Whiting v. State

Decision Date23 December 2004
Docket NumberNo. 1052,1052
Citation863 A.2d 1017,160 Md. App. 285
PartiesWesley WHITING, a/k/a Jeffrey Wilson, a/k/a Lynell Whiting v. STATE of Maryland.
CourtCourt of Special Appeals of Maryland

Michael R. Malloy (Nancy S. Forster, Public Defender, on brief), for appellant.

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

Panel SALMON, KENNEY, EYLER, DEBORAH S., JJ.

KENNEY, J.

A jury sitting in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City convicted Wesley Whiting, appellant,1 of first degree murder, armed robbery, possession of a deadly weapon openly with intent to injure, first degree assault, and theft under $500. Appellant was sentenced to life imprisonment for the first degree murder conviction and to a consecutive twenty-five year term of incarceration for the robbery with a deadly weapon conviction. The remaining convictions merged. He presents two questions on appeal, which we have slightly reworded:

1. Did the suppression court err in denying the motion to suppress evidence taken from appellant's "residence"?
2. Was the evidence sufficient to sustain appellant's convictions?

For the reasons that follow, we affirm the judgments of the circuit court.

FACTUAL AND LEGAL HISTORY

William Moore was last seen at his job as a Correctional Officer around 1:35 p.m. on April 5, 2001. He did not report for his shift the next afternoon. When he did not report the following day, his supervisor asked Kedrick Wilson, another correctional officer, to check on him. Wilson tried to telephone Moore several times, but never got a response. Wilson asked Wortham Hall, a mutual friend, to check on Moore. Around 5:00 p.m. on April 7, 2001, when Hall went to Moore's home at 1136 Homewood Avenue, he saw that Moore's car was parked on the street, that mail was piled up at the door, and that the back door had tape on the lock so that it would not lock. Hall remained outside and called the police from his cell phone.

Baltimore City Police Officers Michael Lind, Dave Peters, and John Carroll were among the officers responding to Hall's call. Lind went inside Moore's home through the back door and observed that the kitchen area had been ransacked. When the officers searched the house to secure it, they saw a brown stain on the dining room carpet. They saw "a large amount of blood all over the wall and the carpet and everything else leaving a trail that was the brown stain on the carpet that we saw in the dining room area." The officers checked the basement and found Moore's body lying on the steps.

Melvin Stallings, a crime laboratory technician, arrived at the house around 5:10 p.m. He photographed the house, lifted fingerprints, and sketched the locations of possible evidence. Among the items noted were a pair of sweatpants, running shoes, tennis shoes with suspected blood, possible footprints, and samples of suspected blood.

Lissette Rivbra, Rana Creamer, and Nina White, other crime lab technicians, processed the house after Stallings's shift had ended. Rivbra reported that they collected 39 fingerprint lift cards. They explained to the jury where each card was taken. One of the items the technicians recovered was a Rubbermaid trash can lid, which was found at the bottom of the steps between the first and second floor. The trash can itself was missing.

Lieutenant Kim Wilson, a co-worker and good friend of Moore's, testified that Moore was homosexual. Wilson told the jury that photographs of the crime scene did not reflect how Moore's house usually looked. She described Moore as "very, very particular, very, very neat, very organized, very detailed about how he put everything in his house everywhere, everything had a particular place, and he was very, very neat." She said that he had a pair of athletic shoes that were "all white; real, real clean." She testified that the shoes depicted in a photograph of the crime scene were not the shoes she had seen at Moore's house. Wilson said that Moore had had two televisions in his home.

Wilson told the jury Moore's cell phone number and that he had kept the phone charger in his house. She testified that Moore had called her most recently on March 30, 2001, at 8:52.2

On cross-examination, Wilson agreed that Moore "would have people over to his home." She also agreed that if Moore saw someone who needed money, Moore would give him work and pay him.

Homicide Detective Ronald Berger testified that he responded to 1136 Homewood Avenue at 5:26 p.m. on April 7, 2001. He videotaped the crime scene. At trial, he presented to the jury a photograph showing a calendar book on a night stand, and told the jury that every day from the beginning of the year had a slash mark, up to and including April 5, 2001.

