Short v. State

Decision Date19 July 2016
Docket NumberNo. 0576,0576
PartiesRONALD JEFFERSON SHORT v. STATE OF MARYLAND
CourtCourt of Special Appeals of Maryland

UNREPORTED

Krauser, C.J., Berger, Reed, JJ.

Opinion by Berger, 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.

Ronald Jefferson Short, appellant, was convicted by a jury sitting in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County of first-degree murder; use of a handgun during the commission of a crime of violence; wearing, carrying, or transporting a handgun; and two counts of possession of a regulated firearm after a disqualifying conviction.1 Appellant asks four questions on appeal:

I. Did the suppression court err when it denied appellant's motion to suppress three items seized by the police?
II. Did the trial court abuse its discretion when it admitted into evidence a recorded jail call between appellant and his girlfriend?
III. Did the trial court err when it admitted into evidence three videos from appellant's cell phone?
IV. Did the trial court err in denying appellant's motion for a new trial?

For the reasons that follow, we shall affirm the judgments.

FACTS

The State's theory of prosecution was that during the early morning hours of November 14, 2012, appellant lured Reginald Z. McNeil to an area in Mount Rainier, Maryland, where he shot and killed him because the victim had failed to pay for drugs appellant had "fronted" to him. Testifying for the State, among others, was a friend of the victim who was with him shortly before he was killed, appellant's girlfriend, appellant'sprison cell mate, and several police officers. The defense theory of the case was lack of criminal agency. Appellant presented no testimonial evidence. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, the following was established.

Andrea Stubbs testified that she knew the victim for about two weeks prior to the shooting. On the night preceding the murder, the victim picked up Stubbs and two others and they went to a motel. According to Stubbs, while at the motel, the victim received several phone calls from someone nicknamed "Bin Laden," who wanted to "meet up" with the victim. Stubbs understood that the meeting was for Bin Laden to "front [the victim] work," meaning that Bin Laden would give the victim "Molly"2 to sell and the victim would pay appellant later. The victim was reluctant to meet Bin Laden but Bin Laden was persistent. Indeed, Stubbs spoke to Bin Laden during one of the phone calls, and Bin Laden said he would pay Stubbs's rent if she brought the victim to him.

At some point the victim relented about meeting Bin Laden, and all four left the motel and drove to Mount Rainier where he had told the victim to meet him. They got lost at one point, and Stubbs spoke to Bin Laden for further directions. Eventually, they parked in an area where Bin Laden had instructed. The victim stepped outside the car, waited for a while, and then walked off. They waited for the victim to return, but he did not. They called himseveral times on his cell phone, but he never picked up. They eventually heard and saw emergency vehicles drive into the area.

At approximately 4:40 a.m., the police responded to the 3800 block of 37th Street in Mount Rainier in response to shots at the scene. The first officer on the scene found the victim lying on the ground near an alley. No one else was present. The victim was transported to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. The police recovered several .40 caliber shell casings and an unfired .40 caliber cartridge from the crime scene. Lieutenant Patrick Hampson of the Prince George's County Police Department, who supervised the murder investigation, testified that he spoke with Stubbs and the others in the car and learned that the victim had been on the phone with someone nicknamed Bin Laden before he was shot. Using the victim's phone records, the police tracked, by GPS, the last incoming phone number on the victim's phone to a phone located at 1854 Central Place in Washington, D.C.

Just after midnight on November 15, 2012, about 20 hours after the murder, Lieutenant Hampson and other officers went to the Central Place address - a two-story apartment house. Lieutenant Hampson and three officers went to the second floor apartment while several other officers went to the back of the house. The police at the back of the house saw a silhouette of a male figure looking out the second-floor, back window. The man turned back into the room after a gun was heard being racked. A short time later, the same man again returned to the window and looked out.

In the meantime, Lieutenant Hampson knocked on the door of the second floor apartment and heard inside the sound of a gun being "racked to load[.]" A male voice yelled, "[W]ho the fuck is it[?]" The lieutenant identified himself as a police officer, and the door opened. He spoke to an older woman, who identified herself as the leaseholder, Tara Sanders. She invited the lieutenant and the three officers inside.

