Benton v. State

REPORTED
IN THE COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS
OF MARYLAND
No. 959
September Term, 2014
______________________________________
JOSHUA BENTON
v.
STATE OF MARYLAND
______________________________________
Woodward,
Kehoe,
Arthur,
JJ.
______________________________________
Opinion by Arthur, J.
______________________________________
Filed: August 31, 2015
Following a five-day jury trial in the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County,
Joshua Benton, appellant, was convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit
first-degree murder, and use of a handgun in the commission of a felony or crime of
violence. The circuit court sentenced Benton to serve two consecutive life sentences for
murder and conspiracy to commit murder and a consecutive sentence of 20 years for use
of a handgun. He filed a timely appeal.
QUESTIONS PRESENTED
Benton raises three questions for our review:
1. Did the trial court err in failing to propound Benton’s requested voir
dire question, which inquired whether any member of the venire had
been charged with or convicted of a serious offense, other than a
traffic offense?
2. Did the trial court err in admitting hearsay evidence?
3. Was the evidence insufficient to sustain Benton’s convictions?
Because we agree that the trial court committed reversible error by failing to
propound the requested voir dire question regarding whether the venire members had
been convicted of a serious offense, and thus were statutorily disqualified to serve on the
jury, we reverse Benton’s convictions and remand this case for a new trial.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
Benton was charged with offenses arising from the death of Sharod James. The
evidence presented at Benton’s trial, framed in the light most favorable to the State
demonstrated that around 11:50 p.m. on the night of November 16, 2012, James was shot
at a gas station on Martin Luther King Jr. Highway in Prince George’s County. The State
theorized that Benton and his co-defendant, Madhi Lawson, killed James because they
believed that James had killed their friend, Matheno Nichols, in 2006.1
Two witnesses, a driver and passenger of a nearby automobile, heard the gunshots
while they were stopped at a red light near the gas station. They observed two men
standing over another man in a dark area of the gas station lot. Although the witnesses
were too far away to see the faces of the two men they saw, they believed that the men
were African-American. The witnesses were also able to describe the assailants’ clothing
to the police. The witnesses’ description of the assailants’ clothing was consistent with
the clothing worn by Benton and Lawson in a surveillance video taken at the gas station
on the night James was killed.2 Telephone records indicated that, at around the time of
the shooting, James received a call from a cell phone number used by Lawson.
Steven Waytes, who had been incarcerated with Benton in the Prince George’s
County Corrections Center while Benton was awaiting trial in 2013, testified that
members of the public believed that James had killed Benton’s friend, Matheno Nichols.
The trial court allowed the admission of Waytes’s grand jury testimony that Benton
admitted that he was at the gas station on the night James was shot, but that “the State
had nothing on him.”
1
James was charged with Nichols’s murder, but was acquitted by a jury.
2
From a still photograph made from the gas station surveillance video, Wasette
Lawson, co-defendant Lawson’s mother, identified Lawson and “Twin,” which was a
street name used by Benton, who has a twin brother. Benton and Lawson were also
identified in the surveillance video by the Detective who investigated James’ murder.
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DISCUSSION
I. Voir Dire Question
Before trial, the parties submitted written requests to the trial court, including the
voir dire questions that they wanted the court to ask the potential jurors. The State’s
proposed voir dire question number 7, inquired: “Have you, any members of your
immediate family, or close personal friends ever been . . . arrested for, charged with, or
convicted of a crime, excluding routine motor vehicle violations?” The defense’s
proposed voir dire question number 26 queried: “Has any member of the jury or a close
personal friend or relative been charged with or convicted of a serious offense, other than
a traffic offense?” The defense also included question 31, which asked: “Has any
member of the jury or a family member or a close personal friend, been a victim of a
criminal offense?”
During voir dire, the trial court posed only eight questions to the prospective jurors
and then individually questioned the jurors who had responded affirmatively to the
court’s questions. At the conclusion of voir dire, the following colloquy occurred:
THE COURT: That’s it for the questions I intend to pose to them on
voir dire. Any exceptions to the Court’s voir dire[?]
[PROSECUTOR]: The State would ask for the standard three part —
charged with, convicted of, victim of a crime.
THE COURT: I am not doing it. Case law says no.
[PROSECUTOR]: No?
[DEFENSE]: Going to ask.
