United States v. Holness

• Decision Date: 11 February 2013
• Docket Number: No. 11–4631.,11–4631.
• Citation: 706 F.3d 579
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Ryan HOLNESS, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

706 F.3d 579

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.Ryan HOLNESS, Defendant–Appellant.

No. 11–4631.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: Oct. 4, 2012.

Decided: Feb. 11, 2013.

ARGUED:Jonathan Alan Gladstone, Annapolis, Maryland, for Appellant. 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 KING, KEENAN, and THACKER, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge KING wrote the opinion, in which Judge KEENAN and Judge THACKER joined.

OPINION

KING, Circuit Judge:

Following a jury trial in the District of Maryland, Ryan Holness was convicted of interstate domestic violence and attempted witness intimidation. Holness appeals, contending that the district court erred by declining to suppress certain aspects of the government's evidence which, Holness alleges, were obtained in deprivation of his Sixth Amendment right to the assistance of counsel. Although the facts underlying his claim of error fail to sustain Holness's proffered Sixth Amendment theory, the record indicates a potential abridgement of his privilege against self-incrimination and concomitant right to counsel, as secured by the Fifth Amendment. Further factual development would permit a definitive resolution of the matter, but remand is unnecessary in this instance because any Fifth Amendment error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. We therefore affirm Holness's convictions.

I.

About ten minutes before six o'clock in the morning on June 5, 2009, dispatchers received a 911 call alerting them of a carjacking on Route 290 near Crumpton, Maryland, on the state's Eastern Shore. The caller related that a woman had possibly been stabbed in connection with the incident. Deputy Amanda Knox of the Kent County Sheriff's Office responded to the residence of John and Kim Rolfe, where she encountered Holness on the front porch. It had been raining, and Holness was wet, shoeless, and shaking, with a wadded loop of duct tape drooped around his neck. Knox asked about the woman reported stabbed, but Holness stood mute. Mr. Rolfe spoke up, informing the deputy that Holness had earlier volunteered that the woman was his wife, and that she was in a field off the road, about 500 yards south. With Maryland State Troopers Sayles and Forte, who had just arrived on the scene, Knox went to check on the woman.

Nearing their destination, the officers observed a number of items strewn across the road, including a purse, a paperback book, a tennis shoe, a woman's sandal, Holness's drivers license, his military ID, and a roll of duct tape. The woman, Serika Dunkley, lay dead in the field, having sustained eleven stab wounds and several dozen cuts, including four to her hands while defending the attack. The most serious wounds were to Dunkley's neck, critically compromising her left internal jugular vein, her trachea, and her thyroid gland.

A.

Holness, born in Jamaica, immigrated to the United States in 2001 and enlisted in the Navy the following year. In June 2003, he entered into a marriage of convenience with Dunkley, his distant cousin, who then left Jamaica to live with Holness's mother and brother in Brooklyn, New York. Holness resided in an apartment in Lexington Park, Maryland, near his duty station at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station. On November 5, 2008, while accessing the internet with his roommate's computer, Holness used Dunkley's personal information to obtain a $500,000 insurance policy on her life. Holness named himself as the policy's beneficiary, charging the monthly premiums of $74.37 to his personal credit card.

Holness's landlord received federal tax credits from participating in a housing program, which permitted it to accord Holness a rent reduction of $200 per month so long as Dunkley's name was also on the lease. The applicable regulations, however, required Dunkley to execute the lease and any renewals in person. Dunkley's presence being required in Maryland to execute a renewal, she departed from Brooklyn with Holness in his blue Honda Accord on the evening of June 4, 2009, unaware that the trip—and her life—would come to an abrupt end in Crumpton a few hours later.

B.

1.

Deputy Knox and Trooper Forte returned to the Rolfe residence to interview Holness, who explained that he and Dunkley had been accosted and carjacked by a masked male at a rest area off the New Jersey Turnpike. Holness showed Knox a four-centimeter laceration on his left wrist, and he described the Honda to Forte. Holness was transported to a local hospital for treatment, where Dr. Deborah Davis diagnosed a non-displaced rib fracture. Dr. Davis sutured and stapled Holness's wrist laceration, recommending ibuprofen for the pain. Holness remained at the hospital until mid-morning, when two members of the Maryland State Police homicide unit, Sergeant Stephen Hall and Sergeant Michael Smith, picked him up and drove him to their barrack.

