Poole v. State
| Decision Date | 13 September 2017 |
| Docket Number | No. 2400,2400 |
| Parties | BRYAN LAMONT POOLE v. STATE OF MARYLAND |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Circuit Court for Montgomery County
Case No. 74545C
UNREPORTED
Nazarian, Arthur, Zarnoch, Robert A. (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), JJ.
Opinion by Arthur, 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.
After he failed to come into work on Saturday, April 29, 1995, David Dior was found dead, with a single bullet wound to the back of his head, in his apartment in Silver Spring. His red BMW convertible was missing from its parking place. Appellant Bryan Lamont Poole, age 18, was the last person who was known to have seen him alive.
At about noon the next day, Poole was arrested in Hillcrest Heights, in Dior's BMW. Poole denied any involvement in Dior's murder.
After a thorough investigation, in which the police found some of Dior's personal effects hidden in Poole's apartment and identified two witnesses who said that Poole had implicated himself in the killing, the State charged him with first-degree murder and the use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence.
On December 1, 1995, a Montgomery County jury convicted Poole of both charges. The court sentenced Poole to life imprisonment for murder and a concurrent 20-year term for the handgun offense. This Court affirmed his convictions on direct appeal.
In a petition for post-conviction relief, Poole contended that he was deprived of the effective assistance of counsel because, he said, his trial counsel:
After a hearing, the Circuit Court for Montgomery County denied Poole's petition. He appealed. We affirm.
Poole's trial took place over four days, from November 27 through November 30, 1995. During the State's case-in-chief, which took three full days, the State called 22 witnesses and introduced more than 70 exhibits. In the words of the post-conviction court, "[T]he State carefully built its case against [Poole] brick-by-brick." We shall discuss some of the key evidence, as well as aspects of the closing arguments.
Markeith Harris was Dior's friend, business partner, and co-worker at the Hair Port, a salon on Georgia Ave., N.W., in Washington, D.C. While working at the salon on the evening of Friday, April 28, 1995, Mr. Harris saw Poole walk in and wait for Dior. He had seen Poole at the shop twice before. Mr. Harris left at about 9:00 p.m., when Dior was doing a customer's hair.
Dior was supposed to be at work at about 9:30 or 10:00 a.m. the following morning, but when Mr. Harris came in at noon, Dior had not arrived. Mr. Harris called his apartment, but there was no answer. An hour later, he called again, but there was still no answer. He called Dior's sisters and asked them to check on Dior. Later, he learned from them that Dior was dead.
Mr. Harris said that Dior was "like a brother" to him, but that Dior never lent him his BMW. He testified that Dior did not lend his BMW to anyone, "[n]ot even to family members."
Dior's sister, Denise Martin, testified that on the morning of Saturday, April 29, 1995, her sister called her to say that Dior had not shown up for work at the salon. Her sister was very concerned.
Ms. Martin went to her brother's apartment building in Silver Spring and spoke to the security guard, who said that he had not seen Dior that morning. She asked the security guard to call to see whether her brother was at home. There was no answer.
After going to the salon where her brother worked, Ms. Martin returned to her brother's apartment building with her sister Heather and her brother's co-worker, Mr. Harris. They asked the security guard to check Dior's parking spaces to see whether his cars were there. They learned that neither of his cars (the red BMW convertible and a Jeep Cherokee) were in their parking spots.
Ms. Martin became very concerned. She went up to her brother's apartment and found the door unlocked. She went into the apartment and saw nothing out of place. But when she went into the bedroom, she found him dead, on the floor, wrapped in a blanket.
Ms. Martin later learned that her brother's Jeep was in the shop. She was adamant that he never lent his BMW to anyone - not even to his closest friends.
Dior's other sister, Heather Thompson, testified that at about noon on Saturday, April 29, 1995, she learned from her brother's friend, Markeith Harris, that he had not shown up to work. She had a bad feeling. She called her sister, and they went to theapartment together, but Ms. Thompson remained in the car with her sister's child. When her sister returned, Ms. Thompson learned that her brother was dead.