THE COURT: Not doing it. Case law says no.
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[DEFENSE]: Ask for the same thing in addition. Court’s indulgence.
[DEFENSE][3]: My question 23, which was —
THE COURT: Which is, charged, must be guilty of something. I
already asked the jurors. I was going to give them
instructions that are going to be binding, and would
they be able to follow the Court’s instructions.
They said yes. They will be instructed as to
presumption of innocence.
[DEFENSE]: Okay. Beyond that, the only hesitation I have is the
Court saying they are not going to ask the question
about whether a family member, close friend, or
themselves have been a victim of a criminal offense.
THE COURT: Well, you accept [sic] to my not asking that question?
[DEFENSE]: Yes, I do. Based upon the responses we’ve gotten so
far from some of the jurors, indicated some of them, in
fact, have been victims or have had close friends or
relatives who are victims that has severely affected
their ability to listen to the evidence and be impartial.
THE COURT: I certainly do not feel myself willing, capable to
challenge the wisdom of the Court of Appeals who
have spoken in this matter.
Benton asserts that the trial court abused its discretion by refusing to question the
venire members about whether any of them were currently charged with or had
previously been convicted of a serious offense. The court was required to ask the
requested voir dire question, Benton contends, because it was intended to “expose the
3
The transcript attributes this comment to the prosecutor. Given that the State
requested only 19 voir dire questions, we believe that this request was actually made by
defense counsel, whose list of proposed voir dire questions numbered 38 – including
Question 23, which queried: “Does any member believe that solely because a person is
charged, he must be guilty of something?”
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venire persons’ statutory disqualifications.”
Preliminarily, we must address the State’s assertion that the defense failed to
preserve Benton’s arguments regarding the failure to ask the requested voir dire question.
Based on the colloquy reproduced above, the State asserts that, although defense counsel
joined in the State’s request to ask the “three part – charged with, convicted of, victim of
a crime” question, he subsequently limited his argument to the court’s refusal to question
the venire regarding whether they or a close friend or relative had been a victim of a
crime and thereby waived all other grounds for his objection. The State further asserts
that because defense counsel merely joined in the State’s request for the three-part
question, Benton made no “specific request” to propound a question that focused on any
potential juror’s pending charges and prior convictions. We reject the claim of non-
preservation.
The manner of making objections during jury selection is governed by Md. Rule
4-323(c). See Marquardt v. State, 164 Md. App. 95, 142-43 (2005). This rule provides
as follows:
(c) Objections to other rulings or orders. For purposes of review by
the trial court or on appeal of any other ruling or order, it is sufficient
that a party, at the time the ruling or order is made or sought, makes
known to the court the action that the party desires the court to take or
the objection to the action of the court. The grounds for the objection
need not be stated unless these rules expressly provide otherwise or
the court so directs. . . .
Before trial, Benton submitted a written request that the court ask potential jurors
whether they had ever “been charged with or convicted of a serious offense[.]” During
voir dire, defense counsel joined in the State’s request for a three-part “charged with,
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convicted of, victim of” question at the close of the court’s voir dire, indicating that he
was, “going to ask . . . for the same thing in addition” to the State’s request. These efforts
were sufficient to let the court know that the defense wanted the court to ask the proposed
question and that the defense objected to the court’s refusal to ask the question.
After the trial court summarily denied those requests, the court then denied a
separate, unrelated request to ask the venire members whether they would presume that
any person charged with a crime is guilty. A moment after that ruling, defense counsel
then took exception to the court’s refusal to ask his previously proposed question about
whether potential jurors had ever been the “victim of” a crime.4 At that point, the court
explained its refusal to propound any “victim of” question.
We see no suggestion in the record that, when the defense noted an exception to
the court’s refusal to ask the proposed “victim of” question, defense counsel expressed
any intent to withdraw the previous objection to the court’s refusal to ask the three-part
“charged with, convicted of, victim of a crime” question. In light of the trial court’s
emphatic, repeated ruling (“Not doing it. Case law says no”), any additional efforts by
defense counsel to “focus the court on the ‘convicted of’ part of the State’s question[,]”
as the State suggests he was required to do, would have run a substantial risk of
antagonizing the court. Defense counsel reasonably chose to drop the issue and move on,
expressly stating that his subsequent requests and arguments were made “in addition” to
4
As previously stated, in the defense’s written submissions, the proposed question
about whether potential jurors had ever been a “victim of” a crime (question 31), was
completely separate from the question of whether potential jurors had ever been “charged
with or convicted” of a serious crime (question 26).
