People v. Owens
| Docket Number | Supreme Court Case No. 08SA402 |
| Decision Date | 25 March 2024 |
| Citation | 544 P.3d 1202,2024 CO 10 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Sir Mario OWENS, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Colorado Supreme Court |
Certiorari to the District Court, Arapahoe County District Court Case No. 06CR705, Honorable Gerald J. Rafferty, Judge
Attorneys for Plaintiff-Appellee: Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General, John T. Lee, First Assistant Attorney General, Katharine Gillespie, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Denver, Colorado
Attorneys for Defendant-Appellant: Goodreid Grant & Walta LLC, Mark G. Walta, Littleton, Colorado
Todd E. Mair, Denver, Colorado
Reppucci Law Firm, P.C., Jonathan D. Reppucci, Denver, Colorado
¶1 Pursuant to the capital defendants’ unitary review process then in effect, Sir Mario Owens directly appealed to this court his convictions of two counts of first-degree murder after deliberation, one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder after deliberation, three counts of witness intimidation, and one count of accessory to a crime, which convictions resulted in a death sentence. Thereafter, our General Assembly abolished the death penalty, and Governor Jared Polis commuted Owens’s sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Although we consequently determined that the unitary review process no longer applied in this case, we chose to retain jurisdiction over this appeal.
¶2 Owens now presents six issues for our determination: (1) whether the trial court constitutionally erred in preventing him from conducting voir dire on racial issues and in prohibiting him from informing the jury of the race of one of the victims; (2) whether the trial court reversibly erred in rejecting his challenges under Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), after the prosecution consecutively struck two death-qualified prospective Black jurors; (3) whether the trial court abused its discretion in admitting, under the res gestae doctrine and CRE 404(b), allegedly excessive evidence of prior, related shootings that occurred in Lowry Park; (4) whether the trial court erroneously refused to declare a mistrial following a witness’s outbursts and her repeated declarations from the stand that Owens was guilty; (5) whether the trial court’s exclusion of extrinsic evidence to impeach that same witness constituted an abuse of discretion and prevented Owens from presenting a complete defense; and (6) whether Owens was denied a fair trial under the cumulative error doctrine.
¶3 We now conclude that the trial court (1) did not prevent Owens from conducting voir dire on potential racial bias and did not constitutionally err in declining to inform the jury of the race of one of the victims; (2) properly overruled Owens’s Batson challenges; (3) properly admitted evidence of the Lowry Park shootings under CRE 404(b) and CRE 401-403; (4) properly denied Owens’s mistrial motions; and (5) allowed sufficient cross-examination and impeachment of the prosecution’s key witness while reasonably excluding extrinsic evidence of collateral matters. Having thus determined that Owens has not established any individual errors warranting reversal, we further conclude that he has not established reversible cumulative error.
¶4 Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of conviction.
¶5 To address the issues that Owens raises in this appeal, we must first describe the Lowry Park shootings, which Javad Marshall-Fields, one of the victims in this case, had witnessed. Marshall-Fields intended to testify to what he had witnessed, but he was shot and killed to prevent him from doing so. Vivian Wolfe, Marshall-Fields’s girlfriend, was with him at the time and was also shot and killed. These later shootings, which the parties refer to as the Dayton Street shootings, resulted in the charges and convictions now before us.
¶6 On July 4, 2004, Owens fatally shot Gregory Vann following an altercation at a concert in Lowry Park. Owens tried to flee by getting into the passenger seat of his best friend’s, Robert Ray’s, Suburban. Ray had also attended the concert and had been part of the melee that resulted in Vann’s death. When Elvin Bell, who was Vann’s brother, and Marshall-Fields tried to pull Owens out of the vehicle, Ray exited and walked around to the passenger side and shot them. (Both Bell and Marshall-Fields survived these shootings.) Owens and Ray then left the park in Ray’s vehicle.
¶7 After leaving the park, Ray yelled at Owens for shooting Vann and asked why he did not just shoot in the air. Owens apparently did not respond.
¶8 Thereafter, Owens and Ray sought to conceal their involvement in these shootings, and with the help of Ray’s wife, Latoya Sailor Ray ("Sailor"), they disposed of certain evidence (e.g., the Suburban, guns, and clothes) that might have connected them with the shootings.
