Darius Young v. United States , 2015 D.C. App. LEXIS 85 ( 2015 )

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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS
Nos. 12-CF-1860 and 12-CF-1861
DARIUS YOUNG, APPELLANT,
v.
UNITED STATES, APPELLEE.
Appeals from the Superior Court
of the District of Columbia
(CF2-10858-11 and CF2-22892-11)
(Hon. Ronna L. Beck, Trial Judge)
(Argued January 29, 2015 Decided March 5, 2015)
Chris Kemmitt, Public Defender Service, with whom James Klein and Alice
Wang, Public Defender Service, were on the brief, for appellant.
Stephen F. Rickard, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Ronald C.
Machen Jr., United States Attorney, and Elizabeth Trosman, Elizabeth H. Danello,
and Andrew Finkelman, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for
appellee.
Before FISHER and THOMPSON, Associate Judges, and BELSON, Senior
Judge.
BELSON, Senior Judge: Darius Young appeals his convictions for
carjacking, first-degree theft, and unauthorized use of a vehicle, arguing that the
trial court abused its discretion by admitting lay witness opinion testimony that
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identified him in surveillance footage. We conclude that the testimony was
admissible under Sanders v. United States, 809 A.2d 584, 596 (D.C. 2002), and
affirm.
I.
On April 9, 2011, at around 12:30 p.m., Mr. Dongni Pho was standing
outside of his Lexus SUV in a service station as he finished pumping gas. A man
ran up to the SUV, jumped in, locked the door, and drove away. Mr. Pho had left
his wallet, keys, and an iPhone inside the car. Police reviewed the station’s
surveillance footage of the incident, and then used tracking software on Mr. Pho’s
iPhone to track the device to an area close to the intersection of 46 th and G Streets,
Southeast. The police arrived at that location around 3:30 p.m., three hours after
the robbery. They saw two men standing by automobiles, but the Lexus SUV was
nowhere to be seen. Officer White saw one man, later identified as appellant
Darius Young, wearing a jacket that looked like the jacket worn by the thief in the
surveillance video. Mr. Young “made a motion as [though] he was passing
something to the other gentleman” which the police interpreted as passing the
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stolen iPhone. The other man then walked inside an adjacent apartment building.1
The police then ordered Mr. Young to approach them, and he did so. He gave the
police a series of false names. Officer White then seized Mr. Young’s jacket and
searched it, but found no proceeds of the theft of the Lexus SUV. Officer White
did not arrest Mr. Young, but took his photo without the jacket, which the officers
retained. Mr. Young was subsequently prosecuted, and both the photo and the
jacket were later introduced at trial.
At trial, the government called a witness, Ms. Edwina Jackson, whose
testimony is the subject of this appeal. During the relevant time period,
Ms. Jackson was a social worker who worked with at-risk teens, picking them up
at their homes or schools and taking them to activities in the community, outside of
their own neighborhood. In February of 2009, she worked with two families,
including the family of Mr. Young. For four to eight months in 2009, Ms. Jackson
worked with Mr. Young and his family for up to five hours a day, Monday through
Friday. Her encounters with Mr. Young gradually decreased, especially in late
1
The iPhone tracking software indicated that Mr. Pho’s iPhone was in a
nearby apartment, but the police could not tell which one, and never recovered the
iPhone.
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2009 and early 2010. In this period, Ms. Jackson only saw Mr. Young “maybe two
or three times a week to not being able to catch up with him at all.” Mr. Young
had dreadlocks during the period of frequent interaction in 2009, but cut his hair
short in 2010. Ms. Jackson testified that her last sighting of Mr. Young was “three
to four weeks prior” to June 23, 2011, which would have been after the April 9,
2011, carjacking.
Ms. Jackson testified that she recognized Mr. Young as the carjacker in the
gas station surveillance video. She stated that the carjacker’s face “does look like
Darius,” and that “[t]he stance, the gait, and the jacket look[] familiar.” Asked to
clarify what she meant by gait, she said “[T]he stance. The walk. Like, when he
went back and forth, just the posture.”
Mr. Young was convicted by the jury of carjacking in violation of D.C.
Code § 22-2803 (a) (2001); first-degree theft in violation of D.C. Code §§ 22-
3211, -3212 (a) (2001); and unauthorized use of a vehicle, in violation of D.C.
Code § 22-3215 (2001). He was sentenced to seven years of incarceration and
three years of supervised release on the carjacking charge, and received concurrent
sentences on the remaining counts. This appeal followed.
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II.