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his previously-denied request for “the same” three-part “charged with, convicted of,
victim of” question that the State had proposed.
The State now complains that it is an “appellate afterthought” for Benton to
contend that he was attempting “to expose the venire persons’ statutory disqualifications”
through the parts of his three-part voir dire question that asked whether a prospective
juror had been convicted of or charged with a serious offense. The State’s contention has
some intuitive force, as Benton certainly never mentioned statutory disqualifications as a
basis for propounding the proposed question. Furthermore, if Benton had mentioned
statutory disqualifications, the circuit court almost certainly would have refocused its
analysis from the question concerning whether a juror had been a victim of a crime,
which it correctly recognized that it need not ask (see Pearson v. State, 437 Md. 350, 359
(2014)), to the separate question concerning whether a juror had been convicted of or
charged with a serious crime.
Nonetheless, for the purposes of appellate review, Benton was not required to
explain the basis for his request. Under Md. Rule 4-323(c), it was “sufficient” for Benton
simply to “make[] known to the court the action that [he] desire[d] the court to take[.]”
He had no obligation to state the grounds for the objection, because the court did not
direct him to do so. See id.
This Court’s decision in Baker v. State, 157 Md. App. 600 (2004), confirms that
Benton adequately preserved his objection to the court’s failure to propound his question.
In Baker the defendant had submitted a written list of proposed voir dire questions. Id. at
608. The circuit court asked defense counsel whether he wanted to be heard in support of
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the submission, but counsel declined to speak. Id. at 609. On appeal from the court’s
failure to ask one of the proposed questions, the State argued that the defendant had
waived his rights by failing to state the basis for his objection. Applying Rule 4-323(c),
however, this Court held that the defendant preserved his objection simply by informing
the court what action he wanted the court to take – i.e., by asking the court to read his
proposed voir dire questions. Baker, 157 Md. App. at 610. It made no difference that the
defendant had failed to avail himself of a later opportunity to articulate the rationale for
his proposed questions or the basis for objecting to the court’s refusal to ask them. Under
Rule 4-323(c), the defendant would have waived his rights only if he failed to state the
grounds after the court had affirmatively directed him to do so.
Additionally, Benton did not waive his objection to the trial court’s failure to ask
the requested voir dire question by ultimately accepting the empaneled jury. See
Kegarise v. State, 211 Md. App. 473, 477 n.2 (2013); see also State v. Stringfellow, 425
Md. 461, 471 (2012) (stating that “unqualified acceptance” of jury panel does not waive
“an objection to a judge refusing to ask a proposed voir dire question”); Marquardt, 164
Md. App. at 142-43 (party’s voir dire objection is preserved by letting the court know
what action the party wanted the court to take).
In light of Baker and Rule 4-323(c), we have no choice but to conclude that
Benton preserved his objection. Defense counsel let the trial court know, both in writing
and in an oral request, that he wanted the court to ask a voir dire question that included
the “charged with, convicted of, victim of” language. The trial court made a clear ruling
denying that request, without directing Benton to state the grounds for his request. At no
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point did defense counsel subsequently withdraw that request, or limit his request to only
the “victim of” portion of the proposed voir dire question. Therefore, Benton preserved
his arguments for appellate review.
We shall now consider whether the trial court abused its discretion by failing to
propound a voir dire question, requested by both parties, which inquired, in pertinent
part, whether any member of the venire panel was currently charged with or had
previously been convicted of a serious offense, other than a traffic offense.
Maryland courts employ “‘limited voir dire[,]’” the “sole purpose [of which] ‘is to
ensure a fair and impartial jury by determining the existence of [specific] cause for
disqualification[.]’” Pearson, 437 Md. at 356 (quoting Washington v. State, 425 Md.
306, 312-13 (2012)) (alterations in Pearson). The Court of Appeals has identified “two
broad areas of inquiry that may reveal cause for a juror’s disqualification: (1)
examination to determine whether the prospective juror meets the minimum statutory
qualifications for jury service, and (2) examination to discover the juror’s state of mind as
to the matter in hand or any collateral matter reasonably liable to have undue influence
over him.” Washington, 425 Md. at 313 (citing Davis v. State, 333 Md. 27, 35-36
(1993)). “Maryland law has made clear that if a question is directed to a specific cause
for disqualification then the question must be asked and failure to do so is an abuse of
discretion.” Moore v. State, 412 Md. 635, 654 (2010) (internal quotation marks and
citation omitted).