¶9 Over the days following the shootings, Owens and Ray hid in motels and in friends’ houses. During this period, the two learned from television broadcasts that several witnesses had provided descriptions of them and of Ray’s vehicle. At least some of these descriptions also noted Owens’s braids. Owens thus changed his appearance by shaving his head.
¶10 In the meantime, with the help of Askari Martin, who had recognized Ray from high school, and Marshall-Fields, the police identified Ray as the driver of the Suburban. The police thus arrested Ray, charged him as an accessory to the Lowry Park shootings, and continued looking for the second shooter.
¶11 Ray was eventually released on bond, and while he was preparing for his trial, he was able to review a discovery packet that his attorney had provided to him. He, Sailor, and Owens went through this packet and learned that it was Martin and Marshall-Fields who had given statements to the police identifying Ray as the driver. Owens and Ray further learned that neither witness had identified Owens by name. Owens then told Ray that he was going to take care of Marshall-Fields so that Ray would not go to prison. Owens also told Sailor, or said in her presence, "Snitches, shit, they need to die."
¶12 Several months later, Sailor saw Marshall-Fields at a club in downtown Denver. When Sailor informed Owens that she had seen Marshall-Fields, Owens asked why she did not set him up or get him alone so that Owens could come down and "do something to him." Owens told Sailor to call him the next time that she saw Marshall-Fields.
¶13 Although Owens wanted to confront Marshall-Fields in person, Ray took a different approach. Ray told one of his friends, Jamar Johnson, that he was trying to offer Martin and Marshall-Fields $10,000 to prevent them from testifying but if that did not work, then Ray would pay Johnson $10,000 to kill them. Several months later, Ray again offered Johnson $10,000, this time to kill only Marshall-Fields, because by that time, Ray believed that Martin "ain’t no more" or "was gone."
¶14 Ray’s belief that he no longer had to worry about Martin appears to have derived from (or, at least, was confirmed by) a conversation that Ray had with Martin after a court hearing that Martin had attended. During this conversation, Martin told Ray that he did not want to "snitch" and that although the prosecution was attempting to force him to do so, he was not going to do it. After this interaction, Ray told Sailor that he was not too worried about Martin’s testifying anymore, and Martin never appeared in court again.
¶15 Ray continued to be concerned, however, about Marshall-Fields’s identifying him as the driver, and in June 2005, while Sailor was attending a barbecue, Ray called her to ask if she had seen Marshall-Fields there. Sailor responded that she had. Ray arrived shortly thereafter, and Johnson met him there. The two saw Marshall-Fields leave, and Ray told Johnson that he (Ray) believed that Marshall-Fields was still planning to testify against him and that he would "take things into his own hands."
¶16 At some point after that, Sailor received a call telling her that Owens had been arrested and later released. After Owens was released, he told Sailor that the police had seized from the backseat of the car that he was driving t-shirts that Owens and Ray had purchased after the Lowry Park shootings. These t-shirts said, "[S]top snitching, rest in peace."
¶17 Apparently the same day that Owens was released, an acquaintance of his, Parish Carter, approached Marshall-Fields at a sports bar and told him, "[T]hey looking for you on the street homey." The next day, which was a week before Ray’s Lowry Park trial was to begin, Marshall-Fields and Wolfe were killed in a drive-by shooting on Dayton Street in Aurora.
¶18 In the weeks that followed, witnesses identified Owens as the person who had shot and killed Vann at Lowry Park. Witnesses also provided the police with information about the Dayton Street shootings. With this information, the People charged Owens in connection with the Lowry Park shootings and separately in connection with the Dayton Street shootings.
¶19 Owens went to trial for the Lowry Park shootings first, and he was convicted and sentenced to life plus sixty-four years in prison. He then faced trial on, as pertinent here, two counts of first-degree murder after deliberation, one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder after deliberation, three counts of witness intimidation, one count of accessory to a crime, and one count of aggravated intimidation of a witness arising from the Dayton Street shootings.
¶20 Before the Dayton Street trial began, Owens filed two motions in which he sought (1) extended individual voir dire on...
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