Taylor v. State
| Decision Date | 05 January 2018 |
| Docket Number | No. 1174,1174 |
| Parties | MICHEAL TAYLOR v. STATE OF MARYLAND |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Circuit Court for Talbot County
Case No.: 20-K-15-10966
UNREPORTED
Meredith, Leahy, Zarnoch, Robert A. (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), JJ.
Opinion by Meredith, 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.
At the conclusion of a jury trial in the Circuit Court for Talbot County, Micheal Taylor, appellant, was convicted of sexual offense in the third degree and assault in the second degree. After sentencing, Taylor noted a timely appeal and presents us with the following four questions for our review:
Because we perceive no reversible error, we will affirm.
There was evidence at trial of the following. On April 26, 2015, the victim went out drinking in St. Michaels, Maryland, following a dinner with her children and the children's father. Eventually, the victim arrived at Carpenter Street Saloon, where she met up with some acquaintances. Shortly thereafter, the victim met Taylor, with whom she had not had contact prior to that night. Taylor provided his name and phone number on a napkin. For a brief period, the victim left the bar to drop off her children's fatherand pick up her mother from work. The victim's mother then drove her back the Carpenter Street Saloon, where the victim drank more alcoholic beverages and danced with some acquaintances she had met that night. At some point, the victim decided to go outside and smoke a cigarette. The victim testified that the next thing she remembers after that point is waking up naked in Taylor's house in the early hours of the morning of April 27, 2015. She testified that, after she awoke, Taylor made some crude comments, and she begged him to take her home. He drove her to her home.
The victim went to the hospital early that morning and reported that she "felt like [she had] had sex," but also said she was "missing chunks of time." A forensic nurse at the hospital "completed a SAFE examination of the victim, collected various items of physical evidence, and took a statement from the victim." Items collected during the SAFE exam included the victim's underwear, two maxi pads, and swabs taken from various areas of her body, including a spot on her upper chest where there was a bruise that the nurse described as "hickey-like in appearance."
The St. Michael's Police Department identified Taylor as the person who had taken the victim away from the Carpenter Street Saloon after she passed out, and the police executed a warrant to search his residence, as well as a warrant to obtain a sample of Taylor's DNA. Taylor gave a statement to police in which he admitted that he had been talking to the victim inside the Carpenter Street Saloon on the evening of April 26, and, at one point, had walked outside to smoke a cigarette when he saw the woman he had been talking to "passed out outside on the sidewalk." He determined that she wasunresponsive, and he put her in his vehicle and drove her to his house. Later, he took her to her home. The police obtained surveillance video footage from the Carpenter Street Saloon interior and parking area. The video of the parking area showed Taylor placing the victim in his vehicle outside the Carpenter Street Saloon. (The video was played for the jury.)
Taylor was later arrested and charged with kidnapping, rape in the second degree, sexual offense in the second degree, sexual offense in the third degree, and assault in the second degree. At trial, the State entered as nolle prosequi the kidnapping and second-degree sexual offense charges. Following the State's case, the trial court granted Taylor's motion for judgment of acquittal as to the second-degree rape charge because, the court explained, although there was evidence that the SAFE nurse had observed that the victim had sustained vaginal bruising, the victim herself did not remember what had happened that night and there was no expert testimony to establish that the source of the bruising was sexual intercourse. The court found that there was "also no evidence of semen, blood or saliva in the vagina that would indicate that there was sexual intercourse . . . that is to say, pen[ile] penetration of her vagina."
After Taylor declined to testify, the two surviving counts were submitted to the jury. The jury found Taylor guilty of second-degree assault and third-degree sexual offense. This appeal followed. Additional facts relevant to this appeal are included in the discussion below.
During the State's closing argument, the State made several remarks that Taylor contends were improper. First, the State commented on the inferences that could be drawn from DNA that was found on the victim's maxi pad:
[BY THE STATE]: The DNA found on the maxi pad found mixed in with the fluids of [the victim], discharged onto a maxi pad. Other DNA on the hip of a pair of underpants. We don't know who that, well, we don't know when that underwear was last washed to simply state a fact there. We know there are no other men in that home. We don't know when it was washed, but we do know the licking swab [showing that Taylor's DNA was present on the victim's chest] happened at C Street. She did not shower. She went to the hospital. We do know that one of those maxi pads, I'm not sure if it's 10 or 12, was the one that she wore to the hospital between the time that she left Mr. Taylor's and the time that she got to the hospital wherein she did not void, shower, anything.
Taylor argues that these statements made by the State during closing argument were unsupported by the evidence in the record.
The State also made the following statements that Taylor contends were improper:
[BY THE STATE]: Yeah, she's drunk and she's overly friendly in a bar. Does that mean that she consented to what happened to her before she woke up in that man's loft, naked? Is that really who we are as a society? A man can take a woman he tells you was collapsed on the sidewalk that you can see is completely not in control of her own sensibilities, scoop her into his car, put his hands all over her while she's completely unconscious, take her back to his residence, disrobe her and it's reasonable to believe that his DNA got on her maxi pad from her using the bathroom in his house? She's dancing, she's friendly, she's a sloppy drunk and he is a predator who took advantage of her. Please tell him so.
Taylor contends that these portions of the State's argument were improper because the statements "were inflammatory and were designed to appeal to the prejudices of thejury." Moreover, Taylor asserts: "There was no evidence in the record that the Defendant disrobed the victim or that Defendant put his hands all over her." Taylor argues that the trial court erred in allowing the State to address these matters in its closing argument, and in failing "to cure the potential prejudice from the inflammatory remarks." Taylor concedes, however, that he lodged no objection during closing arguments at trial. But he urges us to consider his claim of improper arguments because, although he did
Because no timely objection was made before the jury returned its verdict, the scope of our review on appeal is limited to whether the trial judge abused his discretion in refusing to grant a new trial on the basis of reasons that were raised for the first time after the trial concluded. The breadth of discretion for trial judges to grant or deny motions for new trial is so great that Maryland cases in the first half of the 20th century generally held that the trial court's "ruling [on a motion for new trial] is ordinarily not reviewable on appeal." Brinard v. Denzik, 226 Md. 287, 292 (1961). But the Court of Appeals observed in Buck v. Cam's Broadloom Rugs, Inc., 328 Md. 51, 54-57 (1992), that, in the latter part of the 20th century, "the correct statement of the law in this area" was that the trial judge's ruling was not totally unreviewable, but, nevertheless, was a discretionary ruling that "an appellate court does not generally disturb," as the Court had stated in Mack v. State, 300 Md. 583, 600 (1984):
The question whether to grant a new trial is within the discretion of the trial court. Ordinarily, a trial court's order denying a motion for a new trial willbe reviewed on appeal if it is claimed that the trial court abused its discretion. However, an appellate court does not generally disturb the exercise of a trial court's discretion in denying a motion for a new trial.
(Citations omitted.) Accord Washington v. State, 424 Md. 632, 667-68 (2012).
In the absence of a timely objection during the trial, we do not address de novo the merits of Taylor's contentions regarding the allegedly...
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