More specifically, we have held that “trial judges are required ‘to pose voir dire
questions directed at exposing constitutional and statutory disqualifications when
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requested by a party[.]’” Kegarise, 211 Md. App. at 478 (quoting Owens v. State, 399
Md. 388, 422 (2007)). In Owens, the Court of Appeals held that a criminal defendant had
waived an objection based on the statutory requirement that a jury be composed entirely
of citizens, because the defendant waited until after voir dire to challenge an unqualified
juror. Owens, 399 Md. at 426. The Court commented that “[h]ad Owens sought, and the
trial judge refused, a citizenship question” during voir dire, then “the propriety of the
denial would have been preserved for appellate review as an abuse of discretion.” Id. at
422. In light of that analysis, we subsequently held, in Kegarise, that a trial court had
abused its discretion by failing to ask a defendant’s requested voir dire question on
whether the venire members met the minimum statutory qualification of U.S. citizenship.
See Kegarise, 211 Md. App. at 487.
Like the voir dire question requested in Kegarise, Benton’s proposed question was
likely to have uncovered cause for automatic disqualification of potential jurors. In
Maryland, “an individual is not qualified for jury service if the individual . . . [h]as been
convicted, in a federal or State court of record, of a crime punishable by imprisonment
exceeding 6 months and received a sentence of imprisonment for more than 6 months; or
[h]as a charge pending . . . for a crime punishable by imprisonment exceeding 6 months.”
Md. Code (1974, 2013 Repl. Vol.), § 8-103(b)(4)-(5) of the Courts and Judicial
Proceedings Article (“CJP”).
The mere fact that the venire members also provided information about past
convictions and pending criminal charges through a jury questionnaire did not render the
proposed voir dire question unnecessary. Before their service, the jurors in this case were
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required to accurately complete juror qualification forms, under penalty of perjury. The
standard juror qualification form includes questions inquiring whether potential jurors
have any “[c]onviction of crime punishable by imprisonment exceeding 6 months and
[have] received a sentence of imprisonment for more than 6 months and not legally
pardoned[,]” or have any “[p]ending charge for a crime punishable by imprisonment
exceeding 6 months[.]” CJP § 8-302(a).5
Ideally, the staff in the jury office pre-screens all potential jurors to ensure that
they are not statutorily disqualified from serving on a jury. See Kegarise, 211 Md. App.
at 485-46 (discussing verification of citizenship). History proves, however, that
“mistakes do happen[.]” Id. at 485. As the Court of Appeals opined in Owens:
. . . [I]t is evident that voir dire questions regarding minimum statutory
qualifications are not always “redundant and unnecessary.” In fact,
our cases ruminate that the pre-voir dire processes of screening out
disqualified jurors are not fail-safe. We are persuaded, and so hold,
that it is in the better interests of justice to require trial judges to pose
voir dire questions directed at exposing constitutional and statutory
disqualifications when requested by a party.
Owens, 399 Md. at 422 (footnote and citation omitted).
5
See http://www.princegeorgescountymd.gov/sites/circuitcourt/JuryDuty/QA
advising potential jurors:
The Juror Qualification Form asks for information to make sure that you are
legally qualified to serve as a juror. You are legally required to answer these
questions truthfully. Your name, age, town, marital status, highest level of
education, occupation, and your spouse’s occupation, will appear on the jury
information sheet given to the judge and lawyers in the courtroom; all other
information will only be reviewed by the Jury, Judge, Jury Commissioner,
and their designees.
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Accordingly, inclusion of the relevant questions on the juror disqualification form
does not excuse the trial court from its obligation to ask requested questions aimed at
verifying whether any potential jurors are statutorily disqualified from serving on a jury.6
In this case, the trial court summarily denied the parties’ requests to ask a three-
part “charged with, convicted of, victim of” voir dire question, stating “Not doing it.
Case law says no.” The trial court was only partially correct, as “a trial court need not
ask during voir dire whether any prospective juror has ever been the victim of a crime.”
