Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 01 August 2016
• Docket Number: No. 1539,1539
• Parties: TIESHA WILLIAMS v. STATE OF MARYLAND
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

TIESHA WILLIAMS v. STATE OF MARYLAND

No. 1539

COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS OF MARYLAND

September Term, 2015

August 1, 2016

UNREPORTED

Nazarian, Leahy, Salmon, James P. (Retired, Specially Assigned), JJ.

Opinion by Salmon, J.

*This is an unreported opinion, and it may not be cited in any paper, brief, motion, or other document filed in this Court or any other Maryland Court as either precedent within the rule of stare decisis or as persuasive authority. Md. Rule 1-104.

During the early morning hours of November 12, 2014, Tiesha Williams, appellant, got into a fight with Malita Savage. During the fight, Ms. Williams stabbed Ms. Savage five times with a knife. As a result of the stabbing Ms. Savage suffered a punctured lung and two arteries in her head were severed. She was hospitalized for three days.

Due to the stabbings, Ms. Williams, was charged by information in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City with: 1) attempted first-degree murder; 2) attempted second-degree murder; 3) first-degree assault; 4) second-degree assault; and 5) wearing or carrying a deadly weapon with intent to injure.

A jury trial was held in June 2015. Even though she never testified at trial, appellant's attorney claimed that his client stabbed Ms. Savage in self-defense. The jury found Ms. Williams guilty of first-degree assault and guilty of openly carrying a deadly weapon with intent to injure, but acquitted her of attempted first and second-degree murder.

After sentencing, Ms. Williams filed a timely appeal in which she raises two questions, worded as follows:

1) Did the trial court abuse its discretion by admitting the redacted versions of Ms. Williams' jail phone calls rather than [admitting] the full version of the calls?

2) Did the court commit plain error when it allowed the prosecutor to make improper and highly prejudicial remarks during closing argument?

I.BACKGROUND FACTS

In Part I of this opinion, we shall make no attempt to summarize all of the testimony that was produced at trial because appellant does not contend that the evidence was insufficient to convict her. Instead, we shall summarize only the facts relevant to the first question presented along with matters that put those facts in context.

A. The State's Evidence

In the early morning hours of November 12, 2014, Ms. Williams went to Kitty's Lounge located on Greenmount Avenue in Baltimore City. Accompanying her that evening was her friend, Ashley Tucker, and another woman whose nickname was "Eye." Also with her were two men whose nicknames were "Reck" and "Little Man."

That same evening, Malita Savage and her friend, Byron Martino, were about to leave the parking lot of Kitty's Lounge in Ms. Savage's SUV when they encountered Ms. Williams and the people who were with her. The encounter had its origin when Reck got out of the vehicle occupied by appellant, then tripped and fell and landed on Ms. Savage's SUV. Byron Martino got out of the SUV and, shortly thereafter Martino and Reck got into a fight. During the fight, Ms. Williams and the two females who accompanied her that evening got out of their vehicle and Ms. Savage got out of hers. Before long, Ms. Savage and Ms. Williams got into a fight with each other in which Ms. Williams's friend, Ashley Tucker, also participated.

According to Ms. Savage's testimony, her initial fight with Ms. Williams ended without substantial injury. But not long thereafter, a second fight commenced when Ms. Williams charged at Ms. Savage and stabbed her repeatedly with a knife. Thereafter, again according to Ms. Savage's testimony, Ms. Savage managed to push Ms. Williams' arm behind her back and take the knife from her. Ms. Savage then began swinging the knife while at the same time telling Mr. Martino that she needed to go to the hospital.¹ Martino immediately took Ms. Williams to Union Memorial Hospital.

Baltimore City Detective Joel Hawk responded to Union Memorial Hospital to investigate the stabbing. Soon after his arrival, Detective Hawk was notified that another female stabbing victim had been located at 449 East Lorraine Avenue, which was about five blocks from Kitty's Lounge.

That second stabbing victim was Ms. Williams. Detective Hawk sent a colleague to meet with Ms. Williams at the East Lorraine address, which turned out to be where Ms. Williams lived. Later, Detective Hawk went to the same address; he was accompanied by Mr. Martino. Detective Hawk found Ms. Williams and Ashley Tucker at that address and saw that blood was pouring from Ms. Williams' face. Mr. Martino then identified Ms.Williams and her friend, Ashley Tucker, as the women involved in the fight with Ms. Savage.²

When she was questioned at her home, Ms. Williams told a police officer that she had been in a fight that evening at a club in downtown Baltimore, but she denied having ever been to Kitty's Lounge on Greenmount Avenue. According to Ms. Williams' statement to the police, the fight originated when she saw her "baby's father . . . with another girl." She also told the officers that when the other girl and that girl's friend jumped her, she (Ms. Williams) hit her head. Ms. Williams refused medical attention even after emergency medical personal were called to assist her.