Prior to questioning him, the homicide officers informed Holness of his rights in accordance with Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966). See J.A. 78.¹ Holness agreed to answer questions without resort to counsel, telling a far more detailed story than the one he recited to Deputy Knox. A gasoline receipt revealed, and Holness confirmed, that he and Dunkley had stopped at the Turnpike rest area around 11:15 p.m. According to Holness, the carjacker brandished a firearm, wore a ski mask, and used a voice modulator. Absent instructions to the contrary, Holness continued from the rest area south toward Lexington Park until, at about 1:30 a.m., he was directed to pull off the road onto an adjacent farm lane.

As the carjacker was binding Holness's hands with duct tape, Dunkley fled. The assailant pursued and Holness tried to follow, hearing Dunkley's alarmed protests: “He's cutting me, he's cutting me.” J.A. 311. The carjacker returned, slashed Holness on the forearm, then pushed him to the ground, kicking him in the ribs. Holness said that he was ultimately knocked unconscious by a kick to the jaw. He awakened four hours later to find his ankles and wrists bound by duct tape, with a black bandana stuffed in his mouth. Upon freeing himself, Holness walked north to the Rolfe residence to seek assistance.

2.

At about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, as Sergeant Hall and Sergeant Smith were winding down the initial interview of Holness, their colleague, Corporal Colleen McCurdy, arrived at the crime scene with her bloodhound, Lojack. McCurdy took Lojack to a spot near where Dunkley's body was found and allowed him to sniff Holness's socks, which had been placed on the ground. Lojack began to track Holness's path—not north toward the Rolfe residence, but south toward the Chester River. After a bit, Lojack veered off the road diagonally across a field toward a modular home, where he jumped on the front door and then ran around to the back door before retreating down a driveway back to Route 290.

From that location, Lojack continued south until he got to the river, which he repeatedly attempted to enter. Corporal McCurdy took Lojack onto the bridge, but he kept trying to jump up on the rail, more interested in the water below. The track ended at the river, so McCurdy and Lojack retraced their steps to the point of origin. Once there, the dog crossed to the opposite side of the road and began to whine, indicating that he detected a powerful scent. McCurdy and Lojack then left.²

Holness returned to the crime scene shortly thereafter, accompanied by Sergeant Hall and Sergeant Smith. Holness had terminated his initial interview with the police and had requested an attorney, but subsequently reinitiated contact for the purpose of offering to physically reenact his version of what had occurred. Upon again being advised of his Miranda rights, see J.A. 83–84, Holness surveyed the scene and more or less repeated his earlier story. Holness explained that he had lost his shoe in the mud upon exiting the Honda, and that, once he regained consciousness after being attacked, he realized that he had somehow wound up on the opposite side of the road.

Holness reiterated that, upon awakening, he immediately headed north and sought assistance at the Rolfe residence, and he categorically denied having walked south toward the river and the bridge. Nevertheless, a resident of the modular home, Cassandra Lupton, told the police that someone had knocked on her front and back doors just before 3:30 a.m., when Holness was supposed to have been unconscious. Moreover, Dr. Davis found no evidence of head trauma consistent with Holness having lost consciousness. The police returned Holness to the barrack, where he again invoked his right to silence and requested counsel. See J.A. 84.

Additional details gleaned from the investigation persisted in rendering Holness's story suspect. At about 5:00 or 5:15 a.m., during the latter stages of Holness's purported incapacity, Erin Boulter was delivering newspapers in the immediate vicinityof the crime scene. Boulter swerved to miss an African–American man with “something silver on his wrists,” J.A. 659, standing in the road near the bridge. Though a crime scene technician observed tape residue around Holness's neck, she found none around his wrists or ankles nor on his clothing, and there was no cut on Holness's long-sleeved shirt to match the laceration on his forearm. Forensic investigators did find Holness's DNA at various locations on the roll of unused duct tape, however, and, on Holness's clothing, they discovered chips of what they suspected (but could not confirm) was Dunkley's fingernail polish.³

The police broadcast an interagency lookout for the Honda, and, later that evening, the vehicle was located on H Street in Washington, D.C., about an hour and twenty minutes away from Crumpton. In the car, blood was found matching...