Pearson, 437 Md. at 359. Nonetheless, it is incumbent upon the trial court to rephrase an
“overbroad proposed voir dire question [that] encompasses a mandatory voir dire
question[.]” Id. at 369 n.6; see also Bowie v. State, 324 Md. 1, 11-12 (1991) (holding
that, even though wording of defendant’s proposed voir dire questions on disqualifying
racial bias was arguably defective, the court erred by refusing to propound any questions
“designed to elicit the essence of the information” sought by the defendant). The trial
court failed to restate the mandatory portion of the voir dire question in this case.
The voir dire question requested by the parties was directed at a “specific cause for
disqualification.” Moore, 412 Md. at 654. The court would have been obligated to
dismiss any member of the venire whose responses to the proposed voir dire question
revealed that the individual had a disqualifying prior conviction or disqualifying pending
6
It is also possible that a potential juror might answer truthfully on the jury
questionnaire that the person has no disqualifying convictions or pending charges, and
then thereafter be charged with a crime punishable by imprisonment exceeding six
months. E.g. Hunt v. State, 345 Md. 122, 140-41 (1997). As a practical matter, only voir
dire questions will reveal disqualifying charges or convictions that occur after the jury
questionnaire is submitted and before the potential jurors are called for service.
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charges. See CJP § 8-103(b)(4)-(5). Given that a mandatory area for voir dire inquiry is
“to determine whether the prospective juror meets the minimum statutory qualifications
for jury service,” Washington, 425 Md. at 313, we conclude that the trial court’s refusal
to ask the potential jurors whether any of them were currently charged with or had
previously been convicted of a serious offense constituted reversible error. See Kegarise,
211 Md. App. at 487 (holding that the trial judge committed reversible error by failing to
pose requested voir dire question directed at exposing statutory disqualifications of
potential jurors).
II. Admission of Informant’s Testimony
We shall next briefly address the evidence issue raised by Benton because this
issue is likely to arise again at Benton’s new trial.
During the direct examination of Waytes, the jailhouse informant who testified
against Benton, the prosecutor elicited testimony indicating that the “word on the street”
was that the victim, James, had killed Benton’s friend, Matheno Nichols, in 2006. The
court allowed the informant’s testimony, not for the purpose of proving that James killed
Nichols, but to demonstrate what the informant, and arguably Benton, believed to be true.
Benton contends that the trial court erred by admitting evidence that James killed
Nichols. He also asserts that the informant’s testimony constituted both inadmissible
hearsay evidence and improper lay opinion testimony. Even assuming that the admission
of the informant’s testimony was erroneous, we would conclude that any error was
harmless beyond a reasonable doubt in the circumstances of this case.
On the third day of Benton’s trial, the detective who investigated Nichols’s death
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testified, without objection, that James had been arrested and tried for Nichols’s murder.
An appellate court “will not find reversible error on appeal when objectionable testimony
is admitted if the essential contents of that objectionable testimony have already been
established and presented to the jury without objection through the prior testimony of
other witnesses.” Yates v. State, 429 Md. 112, 120 (2012) (citation omitted). Moreover,
“[o]bjections are waived if, at another point during the trial, evidence on the same point is
admitted without objection.” DeLeon v. State, 407 Md. 16, 31 (2008) (citing Peisner v.
State, 236 Md. 137, 145-46 (1964), cert. denied, 379 U.S. 1001 (1965)).
Even if Benton had not waived his arguments regarding the informant’s testimony,
however, we would find no merit in his assertions that the evidence constituted either
hearsay or lay opinion testimony. “‘Hearsay’ is a statement, other than one made by the
declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of
the matter asserted.” Md. Rule 5-801(c). Generally, hearsay evidence is not admissible,
unless it falls within one of many exceptions. Md. Rule 5-802; see also Thomas v. State,
429 Md. 85, 96 (2012) (“Generally, statements made out of court that are offered for their
truth are inadmissible as hearsay, absent circumstances bringing the statements within a
recognized exception to the hearsay rule”) (quoting Su v. Weaver, 313 Md. 370, 376
(1988)).
