Wint v. United States
| Decision Date | 15 December 2022 |
| Docket Number | 19-CF-116 |
| Citation | 285 A.3d 1270 |
| Parties | Daron D. WINT, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee. |
| Court | D.C. Court of Appeals |
Lee R. Goebes, Public Defender Service, with whom Samia Fam and Mikel-Meredith Weidman, Public Defender Service, were on the brief, for appellant.
Nicholas P. Coleman, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Channing D. Phillips, Acting United States Attorney, and Elizabeth Trosman, Chrisellen R. Kolb, and Laura Bach, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee.
Before Blackburne-Rigsby, Chief Judge, Easterly, Associate Judge, and Fisher, Senior Judge.
Opinion by Associate Judge Easterly, concurring in part and dissenting in part, at page 1283.
This appeal stems from a brutal quadruple homicide, in which three family members and their housekeeper were kidnapped, held hostage over the course of two days, extorted for cash, and tortured. Firefighters ultimately found part of the family's home engulfed in flames and all four victims’ bodies burned.
In 2016, appellant was indicted on four counts of first-degree murder while armed ( D.C. Code §§ 22-2101, - 4502 ), and related charges.1 At trial, appellant presented a third-party perpetrator defense, arguing that his two brothers, Darrell Wint and Steffon Wint, were the actual perpetrators. During its rebuttal case, the government introduced evidence that Darrell Wint was outside the District of Columbia for part of the day when the crimes occurred. Appellant moved for surrebuttal, proffering evidence that would purportedly contradict Darrell's alleged whereabouts that day. The trial court denied the motion for surrebuttal, and the jury convicted appellant of all counts. Appellant was sentenced to four terms of life imprisonment without release.
On appeal, appellant argues that the trial court committed reversible error when it denied his motion for surrebuttal. We affirm appellant's premeditated murder convictions for the deaths of Savvas Savopoulous, Amy Savopolous, Veralicia Figueroa, and Philip Savopolous. As we discuss, while the trial court should have allowed appellant to present surrebuttal evidence, the weight of the other overwhelming evidence against appellant rendered any error by the trial court in denying surrebuttal harmless. Finally, we remand this case to the trial court so that appellant's felony-murder convictions may be merged into his premeditated murder convictions, with any decisions on resentencing left to the trial court. In all other respects, the judgment is affirmed.
Early in the afternoon of May 14, 2015, first responders arrived at a house in a neighborhood in the Northwest quadrant of D.C. after receiving reports of a house fire. When the firefighters arrived, they discovered that one of the bedrooms on the second floor was engulfed in flames, and they searched for victims. In a separate bedroom, firefighters found the bodies of Amy and Savvas Savopoulos, the homeowners, and Vera Figueroa, their housekeeper. In another room, firefighters found the body of Philip Savopoulos, Amy and Savvas's ten-year-old son.
When the smoke cleared, one of the firefighters described seeing a "bloodbath" because blood covered the floor of one of the bedrooms and a bloody baseball bat was on the bed. A medical examiner testified that all four victims were stabbed, and the three adults had been beaten, restrained, and doused with gasoline.
Police found appellant's DNA at the Savopoulos home. A Domino's pizza box was found in the bedroom with the adult victims, and appellant's DNA was on the pizza crust. Appellant's partial genetic profile was on the back of a knife that was propping open a window in the basement. Two hairs matching appellant's DNA profile were recovered from a hard hat in the garage and a bedroom.2
The government's theory was that appellant kidnapped, restrained, and extorted the decedents for cash before killing them and setting the house on fire. The government contended that appellant broke into the Savopoulos home sometime between 11:29 a.m. and 3:14 p.m. on May 13, 2015, and cut their home phone lines. During that timeframe, Philip was home with the housekeeper, Mrs. Figueroa, while his mother Amy was out walking, so the government posited that appellant first restrained the child and the housekeeper. Then, when Amy came home, he was able to restrain her as well, followed by the restraint of the father, Savvas, after he returned home from work.3 While they were held captive, the victims were subjected to various forms of violence, including being beaten, stabbed, and asphyxiated, doused with gasoline, and their bodies were burned. The government argued that appellant forced Savvas to obtain $40,000 in cash from his company's bank account and have it delivered to the house. After the cash was delivered the following day, all in $100 bills, the government contended that appellant burned the house to destroy the evidence.
