People v. Littlejohn
| Decision Date | 30 October 2013 |
| Citation | 974 N.Y.S.2d 77,2013 N.Y. Slip Op. 07063,112 A.D.3d 67 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE, etc., respondent, v. Darryl LITTLEJOHN, appellant. |
| Court | New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Lynn W. L. Fahey, New York, N.Y. (William Kastin of counsel), for appellant.
Charles J. Hynes, District Attorney, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Leonard Joblove and Victor Barall of counsel), for respondent.
WILLIAM F. MASTRO, J.P., L. PRISCILLA HALL, PLUMMER E. LOTT, and SANDRA L. SGROI, JJ.
MASTRO, J.P.
On this appeal by the defendant from a judgment convicting him of murder in the first degree, we principally are called upon to determine whether the introduction at trial of certain evidence of other crimes committed by the defendant, for the purpose of proving the defendant's identity as the killer, constituted reversible error. We conclude that while some of the challenged evidence was improperly admitted, the error was harmless and did not deprive the defendant of a fair trial.
The Murder of Imette St. Guillen
At approximately 4:00 a.m. on February 25, 2006, 24–year–old graduate student Imette St. Guillen was the lone remaining patron at The Falls, a bar in Manhattan that was in the process of closing for the night. She was last seen alive after she finished her drink at the bar, and was escorted out of the establishment by the defendant, a bouncer employed at The Falls, and another employee who went directly home. According to the defendant's own subsequent statements to the police, in order to facilitate his job as a bouncer, he falsely told people at The Falls that he was a federal marshal. The defendant admitted that shortly before he escorted the intoxicated St. Guillen out of the establishment, he had untruthfully informed her that he was a United States marshal.
At approximately 8:30 p.m. on that same date, St. Guillen's lifeless body was discovered in a vacant, overgrown lot in a desolate area at the intersection of Fountain Avenue and Seaview Avenue, near the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn. St. Guillen's body was wrapped in a quilt which had been taped closed at both ends. A sock had been stuffed in her mouth while she was still alive, and packing tape had been wrapped around her head from her eyebrows to her chin. Her wrists had been bound together behind her back with three plastic zip ties, and her feet had been bound together with what appeared to be a dark-colored shoelace. An automobile snow brush that was lying on the ground at the foot of the quilt also was recovered from the scene. The cause of death was determined to be asphyxia by compression of the neck and occlusion of the mouth and nose. The injuries on the body indicated that St. Guillen had resisted her attacker, and tears in the area of her vagina and anus were found to be consistent with a sexual assault. Medical experts estimated that St. Guillen was killed between one and three hours after she consumed her last alcoholic beverage on February 25, 2006.
The evidence at trial further revealed that the defendant's DNA was found on one of the zip ties used to bind St. Guillen's wrists, as well as on the automobile snow brush found next to her body. DNA from the defendant's mother and from the defendant's brother was found on the quilt in which St. Guillen's body had been wrapped. Carpet fibers and two different types of animal hair found on the quilt and on the tape that had been wrapped around St. Guillen's head were consistent with samples taken from the defendant's basement apartment in Jamaica, Queens, and from a van that he used. Moreover, approximately one hour before St. Guillen's body was discovered, a witness observed a van, which generally matched the characteristics of the van used by the defendant, at the remote location where the body was found. The same witness observed a man using a cellular phone while seated inside the vehicle. An investigation of the defendant's cellular phone calling records for that time period revealed that the call activity was consistent with the defendant's phone having traveled from the vicinity of his residence in Queens to the vicinity of the body's location in Brooklyn, and then returning to the vicinity of the defendant's residence.
The Evidence of Other Crimes
In addition to the foregoing evidence and other proof, including inconsistent statements made by the defendant during the investigation and evidence that he attempted to set up a false alibi for the day of the killing, the prosecution sought to introduce evidence of other crimes committed by the defendant on its case-in-chief. The evidence of other crimes, consisting of an uncharged sexual assault and a kidnapping, was offered to help establish the defendant's identity as the killer of St. Guillen pursuant to the modus operandi exception to the general prohibition against evidence of other crimes set forth in People v. Molineux, 168 N.Y. 264, 61 N.E. 286. The trial court granted the prosecution's application.
