Triggs v. State

• Decision Date: 16 June 2004
• Docket Number: No. 118,118
• Parties: David TRIGGS, Jr. v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

852 A.2d 114

382 Md. 27

David TRIGGS, Jr. v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 118, September Term, 2003.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

June 16, 2004.

Bradford C. Peabody, Asst. Public Defender (Stephen E. Harris, Public Defender, on brief), for petitioner.

Shannon E. Avery, Asst. Atty. Gen. (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Atty. Gen., on brief), for respondent.

Kerri L. Ruttenberg, King & Spalding, LLP, Washington, D.C., Joan S. Meier, brief of Amici Curiae Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project, House of Ruth Maryland, and the Women's Law Center of Maryland on behalf of respondent.

Argued before BELL, C.J., RAKER, WILNER, CATHELL, HARRELL, BATTAGLIA and GREENE, JJ.

BATTAGLIA, J.

We are called upon in this case to determine whether it was error for the trial judge to impose eighteen consecutive sentences when the defendant was convicted for making eighteen threatening calls to his wife in violation of a protective order requiring that he have "no contact" with his wife. We find no error in the sentence.

I. Introduction

A. Facts

On Sunday morning, September 16, 2001, David Triggs (hereinafter "Petitioner") made the first of dozens¹ of calls to his ex-wife, Pamela Triggs (hereinafter "Mrs. Triggs"), who lived in Montgomery County, in violation of a protective order prohibiting him from having any contact with her. When he made many of the calls, which continued over a four-day period, Petitioner threatened to rape and murder his ex-wife and murder their three children, who were with him during a scheduled visitation when he called.

Petitioner and Mrs. Triggs were married for almost seven and a half years when they divorced on March 1, 2002. They had three children together, who were eight, six, and four at the time of their divorce. Petitioner's four-day "reign of terror," as Judge Ann S. Harrington, Circuit Court for Montgomery County, called it, was the culmination of a long history of a troubled relationship filled with domestic abuse.

In her victim impact statement, Mrs. Triggs described some of Petitioner's controlling and abusive behavior that occurred over the course of their marriage and during the period at issue during this case. According to Mrs. Triggs, Petitioner, in the past, had held electric hedge clippers to her throat, pointed a gun to her head, fired a gun at her, and raped her four times. In 1996, she obtained her first protective order after Petitioner shot at her.

When Mrs. Triggs attempted to leave her husband, Petitioner harassed her friends who were helping her, causing them to get peace orders against him. Petitioner also harassed Mrs. Triggs at work and threatened to kill her co-workers, which resulted in her place of work closing for two days and hiring security for three weeks. Mrs. Triggs claims she "lost [her] job because of him." In addition, the couple lost their home and Mrs. Triggs's credit record was ruined when Petitioner refused to sign the papers to sell their home, telling the realtor he preferred to have the home foreclosed so as to "destroy" Mrs. Triggs.

Mrs. Triggs also described how Petitioner verbally abused her and attempted to control her every move and thought. He dictated the types of clothes she could wear ("no sweatpants or baggy clothes allowed"), taped her telephone calls, removed her car radio, and disabled her car on several occasions. During the month before they separated, he would wake her up every time she fell asleep, "allowing only one hour a night." After they separated, Mrs. Triggs related how Petitioner would tell the children to "tell mommy her cement shoes are coming," "tell mommy I am going to cut her head off," "tell mommy she doesn't have long to live," and "tell mommy I'm watching."

On September 26, 2000, Mrs. Triggs obtained her second order of protection from the District Court of Maryland sitting in Montgomery County. She stated she was afraid for her life because her husband had shot at her in the past and sought the order because he "wanted her to get an apartment and prostitute herself to support the family" and threatened to "burn her like a witch on a stick" if she did not comply. The court issued an order, effective for one year, requiring Petitioner to refrain from threatening or abusing Mrs. Triggs and to begin counseling immediately.

On March 28, 2001, the court amended the September 26 protective order pursuant to Mrs. Triggs's emergency motion to modify the order, ordering, among other things, that Petitioner have "no contact" with Mrs. Triggs, that he could not take the children out of the state or out of school "if it was not his scheduled time," and that he must abide by a two-week visitation schedule requiring him to pick up his children from school on Friday and drop them off at school on Monday. One month later, in April 2001, Petitioner violated the protective order by banging on Mrs. Triggs's door in the middle of the night. Mrs. Triggs called the police, who arrested Petitioner when he tried to flee the apartment complex in his car.