According to Ms. Thompson, Dior never let anyone drive his BMW.
One of Dior's clients, Karen Moore, testified that she had an appointment with Dior on the evening of Friday, April 28, 1995. At about 9:20 p.m., while she was waiting for her hair to dry, she saw Poole come into the salon. She recognized Poole because she had seen him there about three weeks earlier.
When Poole arrived, Dior put him in a chair and trimmed his beard. When Ms. Moore left, she saw Dior drive away, up Georgia Avenue, N.W., toward Silver Spring, in his red BMW. Poole was with him.
Ms. Moore, who had known Dior for six years, said that she had never known him to lend his BMW to anyone.
Tanya Eastwood, the property manager at Dior's apartment building, testified that the only way to enter the building's parking garage was by using a magnetic key card or by being buzzed in by the front desk. Whenever the key card was used to enter or exit the garage, the time of use was electronically recorded. A person could exit the garage by using the key card, depositing a token or money into a cash machine, being buzzed out by the security guard, or tailgating another car. Ms. Eastwood stated that Dior's card was used to enter the garage at 10:25 p.m. on Friday, April 28, 1995. After that time, Dior's key card was not used to exit the garage.
Ms. Eastwood testified that she had seen Dior driving his BMW, but that she had never seen anyone else driving that car.
Officer Gregory Gill arrived at Dior's apartment at a little before 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 29, 1995. He found Dior's body, covered by two comforters. Near the body was a tube of lubricant. Beneath the body was a spent shell casing. From Dior's right hip, the officer collected some white powder, which was later identified as cocaine. On the night table, the officer found an empty condom wrapper.
Leon Frazier, a 16-year-old friend or acquaintance of Poole's,1 testified that on the night of April 28, 1995, Poole was driving a red BMW. Poole told him that he was going to buy the car from a "faggot" in Maryland for $15,000. He and Poole drove the car to a nightclub, where Poole showed the car to some young women.
Frazier said that Poole had a wallet, which apparently was Dior's. After the State refreshed Frazier's recollection by reading part of his grand jury testimony, he agreed that Poole showed him "the faggot's credit cards" and "the faggot's license."
Frazier testified that Poole asked him to "keep" a handgun for him. After the State refreshed his recollection again by reading part of his grand jury testimony, Frazier agreed that he had asked Poole why he wanted him to keep the gun and that Poole responded that "the police would probably come to his house looking for the gun."Although Frazier told the grand jury that Poole had shown him the gun (a silver, .25 caliber automatic with a white handle), he backed away from that testimony at trial. Instead, he claimed that Poole had described the gun as a silver .25 with a white handle. Frazier insisted that he refused to hold onto the gun for Poole.2
One of Poole's acquaintances, Ryan Powell, testified that in the early afternoon of Saturday, April 29, 1995, he saw Poole driving a red BMW in their neighborhood in Northeast Washington. Poole was with Leon Frazier.
When asked about the car, Poole said that it was his "people's car," meaning that it belonged to someone in his family. Powell noticed that Poole did not park the car in front of his own apartment even though there was space to park it there.
Powell saw Poole again between 11:00 p.m. and midnight on that Saturday evening, when they arranged to meet two young women at the women's house in Hillcrest Heights. As they were driving to the house in the red BMW, Powell asked Poole where he got the car. According to Powell, Poole said that he was buying the car from a "faggot" and had put a down payment on it.
Powell noticed that Poole could have used a main avenue to get to their destination, but that he chose to take "a lot of side streets." Powell claimed to have believed that Poole was buying the car until he started taking the side streets.
The following morning, when they were leaving the women's house, Poole reiterated that he was buying the car. He said that the seller's name was David. Powell asked Poole whether he had papers for the car, and Poole said that he did. Powell looked into the glove compartment and saw something that contained the name that Poole had given. Powell also looked into the backseat, where he said he saw credit cards.
Powell and Poole were arrested while they were sitting in the BMW outside of the women's house on Sunday, April 30, 1995. In...
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