McDaniel v. Commonwealth

• Decision Date: 29 June 2021
• Docket Number: Record No. 0153-20-2
• Citation: 858 S.E.2d 828,73 Va.App. 299
• Parties: Lemar Jason MCDANIEL, Jr. v. COMMONWEALTH of Virginia
• Court: Virginia Court of Appeals

73 Va.App. 299

858 S.E.2d 828

Lemar Jason MCDANIEL, Jr.

v.COMMONWEALTH of Virginia

Record No. 0153-20-2

Court of Appeals of Virginia.

JUNE 29, 2021

Daniel W. Hall (Law Office of Daniel W. Hall, on brief), for appellant.

A. Anne Lloyd, Assistant Attorney General (Mark R. Herring, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.

Present: Chief Judge Decker, Judges Beales and Athey

OPINION BY CHIEF JUDGE MARLA GRAFF DECKER

Lemar Jason McDaniel, Jr., appeals his convictions for second-degree murder, use of a firearm in commission of a felony, and concealment of a body. The appellant argues that the trial court erred by admitting expert testimony about blood spatter evidence. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the trial court acted within its discretion by admitting the testimony. Consequently, we affirm the convictions.

I. BACKGROUND¹

This case arises from the death of Devin Harrison. She and the appellant were involved in a romantic relationship for about four months, and he lived with her for a time at her home.

Harrison was last seen alive on July 30, 2018. On that day, the victim and the appellant went to a store together around 11:00 a.m.² During lunchtime, Harrison's next-door neighbor heard Harrison arguing from inside her home. She heard only Harrison's voice and did not hear the voice of the person with whom she argued. Later that same afternoon, a different neighbor saw the appellant in the street by the victim's car. He was "messing with" clothes in the back of the vehicle.

That same day, when Harrison went missing, her mother received a text from her mobile phone number indicating that she and the appellant had ended their relationship. The victim's mother expected Harrison to come by her house that day, but Harrison never did. Her mother sent Harrison text messages repeatedly throughout the next day, July 31, 2018, but received no response. Harrison's father called the police and reported her missing.

On the afternoon of July 31, 2018, Harrison's parents went to her home to check on her welfare. While they were there, the appellant met them outside the house. The victim's father forced open the back door and let the mother and the appellant inside. Chairs in the dining room had been overturned, the house was "tor[n] up," and there was a mop and a bucket in the hallway. The house smelled of bleach or a cleaning solvent. Despite the apparent attempt at cleaning, some blood was still in the house, including a large amount of Harrison's blood on her mattress. Harrison was nowhere in the house. Her car was also missing, and her trash can was gone from the back of the house.

Harrison's father described the appellant's demeanor as "nonchalant" while they searched the house for her. During the search, the father threatened to kill the appellant if he had harmed Harrison, but the appellant denied any wrongdoing. After that conversation, the appellant entered Harrison's bedroom crying. He encountered her mother there and stopped crying after she asked why he would be crying if he had not done anything wrong. At around 3:00 p.m., Harrison's parents drove the appellant to the police station for an appointment and left him there.

After parting ways with the appellant, Harrison's mother received multiple text messages from Harrison's phone number. The first stated only "Mom," and the second was "I need your help." That evening, she received another text from Harrison's phone number stating that she had cut herself badly, a man had helped her, and that he had driven her to Pittsburgh. Later text messages indicated that Harrison was somewhere in Petersburg but, according to the text, Harrison did not know precisely where she was and needed help. Harrison's mother found this message "unusual" because Harrison was familiar with Petersburg from formerly living there. Previously, the victim and her mother had established a code of texting the word "brown" in case of trouble, and the victim had used the signal with her mother before. However, none of the July 31, 2018 texts purportedly from Harrison included the word "brown," suggesting that she was not actually the person sending them.

Later that same day, the police found Harrison's dead body in her back alley in a trash can a few houses from her residence. A garbage bag found beneath the body contained documents related to court proceedings involving the appellant. The documents included an arrest warrant for damaging Harrison's car window, an arrest warrant for assault and battery of Harrison, a protective order for Harrison against the appellant, the appellant's recognizance bond order for him to appear for a July 31, 2018 hearing, and a subpoena for Harrison to appear in court as a witness in the appellant's assault and battery case.