Berger also testified as an expert in blood stain pattern analysis. He explained that the blood stains on the wall indicated that the source of some of the blood was about a foot off the ground, and that there were signs of a struggle resulting in the smearing of blood droplets on a portion of the wall. According to Berger, "signs of bleeding were present and suggestive of a violent encounter which extended through the first floor between the front and back doors." Berger also concluded that "the final stage of a beating was low near the floor at the point of the living room of [sic] recess of the north wall."

Berger testified that he executed a search warrant on April 27, 2001, at 810 East Preston Street, the place were appellant allegedly lived. From a second floor rear bedroom, he recovered photographs, a letter addressed to appellant, and a letter addressed to Crystal Whiting. Detective Berger returned to the premises on May 3, 2001, to interview Robert Jones, also known as "Crystal Whiting." While there, Detective Berger observed a trash can in the second floor rear bedroom. Berger said that he did not recall seeing the trash can during the first search, but said that he had not been looking for a trash can at that time. Detective Berger obtained a search warrant the following day and recovered the trash can at that time.

Detective Berger told the jury that, on May 16, 2001, he spoke to Kevin Smith, an inmate with appellant at Central Booking, about inculpatory statements appellant had made. Berger reported that, at Smith's request, he wrote a letter to the Maryland Parole Board informing it of Smith's cooperation.

Detective Kevin Turner also examined Moore's home. Turner showed the jury photographs depicting a TV stand in the bedroom with the television missing and a living room table with dust around the outline of "something that was the size of a television set." In addition, Turner retrieved a Sprint telephone number from Moore's wallet and contacted Sprint to get information about the last phone numbers called from that phone. As a result of records he received from Sprint, Turner learned that no phone calls were made from the phone in the six days prior to Moore's death. With the records, Turner also was able to trace the phone to Derrick Venable. Turner did not recover the cell phone, but did recover the battery and charger from Venable's room. On cross-examination, Turner acknowledged that Venable had told him that his friend Jamal had tried to buy the phone three or four days before he bought it. Detective Turner also contacted Rubbermaid and learned that trash cans of the style found in appellant's room had been shipped to Lowe's and to an Ace Hardware store in Maryland in ten shipments of 36 each between January and September 2000.

Robert Jones testified that he lived with appellant at 801 East Preston Street in April 2001. Jones said that they had an intimate relationship, and that, because he considered himself appellant's wife, he called himself "Crystal Whiting." Jones reported that, in early April 2001, appellant had left the East Preston Street home and returned two or three hours later with a bite or cut mark on his chin and a swollen finger. According to Jones, appellant said that "he had been in a fight with someone, and he left and they might not have been breathing." Jones reported that appellant returned with a cell phone and $40 in cash. Jones said that appellant was wearing two rings when he returned, but that they may have been the same ones appellant had worn when he left. Jones acknowledged, however, that he told the detectives in April 2001, that he had assumed that appellant got the rings from Moore's house. He said that appellant returned wearing a different pair of pants than he had worn when he left. Jones also said that appellant had been wearing "a pair of tens;" the "tens" were Timberland boots. Jones also said that he and appellant went to get medical treatment for appellant's finger on April 9, 2001, the day after the injury. Medical records indicated that appellant also had injuries on his shoulder and cheek.

Jones identified the trash can as being the one in the bedroom that he and appellant shared. Jones explained that appellant "brought [the trash can] in from outside." Jones also testified that appellant sold the cell phone to "some kid around the neighborhood" for $15. Jones read a letter he had written appellant telling him he would let him know if he heard anything about the phone, because "there was some talk in the neighborhood about a phone that was being used by some young kids that belonged to someone that had got killed around the neighborhood," and he wanted to know if it was that phone. Jones testified that appellant sometimes used the name "Lamont Wilson."

On cross-examination, Jones repeated that appellant wore two rings when he left home and two when he returned home, and that the rings could have been the same. He also said that when he spoke to the detective the first time, the detective told him he could go to jail.

Salvatore Bianca, a serologist with the police, testified as an expert in trace analysis. Bianca examined the trash can lid found at Moore's house and the trash can...

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    ...about what "that version of the evidence most favorable to the prevailing party" means, one can always turn to Whiting v. State, 160 Md. App. 285, 300, 863 A.2d 1017 (2004), for helpful guidance:It will fully credit the prevailing party's witnesses and discredit the losing party's witnesses......
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