; appellant was 48 years old, five feet four inches tall, and weighed 140 pounds. Daniels was self-employed at the time of his death and operated an insurance business called Prepaid Legal Services, as well as other businesses. Appellant was associated with Daniels in his Prepaid Legal Services business.

The Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration listed Daniels's residence as a home he owned with his wife in Woodlawn. At the time of his death, however, Daniels was living with a girlfriend in Sparks, Maryland. He also maintained a residence at 5312 Wayne Avenue near his Woodlawn, Baltimore County, office. Appellant lived in a row home in Baltimore City; she shared the home with a man who rented the top floor from her.

Appellant first met Daniels in November 1996 while she was exploring the possibility of joining his Prepaid Legal Services operation. By the first or second week of January 1997, their relationship became sexual. Daniels told appellant that he was still married but had been separated from his wife for approximately twenty years. Appellant asked Daniels repeatedly about where he lived, but he evaded these questions by telling her that if she were patient she would eventually see where he lived. Daniels once took her to his house on Wayne Avenue, but this visit did not allay her suspicions that he actually lived elsewhere. Daniels never told appellant about his residence in Sparks, Maryland.

Russell Johnson, a business associate of Daniels, testified that he had known Daniels for over thirty years and that he and Daniels had started the Prepaid Legal Services business together. Through the business, Johnson met appellant. Appellant told Johnson that she was having a personal as well as business relationship with Daniels and that she was dissatisfied with information that Daniels was giving her regarding his personal life. Especially annoying to Ms. Jensen was the fact that Daniels would not tell her where he lived. Appellant telephoned Johnson on multiple occasions to ask him if he had seen Daniels, had any contact with him, or knew why Daniels had not called or seen her.

Johnson learned of a disagreement between appellant and Daniels that occurred on Sunday, February 16, 1997, which was two days prior to Daniels's death. On that date, Daniels asked Johnson to fill in for him on a radio program that the two hosted to promote their Prepaid Legal Services business. Daniels told Johnson that he was with appellant at the time and that the two were "trying to work out some things."

B. The Scene of the Murder

Daniels's corpse was found in his business office located on the second floor of a two-story office building at 2133 Gwynn Oak Avenue in Woodlawn, Maryland. The building contained five separate businesses. The first floor housed a motorcycle shop and the Woodlawn Beauty Salon. These businesses had no direct access to the second floor of the building. Daniels's Prepaid Legal Services office, a civil process serving business, and the Something Sassy Hair Salon occupied the second floor. Access to the second story was limited to two entrances, one at street level at the front of the building and another at the top of a set of outdoor metal stairs located at the rear of the building. Both the front and rear entrances to the second floor had doors with deadbolt locks that required a key to unlock. One key operated both locks. Appellant did not have a key to the locks.

The front entrance to the building opened into a hallway that contained stairs leading to the second floor. The rear entrance was located next to a landing atop a metal staircase that led down to a parking lot behind the office building. The rear entrance had two doors—an unlocked aluminum storm door and a wooden interior door with a deadbolt lock. The interior door had three horizontal panes of glass in the upper half of the door. The lower border of the bottom pane was 38 inches above the landing. Each of the glass panes measured 11½ inches high by 22½ inches wide. The rear entrance opened directly into the common hallway shared by the businesses on the second floor of the building.

C. Daniels's Last Hour and Events Leading to the Discovery of His Body

On Tuesday, February 18, 1997, at approximately 7:30 p.m., the owner of the Something Sassy Hair Salon and one of her employees were leaving after closing the salon. The salon was next to Daniels's office space, which had two rooms—Daniel's office and a conference room. Both the owner and the employee of the hair salon checked the rear entrance of the building to make sure that it was locked. They found that the rear door was locked and that the window panes were intact. The salon owner, hearing Daniels's television playing in his office, knocked on Daniels's door. Daniels answered, and the owner told him that she was closing up and asked whether he wanted the front door locked. Daniels said that he was expecting a visitor and that she should leave the front door unlocked. When the salon owner and her employee left the building, they did not lock the front door.

On the evening of the murder, Theodore Daniels, Jr. (Daniels, Jr.), was driving home from evening classes at Morgan State University when he passed his father's office and noticed that the lights were on and his father's car was still parked in the rear parking lot. Thinking that his father was working, he decided to stop by for a visit. Daniels, Jr., could not be precise as to the time he arrived at the office except to say, "It had to be after 8:00." The front entrance was locked when he arrived so Daniels, Jr., used his own set of keys to enter the building. He then re-locked the front door. As he walked upstairs, Daniels, Jr., could hear that the television in his father's office was on at a very high volume. He arrived at the door to his father's office and found that it, too, was locked. He used one of his keys to unlock the office door and then found his father's body lying face down on the floor near the entrance. He turned his father's body over, called for emergency assistance, and attempted CPR, but the body was cold. He next heard the ambulance arrive so he went downstairs, unlocked the front door, and directed emergency personnel to his father's body.

At approximately 9:00 p.m., shortly after emergency personnel had arrived, police officers came to the scene and attempted to gain entrance to the building via the second floor back door. After ascending the rear stairs, these officers noticed that the pane of glass in the bottom window opening of the interior door had been broken,¹ that there were shards of glass lying on the floor both inside and outside the door (there was more glass on the exterior side of the door), and that there was blood smeared on the interior and exterior of the door and on the broken glass. The blood smears suggested that someone had been cut by the broken glass. The blood smears were heavier on the exterior portion of the door. It also appeared to the officers, based on where the glass landed, that the glass was broken from the inside of the building while the storm door was closed.

Because the interior rear door was locked, the officers attempted to kick open the door. This action jarred additional glass out of the broken window pane that landed on the hallway floor. Daniels, Jr., hearing the commotion, went out into the hallway and unlocked the rear door. Once the officers confirmed that Daniels was dead, they cleared the premises and secured the crime scene.

D. Evidence at the Crime Scene

When the officers arrived at Daniels's...