Barnes v. Commonwealth

81 Va. App. 737

905 S.E.2d 164

Juhwaan BARNES

v.COMMONWEALTH of Virginia

Record No. 0372-23-2

Court of Appeals of Virginia, Richmond.

September 3, 2024

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF RICHMOND, Claire G. Cardwell, Judge David B. Hargett (Hargett Law, PLC, on brief), for appellant.

Timothy J. Huffstutter, Assistant Attorney General (Jason S. Miyares, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.

Present: Chief Judge Decker, Judges Raphael and White

OPINION BY JUDGE STUART A. RAPHAEL

Following a jury trial, Juhwaan Barnes was convicted of first-degree murder (Code § 18.2-32) and using a firearm during the commission of murder (Code § 18.2-53.1) in a successful plot to kill Vinshuan Johnson in April 2021. It was undisputed at trial that five people were present when Johnson was killed, three men and two women. The three men were Barnes and his two friends—Justin Oliver and Kevon Bynum. The two women were Barnes’s friends, Brianna Stephens and Ashley Carpenter. All five faced criminal charges in connection with Johnson’s murder. The two female accomplices, Stephens and Carpenter, testified against Barnes in the hope of receiving more favorable treatment in the disposition of the criminal charges against them.

The Commonwealth’s theory of the case was that Barnes, Oliver, and Bynum used the two women to lure Johnson to a dark residential street where the men lay in wait. When Johnson arrived, the three men opened fire, killing Johnson. Barnes’s theory of the case, by contrast, was based on the testimony of the then-convicted Bynum that Bynum alone plotted to kill Johnson and that Bynum alone fired the shots that killed him.

The only issue on appeal is whether there was enough corroboration of the accomplice testimony by Stephens and Carpenter that the trial court was not required to instruct the jury about the danger of convicting a person based on the "uncorroborated" testimony of an accomplice. Finding sufficient evidence to corroborate their testimony, we affirm Barnes’s convictions.

Background

In the early morning hours of April 7, 2021, Stephens and Carpenter were on their spring break, hanging out together. Carpenter texted Barnes (who goes by the nickname "Waan") to see if he wanted to join them. Carpenter live-streamed herself to her Instagram followers. Johnson (who went by the nickname "Tazz") joined Carpenter’s livestream and suggested that they get together. When Barnes also joined the livestream, Carpenter immediately shut it down because she knew that Barnes and Johnson "didn’t like each other."

Barnes sent Carpenter an Instagram message asking her to come to his house. At trial, the Commonwealth introduced screenshots of the "Instagram chat window" showing Carpenter’s conversation with Barnes. Only Barnes’s messages are visible, however, as Carpenter deleted her Instagram account after the murder. Carpenter testified to the substance of her responses to each of Barnes’s questions as shown in the screenshots.

On their way to Barnes’s residence, Carpenter and Stephens stopped to pick up Oliver. Stephens testified that when they reached Barnes’s house, Barnes told Oliver that Carpenter "was on live with an op"—referring to Johnson.¹

The group then drove to Oliver’s house. Carpenter testified that, on the way there, she overheard Barnes and Oliver saying "something about setting [Johnson] up." She recalled that she and Stephens said "no" to that idea. After picking up Oliver, the group then picked up Bynum (who goes by the nickname "Six"). The group was now five strong.

Stephens and Carpenter testified that Stephens’s phone was "getting passed around" the car as the men used it to text Johnson, pretending to be Stephens. The men also started telling Stephens and Carpenter where to drive. The men said they should "set up" Johnson, and Barnes was "trying to get [Stephens and Carpenter] to go along with it." Carpenter explained that the men had "made up a little lie" to tell Johnson so he would meet them at a house, which they falsely texted Johnson was the home of Carpenter’s father. Carpenter testified that all three men had guns, and she suspected they were going to "try to shoot" or "kill" Johnson. At 3:52 a.m., Stephens texted Carpenter, "I don’t like this." Stephens testified that she knew that Barnes had a gun and saw him with it. She believed that the men intended to kill Johnson.

As the group approached the ambush location at the intersection of Montvale Avenue and Wellington Street in the City of Richmond, the men were still "telling [Stephens and Carpenter] what to say" to Johnson. At the men’s request, Stephens sent Johnson her location by text message, showing him where they had parked. The text message to Johnson with the location marker, sent around 4:06 a.m., was admitted into evidence. The marker showed that Stephens’s phone was at the intersection of Montvale Avenue and Wellington Street.

