Cantrell v. State

1

DOUGLAS CANTRELL v. STATE OF MARYLAND

No. 1419-2022

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

May 3, 2024

UNREPORTED ^[*]

Circuit Court for Baltimore City Case No. 119148030

Beachley, Zic, Getty, Joseph M. (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), JJ.

OPINION

Zic J.

A jury in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City convicted appellant, Douglas Cantrell, of first-degree murder, openly carrying a deadly weapon with the intent to injure, and two counts of second-degree assault. The court sentenced Mr. Cantrell to life imprisonment for first-degree murder, plus a consecutive term totaling 23 years for the remaining counts. This appeal followed.

QUESTIONS PRESENTED

Mr. Cantrell presents three questions for our review, which we have rephrased slightly as follows:^[1]

1. Did the trial court commit reversible error by denying Mr. Cantrell's motion to sever the second-degree assault charges from the first-degree murder count?

2. Did the trial court abuse its discretion by granting the State's motion to redact portions of Mr. Cantrell's recorded statement to the police?

3. Did the trial court commit reversible error by declining to instruct the jury on first- and second-degree assault as lesser included offenses of first-degree murder?

For the reasons that follow, we will affirm the judgments of the circuit court.

BACKGROUND

On the morning of May 1, 2019, Mr. Cantrell followed Sandra Grahe and her friend, Deanna McCombs, as they walked to Ms Grahe's house (the "House") from a nearby corner store in Brooklyn, Maryland. Before they reached their destination, Mr. Cantrell repeatedly struck Ms. Grahe, slapped Ms. McCombs, and fled the scene. Upon arriving at the House, Ms. Grahe reported the incident to her brother, Vernon Jacobs. Mr. Jacobs and his friend, Delbert Henry, left the House in search of Mr. Cantrell. During an ensuing physical altercation, Mr. Cantrell repeatedly stabbed Mr. Jacobs, killing him.

At trial, Ms. Grahe testified that at approximately 7:00 a.m. on May 1, 2019, Ms. McCombs and she walked to a corner store at the intersection of 5th Street and Patapsco Avenue.^[2] When Ms. Grahe and Ms. McCombs arrived at the store, Mr. Cantrell followed them inside. As Ms. Grahe headed to the counter, Mr. Cantrell approached her and requested that she return his phone, which she had been charging for him. According to Ms. Grahe, Mr. Cantrell then "pulled [her] on the side[,] . . . stated that his truck had been stolen" from a gas station, and blamed Mr. Jacobs and her for the theft. Before leaving the store, Mr. Cantrell revealed a knife to Ms. Grahe that had been concealed in his jacket, removed the weapon from its sheath, and asked her a question to the effect of: "'What if something should happen to your mother,' . . . [your] brother[,] or [your]self[?]"

After exiting the store, Mr. Cantrell followed Ms. Grahe and Ms. McCombs as they walked back to the House. When they were about half a block away from their destination, Mr. Cantrell pushed Ms. Grahe "to make [her] move faster," causing her to lose her balance and fall to the ground. When Ms. Grahe attempted to stand, Mr. Cantrell repeatedly struck her in the face. Ultimately, Ms. Grahe managed to escape and ran to the House while calling out for Mr. Jacobs. When Ms. Grahe entered the kitchen through the rear door of the House, Mr. Jacobs saw that she was bleeding. After Ms. Grahe informed him that Mr. Cantrell had hit her and "was up on 5th Street by Freeman [Street]," Mr. Jacobs "ran out the back door to look for him." Rather than follow Mr. Jacobs, Ms. Grahe ran to a firehouse across the street, from which an ambulance transported her to the hospital. When Ms. Grahe next saw her brother, he was lying on the ground near the intersection of Annabel Avenue and Helmstetter Street with a woman kneeling next to him.

Ms. McCombs corroborated much of Ms. Grahe's account. Ms. McCombs testified that Ms. Grahe and she "went to the store[,]" where they encountered Mr. Cantrell, who began "venting" about his truck having been stolen. Mr. Cantrell followed them as they "walked back to [Ms. Grahe's] house." As they walked, Ms. McCombs averred, Mr. Cantrell "busted [Ms. Grahe]'s face open and slapped [Ms. McCombs] once." While striking Ms. Grahe, Mr. Cantrell "was . . . saying a whole bunch of stuff about his truck being missing and . . . people stealing from him." After the altercation, Ms. McCombs and Ms. Grahe "took off down the street," while Mr. Cantrell departed in a different direction. When Ms. McCombs arrived at Ms. Grahe's yard approximately one and one-half minutes later, Ms. Grahe was already inside the House and Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Henry were leaving in search of Mr. Cantrell.

