Williams v. United States

Citation52 A.3d 25
Decision Date14 June 2012
Docket NumberNo. 09–CF–1249.,09–CF–1249.
PartiesMyrone WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.
CourtCourt of Appeals of Columbia District

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

Sydney J. Hoffmann, appointed by the court, for appellant.

Suzanne C. Nyland, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Ronald C. Machen Jr., United States Attorney, and Roy W. McLeese III, Elizabeth Trosman, and Charles W. Cobb, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee.

Before BLACKBURNE–RIGSBY and OBERLY, Associate Judges, and FERREN, Senior Judge.

FERREN, Senior Judge:

Myrone Williams appeals his convictions of threatening to injure a person 1 (his wife) in early March 2008; second-degree murder (of his wife) while armed 2 a few weeks later; and related weapons offenses: possession of a firearm during a crime of violence (PFCV),3 carrying a pistol without a license outside the home (CPWL) after a felony conviction, 4 and unlawful possession of a firearm (UF) after a felony conviction. 5 Appellant contends (1) that the evidence was insufficient for conviction of the murder and weapons offenses; (2) that the trial court violated his constitutional right to due process by failing to order removal of his leg shackles during trial; (3) that the trial court abused its discretion by admitting prejudicial evidence, including appellant's absence from his wife's funeral, to show consciousness of guilt; and (4) that the trial court erred by instructing the jury with a combination anti-deadlock/ “reasonable efforts” instruction after receiving a second note indicating that the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on the first-degree murder charge. We conclude that none of these arguments provides a ground for reversal, and thus that all of appellant's convictions must be affirmed.

I.

The charges grew out of the fatal shooting of appellant's wife early in the morning of March 22, 2008. According to the government's evidence, in early March, appellant's son, Myrone Hamilton (age ten), heard his mother, Bernadette Hamilton, arguing with appellant at their home about divorce papers she had had served on appellant on March 4th. During the argument, Myrone heard his father say that he would “kill her and then kill hi[m]self.” At approximately 1:30 a.m., Melissa Stokes, a Detail Support Liaison with the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), was dispatched to assist with a family disturbance report. Stokes assisted Ms. Hamilton in gathering her belongings, as well as Myrone and her older son, Tyzje, and transporting them to the nearby home of Ms. Hamilton's mother, Renae Mickens.

Two weeks later, on March 21, Ms. Hamilton, who intended to be with a friend that evening, informed her mother that appellant would be coming to their home to gather Myrone and Tyzje so that appellant could take them to his mother's home to stay with him overnight. Appellant picked up his sons that afternoon and took them to his mother's home at 1503 Tanner Street, S.E. After several hours, however, he decided to take them to their paternal aunt's house while appellant remained at his mother's home.

Appellant's brother, Jeffrey Mosley, testified that at approximately midnight on March 22, 2008, he was with appellant at their mother's house and that appellant had “a gun on him,” a “nine ... [m]illimeter.” Mosley further testified that the gun had been “in [Mosley's] room on the floor” and was gone when appellant left. Another government witness, MPD homicide Detective Joshua Branson, testified with reference to exhibits in evidence that at “about” 12:25 a.m. on March 22, Bernadette Hamilton placed a call to appellant's cell phone. Referring to that time period soon after appellant had left, Mosley testified that he saw a car outside the house that he believed was Bernadette Hamilton's. 6

Around that time, several neighbors heard gunshots and looked outside to see what was happening. Lakeisha Walker, who was at her home near 15th Place and Tanner Street, S.E., looked out her window, overlooking Tanner Street, and saw the backside of a man with long “braids, cornrows, or pla[i]ts” as a hairstyle, wearing blue jeans, a white shirt, and a cap, shooting into the driver's side of a dark-colored car.7 Neighbor Janee Carter also heard the gunshots, looked out her window, and saw a blue car in motion on the sidewalk. When she went outside she saw a deceased female, Bernadette Hamilton,8 sitting in the driver's seat with a dog resting on her chest, licking her face.9 Melvin Carter also looked out his window and saw a man shooting into the driver's side window of a car while using profanity and screaming “bitch.” He described the shooter as wearing a black shirt, black shoes, and blue jeans, with his hair styled in dreadlocks. Carter's girlfriend, Jocelyn Aull, described the shooter as wearing a black jacket, blue jeans, and a cap on his head.