In Sanders v. United States, this court held that the admissibility of “lay
witness opinion testimony regarding the identity of a person in a surveillance
photograph or a surveillance videotape” is “subject to the sound discretion of the
trial court,” and we will not disturb the trial court’s ruling absent an abuse of that
discretion. 809 A.2d at 596; see also Gee v. United States, 54 A.3d 1249, 1261
(D.C. 2012). Such testimony is admissible if it is “(a) rationally based on the
perception of a witness who is familiar with the defendant’s appearance and has
had substantial contact with the defendant; and (b) helpful to the factfinder in the
determination of a fact in issue.” Sanders, supra, 809 A.2d at 596. At the end of
the day, “the trial court at least should be reasonably satisfied that because of the
either obscured or altered appearance of the defendant in the photograph or the
videotape, or changed appearance of the defendant, the lay witness is more likely
to accurately identify the defendant than is the factfinder.” Id.Mr. Young argues that “the trial court abused its discretion when it admitted
Ms. Jackson’s lay opinion testimony identifying Mr. Young as the carjacker in
the . . . surveillance video.” He states that:
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Ms. Jackson knew no more than the jury did about Mr.
Young’s jacket, which the government introduced into
evidence. And the government failed to establish that
Ms. Jackson could identify any distinguishing feature of
Mr. Young’s gait, or that anyone could discern such a
feature from the brief period of nondescript ambulation
apparent in the surveillance video. Furthermore, the
helpfulness of Ms. Jackson’s opinion was undermined by
the fact that she had not seen Mr. Young since 2010, was
not familiar with his appearance at the time of the
carjacking, and made her initial identification in a highly
suggestive context. Accordingly, the trial court erred. . . .
Mr. Young’s argument is unpersuasive. Just as in Sanders, Ms. Jackson was
“familiar with the defendant’s appearance and has had substantial contact with the
defendant,” Sanders, supra, 809 A.2d at 596, because she had extensive contact
with Mr. Young in 2009, some contact in 2010, and had seen him as recently as
May or June of 2011.2 See Vaughn v. United States, 93 A.3d 1237, 1271 (D.C.
2014) (holding that police officers’ identification testimony was admissible under
Sanders where “officers, over a period of months, had daily interaction with
[defendants] . . . interaction which gave rise to familiarity and particular
knowledge of their physical features”). Ms. Jackson’s testimony was also “helpful
2
Although Mr. Young asserts that Ms. Jackson “had not seen Mr. Young
since 2010,” Ms. Jackson testified that she most recently saw Mr. Young “three to
four weeks prior” to the June 23, 2011 carjacking.
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to the factfinder in the determination of a fact in issue.” Sanders, supra, 809 A.2d
at 596. As in Sanders, the perpetrator’s face is obscured, since the footage was not
of sufficiently high quality to clearly show the carjacker’s face.3 Id. (“the features
of the men . . . were obscured by their hats . . . the videotape was ‘not all that
clear.’”); see also Vaughn, supra, 93 A.3d at 1245 (“The recordings were of
limited utility on their own. . . . [T]he images are highly pixelated and the faces
are . . . ‘blurry.’) (internal citation omitted). Accordingly, Ms. Jackson’s ability to
identify Mr. Young from his face, “[t]he stance, the gait, and the jacket look[ing]
familiar” was helpful to the jury, who would have an inferior ability to recognize
Mr. Young based on these attributes. Although Mr. Young argues that
Ms. Jackson was unable to describe the carjacker’s gait with sufficient specificity,
the court in Sanders was satisfied by the witnesses’ ability to describe identifying
characteristics of the defendants with the same level of detail: one witness noting a
defendant’s “sway . . . and distinctive moustache,” and three other witnesses “his
jacket and voice.” Sanders, supra, 809 A.2d at 594 (internal quotation marks
omitted). The trial court here was, to put it as we did in Sanders, “reasonably
3
To the extent that Mr. Young argues that Ms. Jackson relied “only” upon
the carjacker’s gait and jacket to identify him as Mr. Young, this argument is
contradicted by Ms. Jackson’s testimony that “[w]hen he turned around, he
looked—the face isn’t really clear on the video, but it does look like Darius.”
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satisfied that because of the . . . obscured . . . appearance of the defendant in the . . .
videotape . . . the lay witness [was] more likely to accurately identify the defendant
than [was] the factfinder.” Id. at 596. Thus the admission of Ms. Jackson’s
testimony was not error, and Mr. Young’s convictions are accordingly
Affirmed.