Wilkins v. Commonwealth
| Decision Date | 24 May 2022 |
| Docket Number | 0715-21-2 |
| Parties | CARL ALLGE WILKINS v. COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA |
| Court | Virginia Court of Appeals |
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF CHESTERFIELD COUNTY Frederick G Rockwell, III, Judge.
Stephen K. Armstrong (Armstrong Law LLC, on brief), for appellant.
Lauren C. Campbell, Assistant Attorney General (Jason S. Miyares Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.
Present: Russell, Ortiz and Raphael Judges Argued at Richmond, Virginia.
Carl Allge Wilkins was convicted by a jury of second-degree murder, in violation of Code § 18.2-32. Wilkins challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain his conviction. He also argues that the trial court erred by not striking the testimony of a witness. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.
"In accordance with familiar principles of appellate review, the facts will be stated in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, the prevailing party at trial." Poole v. Commonwealth, 73 Va.App. 357, 360 (2021) (quoting Gerald v. Commonwealth, 295 Va. 469, 472 (2018)). We accordingly discard any of Wilkins' conflicting evidence and regard as true all credible evidence favorable to the Commonwealth and all inferences that may reasonably be drawn from that evidence. Gerald, 295 Va. at 473.
On February 10, 2020, Wilkins called 911 at 11:29 p.m. and reported a stabbing at an apartment. The 911 operator told Wilkins to stay on the line and to place the victim "flat on his back on the floor." Wilkins acknowledged the operator's instruction, and replied "Yes, yes" when the operator asked if Wilkins was laying down the victim. The operator asked if Wilkins was controlling the bleeding, and Wilkins replied, "I can't, I don't know what happened." When the operator asked if the knife was still there, Wilkins replied, "No, I don't know what he did with it" and "They ran off." The operator emphatically told Wilkins to "lay him flat on his back now" and asked Wilkins to let him know when he had done so. The operator again asked if the victim was flat on his back, and Wilkins replied that he had "tried to." Wilkins did not reply to the operator's additional questions, and the call ended after about four minutes.
Chesterfield County Police Officers Schilke and Bechtold arrived at the apartment and found the victim, later identified as Jamar Golightly, lying on his right side and chest with his face down on the porch. Blood covered the front and back of his shirt and was smeared on various parts of the front door, frame, and threshold of the apartment. Golightly was pronounced dead at 11:37 p.m.
As officers searched the area, they discovered a trail of blood leading from the location of the victim to the steps of Wilkins' apartment, located two units away; blood also was pooling on top of a trash can outside. Inside Wilkins' apartment, officers discovered blood on the kitchen floor, on the kitchen wall beside the back door, on a chair in the living room, on a coat that was on the chair, and on the wall between the kitchen and the living room. The coat had been cut numerous times. Officers also found blood on the front porch pillar at the apartment in between Wilkins' apartment and the apartment where Golightly was found. No forensic analysis was performed on any of the blood.
Officers eventually located and arrested Wilkins late the next day at Erica Thierry's house in Henrico County. Wilkins had cuts on the index finger, thumb, and palm of his right hand but otherwise was uninjured. Wilkins told the police that when he and Golightly went back outside after returning from a liquor store, "three people in all black" confronted them and started swinging knives. Wilkins tried to "block" the knives and sustained three cuts on his right hand. Wilkins claimed that after the attackers fled, Golightly "ran" inside through the back door, out of the "front door," and then "to the next apartment." Wilkins claimed that he pursued Golightly and called 911 because he "was bleeding on the porch." He said that he had tried to help Golightly by applying pressure but "there was nothing" he could do to stop the bleeding.
At Wilkins' trial, Thierry testified that on the night of the incident, she arrived at Wilkins' apartment around 9:00 p.m. She drove Wilkins and Golightly to a liquor store and then to a convenience store before returning to Wilkins' apartment. She parked in the rear, and they entered through the back door. They went into the living room, where Thierry and Wilkins sat on a couch and Golightly sat in a chair next to Wilkins. At one point in the evening, Thierry saw Wilkins with a knife.
