U.S. v. Byers

• Decision Date: 06 May 2011
• Docket Number: 09–4677.,Nos. 09–4439,s. 09–4439
• Citation: 649 F.3d 197
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,v.Patrick Albert BYERS, Jr., Defendant–Appellant.United States of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,v.Frank Keith Goodman, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

649 F.3d 197

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.Patrick Albert BYERS, Jr., Defendant–Appellant.United States of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.Frank Keith Goodman, Defendant–Appellant.

Nos. 09–4439

09–4677.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: Jan. 28, 2011.Decided: May 6, 2011.

ARGUED: Marc Gregory Hall, Hall & Cho, PC, Rockville, Maryland; Mary Elizabeth Davis, Davis & Davis, Washington, D.C., for Appellants. John Francis Purcell, Jr., Office of the United States Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Rod J. Rosenstein, United States Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.Before TRAXLER, Chief Judge, and MOTZ and KEENAN, Circuit Judges.Affirmed by published opinion. Chief Judge TRAXLER wrote the opinion, in which Judge MOTZ and Judge KEENAN joined.

OPINION

TRAXLER, Chief Judge:

Patrick Albert Byers, Jr., and Frank Keith Goodman were convicted on charges stemming from a 2007 conspiracy and murder of a witness to prevent him from testifying against Byers in an upcoming state murder trial. Byers and Goodman appeal, challenging several evidentiary rulings by the district court. Goodman also appeals the denial of his motion to suppress. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

I.

A.

The government presented strong evidence tying Byers and Goodman to the killing of Carl Lackl and offered a motive for the killing: Lackl was the prosecution's primary witness in the upcoming murder trial of Byers for the March 2006 murder of Larry Haynes, and Lackl was expected to be the only witness to place Byers at the scene of that murder. Byers attempted to refute the purported motive by attacking the strength of the state's case against him for the 2006 Haynes murder and the reliability of Lackl as an eyewitness. Thus, the identity of Byers as the person at the scene of the Haynes murder became a critical part of the Lackl case. In response to Byers's strategy, the government sought to bolster Lackl's credibility and value as a witness by introducing evidence to prove identity, and hence motive, that Byers had previously shot another person in a drug dispute in the same block on North Montford Street where Haynes was killed.

B.

The evidence at trial showed the following chronology. On May 24, 2004, Carlile Coleman was staying at a house located at 506 North Montford Street in Baltimore. The homeowner gave Coleman permission to set up a temporary car wash stand in front of the house. Business was brisk, and Coleman enlisted the help of two assistants. At some point, a person named “Pierre,” who Coleman believed was a drug dealer, confronted Coleman and accused him or one of his assistants of taking drugs out of Pierre's car, presumably when they were washing it. Pierre demanded payment for the drugs, but Coleman denied having taken the drugs. A scuffle ensued, and Pierre broke a broom across Coleman's back. Coleman, however, did not give Pierre any money for the purportedly missing drugs.

Following the altercation, Pierre left and Coleman went inside the house. Pierre, however, returned with Byers, who was concealing a gun under his shirt, and they forced their way into the house. Coleman attempted to flee, but Byers shot him in the buttocks. Coleman testified that Byers stood over him as he lay on the floor and said, “I'm going to kill you.” J.A. 1076. Byers then pressed the gun against Coleman's stomach, shot him and left. Coleman sustained substantial injuries that required an extended hospital stay. When he had recovered enough to talk to the police, investigators came to the hospital and presented a photo array to Coleman. Coleman identified Byers as his assailant.

About two years later, Byers was implicated in another shooting in the North Montford Street area. On March 4, 2006, Larry Haynes was shot and killed within a block of where Coleman was shot. Around 3:30 p.m., Baltimore Police Detective Thomas Martin was sent to the scene and recovered .40 caliber shell casings and a .40 caliber bullet nearby. Also during the investigation of the murder scene, police recovered a .40 caliber semiautomatic handgun in an adjacent alley on the 500 block of North Montford Street.