Once inside, the lieutenant told Sanders that he wanted to speak to everyone in the apartment and Sanders called for everyone to come into the living room. Appellant and Tiara Payton, Sanders's daughter and appellant's girlfriend, emerged from Payton's bedroom, from which the police had seen the man looking out the back window. When the lieutenant asked appellant his name, he started to say "Bin" but stopped and said his name was Reginald Short. The lieutenant noticed that appellant's voice matched the voice he had heard when he had knocked on the door. The lieutenant told the group that someone appellant knew had been seriously injured, and he asked appellant if he would help them with the investigation by coming to the police station to look at a photograph. Appellant agreed. The lieutenant noticed that although appellant appeared "very laid back," he was in fact sweating profusely and shaking.

Lieutenant Hampson asked appellant if they could search him before he got in the police car, explaining that appellant would be riding unhandcuffed in the front seat with one of his detectives. Appellant agreed. As he held his arms out, appellant told the lieutenant that he had something in his back pocket that he had found earlier on the sidewalk. Thelieutenant removed from appellant's pocket a handgun magazine, which could hold 10 bullets. After the pat-down, appellant began walking towards the front door. The lieutenant picked up a cell phone from the table that appellant had had in his hand when he had walked out of the back bedroom. The lieutenant asked appellant if he would mind if he brought "it with me to the station so you have it after we're done talking[.]" Appellant said, "Cool." The lieutenant then walked appellant downstairs where he sat in the front seat of a police car and was driven to the police station.

Lieutenant Hampson returned to the apartment and spoke with Sanders and Payton. He asked if he could search the apartment and both agreed, signing consent forms that were admitted into evidence. The police found a .40 caliber Glock semi-automatic handgun and several unfired .40 caliber cartridges in a shoe box on the top shelf of the closet in Payton's bedroom. At the police station, appellant told the police his nickname was "Bin Laden" and gave his cell phone number, which matched the phone number of the incoming and outgoing calls to the victim's cell phone shortly before the victim was killed.

Payton testified that she lived with her mother and several others at the Central Place apartment, and appellant, whom she had dated for about five months before the murder, sometimes stayed there with her. On the night before the victim was shot, November 13, appellant was present at the apartment but left before midnight. When Payton woke up the next morning, appellant was again present. Just before the police arrived the next night, she and appellant had been in her bedroom and he had given her a gun. She gave the gun backto him, and he placed it in her closet. Several hours after appellant was taken to the police station, the police recorded a telephone call between appellant and Payton. In the conversation, appellant told her to put the gun in the trash can. He also told her that he had wanted to throw the gun out the window when the police had arrived, but the police were in the backyard.

Jamonte Bryant and appellant were cell mates at the Prince George's County Detention Center in Upper Marlboro for several months after appellant was arrested. Bryant testified that while they were roommates appellant had told him about a man he had killed. Appellant said he had "fronted" $2,000 worth of Molly to one of his clients. Appellant expected the man to pay him back in a certain time frame, and when he did not, he called him. The man said he did not have the money and suggested that appellant front him some more Molly. Appellant thought he "was being played" and wanted to get back at the man. The two agreed to meet in Mount Rainier. Once there, appellant had told the man to walk out to him because he had heard a woman "in the background," and appellant did not want "nobody to see[.]"

According to Bryant, appellant and the man met and shook hands. The man asked appellant for more Molly, and appellant caught the man off guard, shooting him with his Glock with an extended clip. Appellant said he "emptied the clip on him," focusing on hisface.3 At one point the gun jammed, and he pulled the slide back to unjam it. Appellant told Bryant that he got caught at his "baby mother's house," where he had tried to throw the gun into the backyard, but the police had surrounded the house. Bryant testified that he contacted the State's Attorney's Office with what appellant had told him in the hope that the State, in exchange for the above...

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