Another government witness, Travis Archie, had not seen the shooting but heard the gunshots, knew appellant, and no more than fifteen seconds after the shots stopped saw appellant walking away from the direction of the shooting. Archie testified, as Aull had described the shooter, that appellant was dressed in a black jacket, blue jeans, and a cap.10 Much like Walker, who saw “braids, cornrows, or pla[i]ts,” and Melvin Carter, who saw “dreadlocks,” Archie saw “dreads or cornrows” on appellant. And Archie, like Aull and Walker, saw a cap. The only inconsistency among all the observers was Walker's reference to a white shirt. (Also, those who described a hairstyle varied somewhat in their descriptions of the length, but not general style, of the hair.)

The government also presented evidence of Bernadette Hamilton's wounds and their source. The District of Columbia Medical Examiner, Lois Golinski, M.D., had conducted the autopsy and found twelve bullet wounds in various parts of Bernadette Hamilton's body including her neck, vertebrae, jaw, chest, left shoulder, and left arm. MPD firearms expert Michael Mulderig found that the nine-millimeter cartridges and the nine-millimeter bullets recovered from the scene of the crime were all from the same gun. The police did not, however, locate the gun.

II.

We consider, first, appellant's contention that the evidence was insufficient to convict him of second-degree murder while armed and the related weapons charges (he does not challenge evidentiary sufficiency for his threats conviction). Because of a defense concession and pretrial stipulation, our decision as to whether the evidence was sufficient to support appellant's conviction of second-degree murder while armed will resolve all weapons convictions as well.11

For second-degree murder, “the government was required to prove that [appellant] (1) caused the death of the victim; [and] (2) had the specific intent to kill or ... seriously injure the decedent, or acted in conscious disregard of an extreme risk of death or serious bodily injury to the decedent; [provided] that (3) there were no mitigating circumstances.” 12 Focusing on the first element, appellant claims insufficiency because, he says, none of the eyewitnesses could identify appellant as the shooter; their descriptions of the unidentified shooter varied; some witnesses could provide no physical description of the shooter; and some descriptions of the shooter varied from the description that the government's principal witness, Travis Archie, gave for appellant (whom he knew). Further, argues appellant, Mosley was drunk when he claimed he saw appellant leave the house, and Archie was high at the time of his eyewitness observation of appellant running away that night. Finally, appellant stresses, no forensic evidence connected appellant to the shooting; no murder weapon was recovered; and he did not incriminate himself.

In reviewing for sufficiency of the evidence, we have often observed that this court

must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, giving full play to the right of the jury to determine credibility, weigh the evidence, and draw justifiable inferences of fact. We do not distinguish between direct and circumstantial evidence, and the government is not required to negate every possible inference of innocence. Rather, it is only where the government has produced no evidence from which a reasonable mind might fairly infer guilt beyond a reasonable doubt that this court can reverse a conviction. 13

Based on these criteria, appellant's sufficiency argument fails. Ample evidence supports reasonable jury findings that appellant was the shooter who caused his wife's death, that he had the specific intent to kill her (twelve bullets while she sat in her car), and that no circumstances mitigated the charge of second-degree murder while armed.14 Appellant's brother, Jeffrey Mosley, testified that on the evening of the murder (when Mosley admittedly was drunk),15 appellant left the house at about midnight having apparently taken his nine-millimeter handgun—the kind of weapon that the government expert testified was used to kill Bernadette Hamilton. Detective Branson testified that, at about 12:25 a.m., Hamilton placed a call to appellant's cell phone, and Mosley testified that shortly thereafter he saw a car that he believed was Hamilton's outside his mother's house (where Mosley lived and appellant had stayed that evening). At about that time, less than a half hour after appellant had left the house with a nine-millimeter handgun, Hamilton was shot in the driver's seat of her car. We have summarized in Part I the descriptions of the shooter by the eyewitnesses, as well as the description of appellant by Archie, a man who knew appellant and saw him in the area of the shooting within seconds after it happened. The descriptions by the eyewitnesses,as well as the description by Archie, when compared with those of the eyewitnesses, show remarkable consistency. In any event, [c]ontradictions between the testimony from various witnesses [are]...

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    ...defendant have "kill[ed] another" as a requirement that the defendant have "caused the death of" another. See, e.g. , Williams v. United States , 52 A.3d 25, 31 (D.C. 2012) (elements of second-degree murder include that defendant "caused the death of the victim"); Robinson v. United States ......
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