Carpenter testified that the men got out of the car and walked into an alley behind the houses near where they had parked. Stephens and Carpenter stayed in the car, exchanging texts with Johnson about where to meet, not mentioning that Barnes, Oliver, and Bynum were lying in wait.

At 4:23 a.m., Johnson texted Stephens, "WYA" ("where you at"). Stephens and Carpenter both testified that they saw Johnson walking in the street. Stephens testified that Johnson was walking the wrong way, away from their car, so she texted him, "why y’all walkin dat way," and "come back down." Carpenter saw Barnes, Oliver, and Bynum "creeping from the side of the house."

Carpenter witnessed all three men start shooting at Johnson, while Johnson ran, trying to shoot back. She testified that Barnes and Oliver "stayed on the corner beside where the car was," while Bynum "was on the other side of the street." A diagram showing the location of shell casings recovered from three guns was admitted into evidence as Commonwealth’s Exhibit 7. The locations corresponded with Carpenter’s de- scription of the places from which the shots were fired from three guns.

Stephens did not see any shooting; she ducked under the steering wheel when she heard "a lot" of gunshots. Barnes, Oliver, and Bynum then returned to the car. As they drove off, Carpenter saw Johnson lying in the middle of the street, wearing an "orange-ish jacket," the same one that he was wearing when she had seen him earlier that morning on her Instagram livestream.

The men told Stephens and Carpenter to delete their Instagrams. The men grabbed Carpenter’s phone and deleted her messages with Johnson. They also told Stephens and Carpenter what to say if questioned by the police—that they had seen other people argue and shoot at each other. Carpenter said that the men later called her to make sure that she and Stephens had made it home and to urge her again to keep quiet and to delete her Instagram account.

The police found Johnson lying face down in the middle of the street. A crime-scene photo admitted into evidence shows him wearing the orange jacket described by Carpenter. The investigating detective testified that he had not shared such crime-scene evidence with any of the witnesses.

The police found a cellphone near Johnson’s hand, and a detective (with the family’s permission) recovered the text messages. Police also recovered 32 shell casings from three weapons, as well as a damaged and inoperable handgun near Johnson’s body. A search of Bynum’s residence on Brookfield Street turned up one of the guns that matched the ballistics of some of the recovered shell casings. Police could not find the other two firearms that had ejected the remaining shell casings.

Before Barnes’s trial, Bynum was convicted of first-degree murder and use of a firearm to murder Johnson. Stephens admitted at Barnes’s trial that she had once testified that she had not seen any of the men with a gun. Stephens and Carpenter also admitted at Barnes’s trial that they had initially lied to police about what had happened that night. Both explained that they were now testifying truthfully in the hope of obtaining a more favorable disposition of the charges against them.

Along with the testimony of Stephens and Carpenter, the Commonwealth introduced testimony from the two responding officers, the lead detective, the coroner, and a firearms expert. The Commonwealth also introduced as exhibits:

• pictures of the crime scene;

• the diagram showing where each shell casing was recovered;

• text messages between Stephens and Carpenter;

• text messages between Stephens and Johnson;

• text messages between Carpenter and Johnson;

• the Instagram chat box between Barnes and Carpenter (though only Barnes’s messages are visible); and

• a screenshot of Stephens’s text message to Johnson showing Stephens’s GPS coordinates.

After the court denied Barnes’s motion to strike, Bynum was called as a defense witness. Bynum placed Barnes, Oliver, himself, and two women at the scene of the murder. He said he didn’t know the names of the two women. Bynum said that he was upset after learning that Johnson had "shot up a house of some [of Bynum’s] family members," so Bynum "decided to do something about it" when "the opportunity presented itself." Bynum claimed that neither Barnes nor Oliver knew of his plans to "lure" and "ambush" Johnson. Bynum said that he used the phone of one of the two women to text Johnson to set him up for the ambush, and at other times he told the women what to text. He directed the women to text Johnson their location at the corner of Montvale and Wellington, the place Bynum selected for the ambush.

Bynum claimed that he had two guns with him and that Barnes "definitely" did not have a gun. He didn’t know if Oliver was armed. Bynum said that the three men got out of the car to wait for Johnson to arrive. He told the two women to stay in the car. Bynum said that he alone fired shots at Johnson, chasing him down the street until Johnson collapsed. Bynum said that Barnes and Oliver were behind him, so he...