While he was in jail awaiting trial, Petitioner sent numerous letters to his children containing disturbing references to Mrs. Triggs and their marriage. Mrs. Triggs filed a complaint about the letters with the police commissioner because she feared for her and her children's personal safety.

On July 23, 2001, Petitioner was convicted for violating the March 28 amended protective order. He was sentenced to 90 days in the Montgomery County Detention Center, with 36 days suspended and credit for 54 days, and one year of supervised probation. He was ordered, again, to have no contact with Mrs. Triggs.

In mid-September 2001, a bench warrant was issued from the Circuit Court for Petitioner's arrest because Petitioner was telling his children that he wanted to put his wife in "cement shoes." Because of a technical problem with the warrant, however, the Sheriff's Office for Montgomery County could not arrest Petitioner before he picked up his children on September 14, 2001, for his scheduled two-week visitation.

On September 16, 2001, at approximately 11:45 on Sunday morning, Petitioner made the first of more than fifty calls occurring over a four-day period to Mrs. Triggs.² Petitioner called Mrs. Triggs while she was at home alone in her apartment in Gaithersburg. After Mrs. Triggs reminded Petitioner that he should not be calling her because of the protective order, he said, "I don't give a fuck about a piece of paper, are you going to talk to me, you need to talk to me." When she did not respond, he continued saying, "God dammit, Pamela, these children are dead by the end of this weekend. I don't want them, I want you, but I will kill them." Mrs. Triggs hung up and called the police immediately.

Three Gaithersburg police officers arrived at Mrs. Triggs's house in response to her call. While she waited for the police, the phone rang about six times with the "Caller-ID" showing Petitioner's name and number. When the police arrived, she handed her phone to Officer Chris Vance, who listened to the messages that Petitioner had left. Officer Vance testified that the messages contained threats that "if she [didn't] call him back, he [would] kill the kids." After being advised by the police that it was not safe for her to remain at home, Mrs. Triggs went to a friend's house. Officer Vance subsequently requested a warrant for Petitioner's arrest, which was issued late that afternoon. Petitioner continued to call Mrs. Triggs's phone and leave messages, making a total of fourteen calls that day.

On Monday morning, September 17, 2001, Mrs. Triggs met with the Fugitive Division of the Sheriff's Office to assist them in their efforts to find Petitioner. Petitioner made four calls to Mrs. Triggs on Monday. On Tuesday, September 18, 2001, Petitioner made a total of twelve calls to Mrs. Triggs. At one point, he claimed he was giving one of their sons "Ambient," a sleeping pill. He also asked Mrs. Triggs, who is a nurse, "what does it mean when your respirations only get to one ... when your breathing, respirations are only one a minute." He also threatened to "break [the children's] arms and their legs and then their neck." In another recorded call, he stated, "In about two hours I'm going to call you with an interstate number or an exit number off of 270 where I'm going to leave something for you, or somebody." In yet another recorded call, he told her that she was "down by one" child and "that will leave only two." He also told her that he was "getting a very itchy trigger finger." In still yet another recorded call, he said "Unfortunately, I don't care what [the] court orders, what laws or whatever you've got. It makes no difference to me ... I'm either going to be dead or in jail, and that's fine with me."

At approximately nine or ten at night on September 18, while several sheriff's deputies waited with Mrs. Triggs at her home, Petitioner called and demanded that she meet him at a designated location. Petitioner said that Mrs. Triggs "had to jump through hoops of fire to get to [her] kids and [her] first hoop was going to be this place, Good Time Auto." He told her to be at the auto shop by 11:00 p.m. Mrs. Triggs decided to meet him as he requested as part of a plan with the Sheriff's Office to locate Petitioner and the children.

Mrs. Triggs, however, did not meet Petitioner at the auto shop because the officers decided it was unsafe for her to do so because "the buildings were dark and there were two men standing outside." When she did not meet him there, he called again, after midnight. When Mrs. Triggs told Petitioner she was afraid of meeting him, he said, "I'm not going to kill you yet." Petitioner then told Mrs. Triggs that, waiting for her at Good Time Auto, were "four men ... and they are there to rape you while I listen on the other phone to you scream." Mrs. Triggs then testified:

He said that he was going to beat me, and he was going to torture me, and then he was

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