In the first such incident, which occurred on October 16, 2005, the assailant, while driving a vehicle and dressed in a uniform suggesting that he was a member of law enforcement, accosted a young, unaccompanied woman (hereinafter M.S.) at approximately 5:05 a.m. as she was walking in the vicinity of Queens Boulevard near the 67th Avenue subway stop. The assailant repeatedly asked M.S. if she had identification and then exited the vehicle and approached her. M.S., believing that the assailant was an immigration officer, stopped to speak with him. The assailant grabbed her from behind, handcuffed her wrists behind her back, pushed her into the back seat of the vehicle, and covered her with a black jacket. He drove for approximately 10 minutes to another location in Queens and then escorted her into what she believed was a basement apartment. After removing some of her clothes, he taped a knit cap around her head so that she remained unable to see, wrapping the tape around “[m]any times.” The assailant handcuffed M.S. to a bed and then orally sodomized her and sexually assaulted her “in more than one way.” M.S. did not resist her attacker because she was afraid. The assailant subsequently cleaned her genital area with what appeared to be alcohol and forced her to rinse her mouth with some type of bitter mouthwash. He then gave M.S. a T-shirt and a pair of shorts to wear. He removed the knit cap and tape from her head but kept her head covered and drove her to an area near an address that she provided, where he let her out of the vehicle. Although M.S. was unable to identify the defendant as her assailant from a lineup that she viewed several months after the incident, a circumstance that she attributed to the fact that she was blindfolded during virtually the entire incident, the defendant's appearance was largely consistent with the general description she provided of her attacker. Moreover, a forensic analysis of the T-shirt she was given to wear revealed that it contained DNA from the defendant's mother.
In the second incident, which occurred in the vicinity of the Van Wyck Expressway near Jamaica, Queens, at approximately 3:30 p.m. on October 19, 2005, a college student (hereinafter S.W.) was walking home from school alone when a man whom she identified as the defendant approached her. The defendant “looked like an officer of the law,” as he was wearing dark blue police-issue pants, a blue jacket, combat boots, a belt equipped with handcuffs, a radio, and a gun, and a dark blue shirt and blue cap, both of which bore the words “Fugitive Agency” in yellow lettering. The defendant asked for her identification and, after she gave it to him, he looked at it briefly and then handcuffed her wrists together behind her back. When S.W. asked if she could call someone, the defendant responded that she could not, took her phone, and pushed her into a dark blue van that was parked nearby. Once inside, S.W. realized that the defendant was not a police officer. As the defendant drove, S.W. pushed herself up from the floor behind the passenger seat and managed to open the van door and call for help. The defendant then stopped the van, punched S.W. in the head two or three times, forced her to lie back down on the floor, and covered her with a jacket. The defendant resumed driving, but after a brief period, S.W. again succeeded in opening the van door and then pushed herself out of the moving vehicle and onto a street where children were playing. The van briefly slowed, but then drove off. Police subsequently responded to the scene and removed the handcuffs from S.W. The defendant's DNA was found on the handcuffs. A few months later, in March 2006, S.W. was watching a news report on the television and saw the same van that had been used in her abduction. She contacted the police, who brought her to a van at the defendant's residence. A search warrant was issued for the van, and S.W.'s DNA was found on a seat cushion recovered from the vehicle. The defendant's DNA also was found on various items removed from the van.
After evidence of each of the foregoing incidents was presented, the trial court provided the jury with a limiting instruction, noting that the evidence could be considered solely on the question of proving the identity of the perpetrator in this case, and not for the purpose of proving the defendant's criminal propensity or for any other purpose. The jury convicted the defendant of murder in the first degree.
Analysis
At the outset, we reject the defendant's challenges to the admission of the cellular phone tracking evidence adduced at his trial. Contrary to the defendant's contention, the Supreme Court properly denied his request for a Frye hearing ( see Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013) with regard to this evidence, since the expert testimony proffered by the prosecution did not concern a novel scientific theory, technique, or procedure, but instead involved deductions made from cell phone site data in a manner consistent with a...
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