That same night, the police went to the appellant's home. The appellant showed the officers around the house. In an upstairs bedroom, the police noticed a pair of white tennis shoes with what appeared to be blood on them. At this time, the appellant denied knowing that Harrison was missing. He told the police that he had not seen her in four days.³ The appellant also said that he had spoken with the victim online four days prior and she threatened to harm herself.

At trial, the Commonwealth introduced Angie Witt, a special agent with the Virginia Department of State Police, as an expert witness. Witt, employed by the state police since 1993, testified to her training in the field of blood spatter analysis and prior instances in which she had qualified to testify as an expert witness in that field. Witt based her conclusions in this case on her examination of photographs taken by a crime scene technician. The appellant made a motion to exclude Witt's testimony. The trial court found that Special Agent Witt qualified as an expert in the field of blood spatter based upon her education, training, and experience. The court further concluded that the subject matter was beyond the knowledge and experience of an ordinary person such that expert testimony was appropriate. Witt gave three opinions based on the evidence. First, she concluded that the blood on the appellant's shoe had dropped from a nearly ninety-degree angle above it based on the round shape of the bloodstain. Second, Witt opined that the mattress had a saturation stain from a large amount of blood. Third, she explained that the blood in the car was "transfer[red]," meaning that something with blood on it came into contact with the vehicle.

The Commonwealth introduced evidence that DNA testing of the blood on one of the shoes and on the mattress indicated that it was Harrison's blood on both items. In addition, it presented testimony that the appellant could not be eliminated as a contributor from the DNA collected from underneath the victim's fingernails.

On the day that the victim's body was found, when speaking with the appellant, Detective James Higgins of the City of Richmond Police Department noticed scratches on his body. At a later police interview, the appellant denied killing Harrison and suggested that the blood got on his shoe when he walked through her house with her parents. He also claimed that the last time he had spoken with the victim was about a week prior to her death. At the time of Harrison's death, the appellant was under court order to avoid all contact with her.

The Commonwealth's theory of the case was that the appellant killed Harrison so she could not testify against him in court the following day. The prosecutor argued that the blood dripped on the appellant's shoe as he moved the body.

The jury convicted the appellant of second-degree murder, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and concealment of a body, in violation of Code §§ 18.2-32, -53.1, and -323.02. The trial court imposed the jury's sentence of forty-four years in prison.

II. ANALYSIS

The appellant argues that the trial court abused its discretion by permitting Special Agent Witt to testify as an expert witness on blood spatter evidence. He sets forth two assignments of error that relate to three arguments. First, he contends that Witt was not qualified to testify as an expert in blood spatter. Second, he argues that the Commonwealth failed to establish that she had an adequate background to render an opinion based on photographs. Third, he suggests that the foundation for her analysis was based in part on facts not in evidence.

"The admission of expert testimony is committed to the sound discretion of the trial judge," and the appellate court will not reverse that court's decision unless it "has abused its discretion."

Brown v. Corbin, 244 Va. 528, 531, 423 S.E.2d 176 (1992) ; see Wakeman v. Commonwealth, 69 Va. App. 528, 535, 820 S.E.2d 879 (2018), aff'd, 298 Va. 412, 838 S.E.2d 732 (2020). This "deferential standard" means that "a ‘trial judge's ruling will not be reversed simply because an appellate court disagrees.’ " Campos v. Commonwealth, 67 Va. App. 690, 702, 800 S.E.2d 174 (2017) (quoting Thomas v. Commonwealth, 44 Va. App. 741, 753, 607 S.E.2d 738, adopted upon reh'g en banc, 45 Va. App. 811, 613 S.E.2d 870 (2005) ). Only in those cases in which "reasonable jurists could not differ" does the record support the conclusion that an abuse of discretion occurred. Du v. Commonwealth, 292 Va. 555, 564, 790 S.E.2d 493 (2016) (quoting Grattan v. Commonwealth, 278 Va. 602, 620, 685 S.E.2d 634 (2009) ). "This bell-shaped curve of reasonability governing our appellate review rests on the venerable belief that the judge closest to the contest is the judge best able to discern where the equities lie." Id. (quoting Sauder v. Ferguson, 289 Va. 449, 459, 771 S.E.2d 664 (2015) ).

A. Expert Qualifications

The appellant argues that Special Agent Witt did not have the necessary background to qualify as an expert in blood spatter analysis. He relies in part on the expert qualifications described in the National Research Council's publication Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path...