According to Thierry, Wilkins and Golightly were "drinking and smoking" and went into the kitchen three times to argue. Thierry could not see them or hear what was said when they were in the kitchen but could tell they were arguing. She heard them walk out the back door when they were in the kitchen for the third time. Two minutes later, Golightly came inside and had blood on the front and back of his shirt. Golightly sat in the chair and said, "Call 911," but Thierry did not make the call.
About a minute later, Wilkins came inside and asked Thierry, "You know what happened, don't you?" Golightly ran out the front door, but Wilkins "chased" after him. Thierry followed the men outside and saw Golightly fall and not "get up." Wilkins told Golightly to "get up" and called 911 when he did not respond. Thierry did not see Wilkins bend over or try to stop the bleeding with his hands. When emergency vehicles reached the next street, Wilkins and Thierry left, walking "quickly" back through the apartment to get to her car.
Thierry drove Wilkins to her house in Henrico County. At her house, Wilkins kept "looking out the window" "[a] whole bunch of times" to see if the police were coming. He also changed into "a jacket and a t-shirt and jeans" belonging to Thierry's son but kept his own shoes. The next morning, Thierry drove Wilkins to a picnic area south of Petersburg, where Wilkins put a bag of "[h]is clothes" in a trash can and set it on fire. That night, police arrested Wilkins at Thierry's house; his shoes had "red stains" on them but the clothing he was wearing did not. A search of the house uncovered a "bloody sock" and a "utility knife."
At various points during Thierry's testimony, counsel and the trial court indicated that they could not hear her and asked her to "speak up" and to speak into the microphone. Wilkins' counsel asked Thierry if she could be mistaken about seeing Wilkins with a knife, reminding her that she had testified at the preliminary hearing that she had not seen a knife in his hand. Thierry replied that she was not mistaken and explained that she "wasn't saying a lot" at the preliminary hearing. Thierry acknowledged that she initially did not tell the police that Wilkins had a knife, explaining that she "didn't tell the cops everything the first time I talked to them" because she had been worried about getting into trouble.
Wilkins moved the trial court to strike Thierry's testimony after cross-examination. He argued that the jury didn't hear "half of what she said" and that her testimony was not "that helpful in general because of the inability to hear what she was saying." After argument by counsel, the trial court denied the motion to strike her testimony, emphasizing that Wilkins could argue to the jury that "they can consider her demeanor on the stand, her presentation, whether they find her credible."
Golightly's girlfriend, KeMaya Lewis, testified that, on the night Golightly died, she talked to him after 9:00, while he, Wilkins, and Thierry were at the store. Golightly's phone's battery began to run low, and he told Lewis he would call her once he could charge it. About 7:00 the next morning, Lewis called Golightly's phone but received no answer, so she called Wilkins. Wilkins replied via text message and said that "somebody killed" Golightly. Wilkins informed Lewis that he and Golightly were getting out of the car when they were "ambushed" by men swinging knives. When Lewis replied that it did not make sense, Wilkins said that he thought somebody had been watching them. Wilkins also told Lewis that he had called the police, then went to Williamsburg.
Wilkins' next-door neighbor, Destiny Joyner, testified that she heard a "loud" "[c]ommotion" coming from Wilkins' apartment about 11:30 p.m. on the night Golightly was killed. Shortly afterwards, someone knocked on her front door, but she did not answer. Cynthia Moriconi, who lived in another complex behind Wilkins' apartment, went outside to smoke around 11:15 p.m. After a few minutes, she heard an "altercation" between two people. When she heard "a scream" from the direction of Wilkins' apartment, she looked and saw "a silhouette of a person at the top of the steps" of Wilkins' back porch. The person walked down the steps and towards the trash can in Wilkins' backyard. Moriconi did not see anyone else or any moving cars; she went back inside just before 11:30 p.m.
Dr Jeffrey Gofton, an assistant chief medical examiner, performed an autopsy on Golightly, who suffered ten stab wounds: two in the head, four in the torso, and two in each arm. Although the wounds were mostly superficial, one on the outside left area of Golightly's chest extended "four and a half to five inches deep" and "passed through the left lung and penetrated into the heart." That wound caused "extensive internal bleeding," and would have made it difficult for Golightly to breathe, ultimately leading to his death by "bleeding" and "compression of the lung." Gofton did not find "defensive wounds" on Golightly's hands, although there was "some blood smear"...
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