While he was still at the scene, Detective Martin was informed that Carl Lackl had contacted police and claimed to have witnessed the shooting. Detective Martin interviewed Lackl later that afternoon. Lackl explained that he and Connie Mays were driving along North Montford Street and stopped on the 500 block for Lackl to urinate. He stepped into an alley. Lackl then heard several gunshots, stepped out of the alley and observed a man he did not know running in Lackl's direction along North Montford Street. Lackl saw the man throw a gun onto the roof of a garage right next to an alley across the street from the alley Lackl was in. This gun was later recovered by law enforcement.¹ The man continued running in a northbound direction and made eye contact with Lackl as he passed him. Lackl then saw Haynes, who had been shot eight times, lying on the ground about one-half block away. Lackl approached Haynes to see if he could help but left him there at the insistence of Mays.² When Lackl returned home, he recounted what he had witnessed to his girlfriend Malinda Humes and told her he wanted to call the police and report the shooting. Although Humes, fearing potential retribution from the suspect, advised him not to “get involved,” Lackl contacted police headquarters and met with Detective Martin. According to Detective Martin, Lackl's description of where the suspect discarded the firearm “precisely” matched the actual location where police had recovered the firearm earlier.

Fortuitously, Baltimore City Police that same day arrested Joseph Parham on unrelated drug possession charges. According to Detective Martin, Parham volunteered information about the Haynes murder, explaining that he also had been on North Montford Street earlier that day and had observed a person he knew only as “Pat” arguing with Haynes. Parham was standing close by when he heard gunshots and then saw Pat shoot Haynes. Parham, who lived on North Montford Street, knew both Pat and Haynes from his neighborhood and knew Haynes dealt drugs in that area. Moreover, Parham told Detective Martin that this was not the first North Montford Street shooting in which Pat had been involved. Parham did not know Pat's full name, but he knew that Pat previously had “shot a car wash guy in the 500 block of Montford” about “a half block from where ... Haynes was murdered.” J.A. 950. Detective Martin then consulted police records to find out who “Pat” was and found the file on the 2004 shooting of Coleman on the 500 block of North Montford Street. Detective Martin learned that, as Parham had suggested, a suspect named “Pat”—Patrick Byers—had been arrested for shooting Coleman. Police records contained a photograph of Byers, which Detective Martin then used in compiling a photo array of “suspects” in the Haynes shooting, containing photographs of Byers and six other individuals. Parham identified Byers from this array as the person who shot Haynes.

Having obtained Byers's name and photograph from the Coleman file, Detective Martin took a similar photo array to Lackl's home. Lackl identified Byers as the man he saw running from the area where Haynes was shot. According to Detective Martin, Lackl's identification “seemed very certain.” J.A. 1006. Lackl then wrote, “I Carl Lackl believe that ... the person I picked out is the person that threw the gun onto the roof of the garage,” and signed his name. J.A. 1007 (internal quotation marks omitted).

Based on the identifications by Parham and Lackl, Detective Martin arrested Pat Byers for shooting Haynes and charged him with first degree murder. Byers admitted that he and his associates were involved in the sale of heroin in the North Montford Street area. Byers further admitted having been in the North Montford Street area around the time of the shooting to check on his drug sales for the day. Byers also conceded that he knew Haynes and that he believed Haynes had recently shot and killed Byers's cousins. Nevertheless, Byers claimed that there were no problems between him and Haynes. Detective Martin did not reveal that police had already recovered the gun, but Byers volunteered that he had hidden a gun near a garage on North Montford Street and that he had intended to turn it over to an “Officer Kevin” in exchange for having drug charges against him dropped.

As Byers's trial for the Haynes murder approached, Parham began to express reluctance to testify. In April 2007, with trial scheduled for July 10, 2007, Parham recanted his identification of Byers and claimed that he fabricated the entire story. Thus, Lackl became the sole eyewitness in the Haynes murder case.

On July 2, 2007, with trial scheduled to begin in one week, Lackl was shot to death in front of his home on Philadelphia Road. Lackl had been trying to sell his used Cadillac and had received a call that evening from someone claiming to be interested in buying the car. The caller indicated he was in the area, so Lackl went outside and waited with his young daughters in front of his house. When a car subsequently stopped in front of his house, Lackl approached. Before he reached the car, however, an occupant sitting in the front passenger seat shot Lackl three times and killed him.

Baltimore County police officers were dispatched to Lackl's home to investigate the shooting and learned that Lackl had been expected to testify the following week in a state murder trial at which Byers would be facing a first degree murder charge. Byers was in state custody when Lackl was killed.

Investigating officers traced phone calls coming into Lackl's residence on the day of the murder (including calls just minutes before the murder) to a cell phone owned by Marcus Pearson. Ultimately, Pearson cooperated and admitted his role in Lackl's murder....