During the State's case, a videotape (from a city surveillance camera) of a part of the fight in which appellant participated was played for the jury. The videotape captured intermittent snippets of the fight but did not show how that fight started or ended, nor did it show anyone holding a knife. The tape, however, did show that Ms. Williams was, in fact, at the scene of the fight in which Ms. Savage was stabbed.

Also, as an important part of its case, the State introduced excerpts from three taped recordings of phone conversations that Ms. Williams participated in on November 13, 2014, while in jail. Two of those phone conversations were between appellant and her mother, Andrietta Allen. The third phone conversation was between Ms. Williams and a womancalled "Shay." Also, participating in this third call was Ms. Williams's six-year-old daughter. In the first telephone conversation Ms. Williams admitted to her mother that the victim, Ms. Savage, was unarmed. In the second recorded conversation with her mother, Ms. Williams repeatedly asked her mother to contact Ms. Savage and offer her money in exchange for Ms. Savage's agreement to "not press charges." At one point in that recorded conversation, Ms. Williams said: "Ma, only thing I can tell y'all to do is pull the girl's (Ms. Savage's) name up and try to get a contact for her and see if y'all could pay her to not press charges." Appellant went on to say in the recorded conversation that if Ms. Savage pressed charges, she (Ms. Williams) would "do time." In the phone conversations, Ms. Williams' mother did not agree to attempt to bribe Ms. Savage and told her daughter that "you shouldn't be discussing that on the phone. That's bribery." In the third conversation, when Ms. Williams talked to Shay, Ms. Williams asked Shay if she would get in contact with Ms. Savage, to see if she could bribe her so that the victim would not press charges. Also during the conversation, after Ms. Williams mentioned the fact that the police had the fight "on camera," Shay asked Ms. Williams whether the fact that the fight was on camera was a "good thing or a bad thing?" Ms. Williams replied, "It's a bad thing. That's why I need her to, you know, do what I said. You get what I'm saying? That's the only thing that's helping me."

B. The Defense's Case

Ashley Tucker, a friend of appellant's, was the main witness for the defense. She testified that she, Ms. Williams and their friends went to Kitty's Lounge in Baltimore City at approximately12:30 a.m. on November 12, 2014. After Reck parked his car behind a grey Hyundai, he got out of the vehicle, and fell onto the driver's rear side door of the grey Hyundai. A man, later identified as Mr. Martino, got out of the Hyundai and "was being real forceful" and "aggressive" toward Reck. Mr. Martino then started to fight with Reck.

Ms. Williams and her friends were still inside the car when the fight began. Ms. Tucker exited the car to try to stop the fight but found herself trapped between the two combatants, who were both large men. Ms. Williams then got out and attempted to pull Ms. Tucker out of harms way. As Ms. Williams was trying to help Ms. Tucker, Ms. Savage "jumped out of the car and started to swing on [Ms. Williams]." At some point, Mr. Martino took Ms. Savage back to her SUV. When Ms. Savage tried to get out again, Ms. Tucker tried to stop her. Next, Ms. Tucker saw Ms. Savage crawl back out of the driver's side door of Ms. Savage's SUV, come around the vehicle, and assault Ms. Williams for a second time. This caused Ms. Savage and Ms. Williams to re-engage in a fight once more. Ms. Tucker testified that when she saw Ms. Williams and Ms. Savage wrestling on the ground she suspected a weapon was being used in the fight. That suspicion was caused by her observation of blood coming from Ms. Williams' head. Ms. Tucker then saw Ms. Savagestand up with a knife in her hand. Ms. Williams, at this point, had blood gushing from her head. After Ms. Tucker pleaded with Ms. Savage to calm down, the latter backed away still holding the knife. Next, Mr. Martino grabbed Ms. Savage and placed her in the Hyundai. Ms. Tucker then wrapped her jacket around Ms. Williams' bleeding head and helped Ms. Williams to return to the latter's home. By the time they arrived at Ms. Williams' house, Ms. Tucker's jacket and Ms. Williams' clothing were so drenched in blood that the clothes were thrown away.

Ms. Tucker described Ms. Williams as a "peaceful person" who had never been in a fight before. She testified that she knew for a fact that none of the people she was with on the night of the fight was carrying a knife or any other weapon. Ms. Tucker also told the jury that she was with Ms. Williams "for about four or five hours" prior to the fight and...