In this case, the State did not offer the informant’s testimony that the “word on the
street” was that the victim had killed Benton’s friend, to prove that James did, in fact, kill
Nichols. The State offered the testimony to prove that he, and others – particularly others
in the Kenilworth neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where Benton and his co-
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defendant lived – believed that James killed Nichols. Because the State did not offer the
informant’s testimony for “the truth of the matter asserted” within the meaning of Rule 5-
801(c), it was not inadmissible hearsay evidence. See, e.g., Ashford v. State, 147 Md.
App. 1, 77 (2002) (reasoning that assertion was not hearsay because it was not offered to
prove the truth of the matter asserted but to show effect of statement on defendant).
At trial, Benton objected to the informant’s “word-on-the-street” testimony on
hearsay grounds alone. Because Benton did not object to the testimony on the ground
that it was a lay opinion, he did not properly preserve that contention for appellate
review. See Klauenberg v. State, 355 Md. 528, 541 (1999) (when specific grounds for an
objection are proffered, even though not requested by court, the objecting party is
deemed to have waived all other grounds). Benton does not request plain error review on
this ground.
But even if Benton had preserved his objection, we would not agree that the
informant’s testimony constituted improper lay opinion testimony in violation of Md.
Rule 5-701. The prosecutor never asked the informant if he had an opinion regarding
who killed Nichols. The prosecutor solicited the informant’s testimony regarding what
he had heard, the “word on the street,” and what the informant believed to be true.
III. Sufficiency of the Evidence
In cases where this Court reverses a conviction, and a criminal defendant raises the
sufficiency of the evidence on appeal, we must address that issue, because a retrial may
not occur if the evidence was insufficient to sustain the conviction in the first place.
Ware v. State, 360 Md. 650, 708-09, cert. denied, 531 U.S. 1115 (2001) (citing Mackall
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v. State, 283 Md. 100, 113 (1978)).
In reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence, an appellate court determines
“whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any
rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a
reasonable doubt.” Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979); see also Derr v. State,
434 Md. 88, 129 (2013); Painter v. State, 157 Md. App. 1, 11 (2004) (“[t]he test is ‘not
whether the evidence should have or probably would have persuaded the majority of fact
finders but only whether it possibly could have persuaded any rational fact finder’”)
(citations omitted) (emphasis in original).
The appellate court thus must defer to the factfinder’s “opportunity to assess the
credibility of witnesses, weigh the evidence, and resolve conflicts in the evidence[.]”
Pinkney v. State, 151 Md. App. 311, 329 (2003); see also State v. Mayers, 417 Md. 449,
466 (2010) (“[w]e defer to any possible reasonable inference the jury could have drawn
from the admitted evidence and need not decide whether the jury could have drawn other
inferences from the evidence, refused to draw inferences, or whether we would have
drawn different inferences from the evidence”) (citations omitted). Circumstantial
evidence, moreover, is entirely sufficient to support a conviction, provided that the
circumstances support rational inferences from which the trier of fact could be convinced
beyond a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the accused. See, e.g., State v. Manion, 442
Md. 419, 431-32 (2015); Painter, 157 Md. App. at 11.
Benton contends that the evidence at his trial was insufficient to permit any
rational trier of fact to find that he was complicit in the murder of Sharod James. Benton
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asserts that there was no physical or testimonial evidence that established that he was the
person who killed James. At best, Benton suggests, the evidence was sufficient only to
establish his presence at the gas station on the night James was shot. We disagree.
In addition to the substantial evidence that Benton and his co-defendant were
present at the gas station around the time James was killed, the State presented the
testimony of two eyewitnesses who, immediately after shots were fired, saw two men
standing over a body in a dark part of the gas station wearing clothing similar to that
worn by Benton and his co-defendant in contemporaneous surveillance videos. The State
also presented evidence indicating that Benton and his co-defendant had a motive to
murder James, who they believed had killed their friend.
Under all the circumstances, we are persuaded that the evidence presented, viewed
in the light most favorable to the State, could have led a rational trier of fact to reasonably
conclude that Benton conspired with his co-defendant, Lawson, to murder Sharod James
and that Benton and Lawson did, in fact, shoot and kill James on the night of November
16, 2012. We conclude, therefore, that the evidence was sufficient to support Benton’s
convictions.
JUDGMENTS OF THE CIRCUIT
COURT FOR PRINCE GEORGE’S
COUNTY REVERSED AND CASE
REMANDED FOR NEW TRIAL
CONSISTENT WITH THIS
OPINION. COSTS TO BE PAID BY
PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY.
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