The government presented the following additional evidence that appellant had been at the Savopoulos home and was exhibiting consciousness of guilt. At about 12:10 p.m. on May 14, two people visiting a nearby house saw appellant walk into the Savopouloses’ garage. Later that afternoon, around 5:00 p.m., two different people saw appellant pacing in a parking lot shortly before firefighters recovered the Savopouloses’ Porsche burning in the woods nearby. Around 6:00 p.m. that same day, appellant began using his iPhone to search for information about how to remove its iCloud feature and whether it had a memory card. Appellant also called his girlfriend and asked if cell phones could be traced. That night, appellant used his phone to search for information on how to beat a lie detector test and looked up a fire at Woodland Drive (the Savopouloses’ street). The following day, on May 15, appellant went to the gym with his friend and flashed $1,200 in cash, all $100 bills. Later that evening, appellant called the same friend to ask for help burning his minivan, which the friend declined. Shortly thereafter, firefighters found appellant's minivan on fire.
Appellant's girlfriend, Vanessa Hayles, testified that on May 16, appellant went to visit her in New York City, where he continued to pay for items using $100 bills. He also continued to search for information about the murders on his cell phone and searched for "hideout cities for fugitives" and extradition law. While in New York, appellant and Hayles saw a news report about the Savopoulos murders that included appellant's photograph. The next day, appellant chartered a taxi back to D.C. and told Hayles that he was going to self-surrender.
Later that day, appellant's brother, Darrell, contacted a friend, Chelsea Nunez, and asked her to get money orders for a "friend" who needed to hire a lawyer. Nunez picked Darrell up in her car, and he gave her $2,800 in $100 bills to purchase the money orders. Afterwards, they picked appellant up from a hotel just outside of D.C. Appellant got into the car with Nunez, but Darrell exited Nunez's car and got into a different car, and told Nunez to follow him. As both cars were driving, law enforcement stopped both vehicles and arrested appellant. When police searched the two cars, they found $7,300 in cash in the car Darrell was riding in, but no cash in the car appellant was in.
The government presented cell-site data for Darrell's primary cell phone showing that it did not connect with any cell towers near the Savopoulos house on May 13 or 14. Steffon Wint testified that he had no memory of where he was on May 13 or 14. The government introduced time sheets from May 13 showing that Steffon worked from 6:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and from May 14 showing that Steffon worked from 6:00 a.m. to midnight. The only signatures on the time sheets were Steffon's, suggesting that his supervisor did not certify the hours worked.
Appellant presented a third-party perpetrator defense, arguing that his brothers, Darrell and Steffon, were the actual perpetrators. Appellant testified that Darrell brought him to the Savopoulos home on May 14 (the day after the kidnappings) under the premise that Darrell and Steffon needed help completing a construction project. Appellant testified that he went inside the home, but once he realized that his brothers were burglarizing it, he left, and did not realize the extent of their plan to murder anyone.
Appellant responded to much of the evidence against him. In appellant's version of events, he left his house in the early morning hours on May 13, to meet up with Darrell, who asked him for help with a painting and drywall project that he was working on with Steffon. Appellant testified that he met Darrell around 6:00 a.m. near PCM Services, a construction company in Beltsville, Maryland, but Darrell had changed the plan. Darrell told appellant that he and Steffon no longer needed appellant's help, but would pay to borrow appellant's minivan. Appellant agreed, and asked Darrell to drop him off at his friend Ed's house and pick him up in the minivan later. Appellant testified that he did not sleep at home the night of May 13 because he spent the afternoon at Ed's house and fell asleep there after drinking too much alcohol. Appellant testified that Darrell returned the next morning, May 14, to pick appellant up, but he was driving a Porsche instead of appellant's minivan. Darrell told appellant that he and Steffon now needed appellant's help completing the drywall and painting job, and drove him to the job site, which turned out to be the Savopouloses’ house. Appellant went inside with Darrell and sat in the dining room while Darrell went upstairs. Darrell then came downstairs with a pizza box, and appellant took a bite before putting the crust back in the box because it was cold. Appellant then realized he left his phone in the Porsche, and Darrell told him...
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