Alma Babilonia, a resident of a house at the intersection of 4th and Helmstetter Streets at the time of the incident, testified that she heard an argument while preparing breakfast for her children. When she looked out her kitchen window, Ms. Babilonia saw three individuals, one of whom was being attacked by another and "was no longer able to defend himself." The third individual ran toward the assailant "with a branch in his hand[,] trying to hit him" so that he would "let go of" the apparent victim.^[3] Ms. Babilonia went outside "to see what was happening" and heard the victim's friend proclaim: "He killed him. He killed him." Ms. Babilonia called 911, after which an ambulance and police officers responded to the scene. When subsequently presented with a photo array, Ms. Babilonia identified Mr. Cantrell as the assailant.^[4]

Baltimore City Police Officer Zachary Franks responded to the 3500 block of Helmstetter at around 7:00 a.m. Upon arriving at the scene, he observed "a gentleman on the ground . . . suffering from what looked like stab wounds." Officer Franks accompanied the on-scene paramedics as they took Mr. Jacobs to the Shock Trauma Unit at the University of Maryland Medical Center (the "Medical Center"), where he was pronounced dead at 8:00 a.m.

At approximately 12:55 p.m. that same day, Kendall Allred, a forensic investigator with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ("OCME"), transported Mr. Jacobs' body from the Medical Center's morgue to the OCME. There, Assistant Medical Examiner Russell Alexander, M.D., performed an autopsy, which revealed 11 stab wounds, five cutting wounds, two fractured ribs, and abrasions to the head and right knee. Dr. Alexander, whom the court accepted as an expert in the field of forensic pathology, identified the cause of death as "multiple injuries" and the manner of death as homicide.

Officer Jose Boscana testified that he was also among the officers dispatched to the 3500 block of Helmstetter Street on the morning of May 1, 2019. Upon his arrival, Officer Boscana observed "a white male[] laying [sic] on the ground with blood" and confirmed the identity of the stabbing suspect with a fellow officer. Later that same day, Officer Boscana observed Mr. Cantrell riding a bicycle in the 3700 block of Hanover Street. Officer Boscana immediately recognized Mr. Cantrell, whom he had encountered the day before when responding to a call for a traffic accident in which Mr. Cantrell had been involved. When Officer Boscana exited his vehicle and ordered him to stop, Mr. Cantrell "tried to turn his bicycle around and take off." Mr. Cantrell's attempt to flee was thwarted, however, as Officer Boscana managed to "remove him from the bicycle[.]" Officer Boscana then arrested Mr. Cantrell and recovered a "Buck knife" from a plastic bag that had been hanging from the bicycle's handlebars.

The knife and its sheath were subsequently submitted to Taylor Hall, a scientist with the Baltimore City Police Department's Forensic Biology Unit, for analysis. After the court accepted her as an expert in the field of serology, Ms. Hall testified that she tested swabs of the knife and sheath for suspected blood.^[5] Although swabs of the knife tested negative for the presence of blood, swabs of the interior liner of the sheath tested positive. Subsequent DNA analysis matched Mr. Cantrell's and Mr. Jacobs' inferred genotypes to the swabs from the sheath's liner.

Following his arrest, Mr. Cantrell was transported to the Homicide Unit for questioning. At approximately 1:40 p.m. on May 1, 2019, Detective Raymond Yost gave Mr. Cantrell his Miranda warnings.^[6] After confirming that he understood his rights, Mr. Cantrell executed a written waiver of those rights. During the ensuing interview, a redacted recording of which was played at trial, Mr. Cantrell recounted the events that led to the fatal stabbing of Mr. Jacobs. Mr. Cantrell informed Detective Yost that in either the late evening of April 30th or the early morning of May 1st, two individuals, whom he identified as "Austin" and "Ashley," stole his truck from outside a Royal Farms gas station on Potee Street. After reporting the theft to the police, Mr. Cantrell ran to the House and told Mr. Jacobs what had happened.

According to Mr. Cantrell, Mr. Jacobs "smirk[ed]" and "chuckle[d]" in response to being told of the theft. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Cantrell accused Mr. Jacobs of stealing cash that had purportedly been sitting on the kitchen table at the House. Mr. Cantrell's accusation led to a "shov[ing] match" between the two men. Following that skirmish, Mr. Cantrell "caught up to" Ms. Grahe and "told her what [had] happened[.]" Ms. Grahe replied: "Oh[,] you know that's Jake. It's your problem."^[7] Mr. Cantrell responded by slapping Ms. Grahe. He recounted:

I slapped the shit out of [Ms. Grahe]. I kept slapping her to the ground. I did punch her once pretty hard and kicked the shit out of her[.]

* * *

She get back up, knock her back down, slap her down, you know. [Ms. McCombs], too, slap her around, you

...