Duvall v. State

MICHAEL DUVALL v. STATE OF MARYLAND

No. 568-2020

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

September 14, 2021

Circuit Court for Prince George's County Case No CT161577X

Graeff, Gould, Raker, Irma S. (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), JJ.

OPINION ^[*]

RAKER J.

Appellant was convicted in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County of second-degree murder. He presents the following questions for our review:

"1. Was [appellant] denied the right to a speedy trial?

2. Did the court err in instructing the jury on second-degree murder?

3. Did the court err in admitting the prior testimony of Dana Daniels?

4. Did the court err in admitting evidence about [appellant]'s prior, unrelated case?

5. Is the evidence insufficient to sustain the second-degree murder conviction?"

Finding no error, we shall affirm.

I.

Appellant was indicted by the Grand Jury for Prince George's County in a single count short-form indictment charging first-degree murder. He proceeded to trial on February 25, 2019 and the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict. The court declared a mistrial and the case was re-tried on October 21, 2019. At that trial, the jury acquitted appellant of first-degree murder and convicted him of second-degree murder. The court imposed a term of incarceration of thirty years.

This case was a 'cold case.' The murder occurred in 2005. Appellant was indicted on December 29, 2016. He was detained for approximately 26 months from then until his first trial in early 2019. Shortly before that first trial, he filed a motion to dismiss the charges based upon a denial of speedy trial. In his motion to dismiss, he stated that he suffered significant stress and anxiety because of that period of detention. The trial court denied the motion, explaining as follows:

"Okay. Well, by my calculation there's been 20 months of delay from the original trial date until today. Nine months were attributable to the State-first because a witness was in the hospital; second, because the case had been reassigned from one prosecutor to another, and third, because the assigned prosecutor was in trial in a different case before Judge Dawson. Thereafter, there were 11 months of delay or continuation, five months due to the Defense continuance because [defense] counsel was ill, and then six months due to a joint continuance because counsel for both sides were new to the case. So, by my calculation, the [appellant] was responsible solely or in part for 11 months of the delay; the State was responsible for nine months of the delay. I don't think we get to Barker v. Wingo, and even if we did, in looking at the various factors, the reasons for the delay all seem legitimate on both sides, but the majority of that delay is attributable to the Defense. So, I don't find that the [appellant] has been prejudiced. There's been no showing of that, and I am going to deny the motion to dismiss."

We set forth the following facts as gleaned from the record. Around 11:30 pm on September 15, 2005, Officer Jordan Peretta was on patrol in "the Grove" in Prince Georges County when he received a call reporting an accident on West Street just west of its intersection with 10^th Street-near the Laurel City Hall. He went to the location described in the call and saw a car that was off the road and smashed into a cement sign. The air bags had deployed and a man was in the driver's seat. The man said "[h]e got me." Officer Peretta observed a puncture wound on the man's chest.

Other officers arrived on scene, and they removed the driver from the car. Officer Peretta identified the victim as Brian Moses. Officer Peretta canvassed the Grove but did not find any physical evidence or witnesses who had seen what happened. Mr. Moses was transported to Prince George's Hospital for treatment. He had suffered a stab wound to his chest that went through part of his left lung, through his heart, and into his right lung. He died three weeks later.

Evidence technician John Hamilton went to the scene that night and took photographs, collected blood samples from the vehicle, searched the area around the vehicle, and unsuccessfully attempted to lift fingerprints from the vehicle. The next day he took custody of a steak knife that detectives found about a half mile from the accident.

Although the investigation into Mr. Moses's death was considered a 'cold case,' his mother, Shirley Bell, remained in regular contact with detectives over the years. In 2016, Detective Adam Cheek received information that led him to resume the investigation and re-interview two witnesses: Dana Daniels and Lisa Jones.

The first jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict, and the case was re-tried in October 2019. A key prosecution witness at the first trial was Dana Daniels. When the second trial began, she was hospitalized for treatment for lung cancer and unavailable to testify at trial. She had testified at the first trial and been cross-examined by appellant's counsel. That testimony had been memorialized by a court stenographer (no audio or video recording). At the second trial, the State moved to have her testimony from the first trial read to the jury. Appellant objected and presented a three-pronged argument. First, appellant argued that Ms. Daniels's testimony did not meet the requirements of Md. Rule 5-804(a)(4)^[1] for unavailability of a witness. Second, appellant argued that Ms. Daniels's prior testimony was inadmissible under Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), because it limited his counsel's ability to prepare a new cross-examination strategy. Third, appellant argued that the court should admit only an audio or video recording of the testimony because, if the jury could not hear Ms. Daniels's voice, it would be unable to assess her credibility. Lacking audio recording, the court overruled appellant's objection and permitted Ms. Daniels's testimony to be read to the jury.

Ms. Daniels testified as follows. About seven hours before Brian Moses was found by Officer Peralta, she met up with Mr. Moses to braid his hair. They met at Emancipation Park near the intersection of Eighth Street and Maple Avenue. Mr. Moses parked his car on Clays Lane, and then walked around the corner, onto Maple Avenue, to meet her at the park. While she braided his hair, she saw the appellant-whom she had known for about four months-walk past them through the park and then meet up with her cousin Anthony and her boyfriend Pedro. They went behind her cousin Lorcey's house, which was across Eighth Street from the park. Sometime between 7:40 and 8:40 pm that day, she was still braiding Mr. Moses's hair when a police officer told them to leave the park.

For the hair braiding, they had agreed on a price of twenty dollars, but Mr. Moses had only eighteen dollars. He said he would drive to get the remaining two dollars and come back and give it to her. They parted ways at the corner of West Street and Clays Lane.

Mr. Moses went north on Clays Lane to his car. She saw him drive up that hill to a little past the stop sign at the intersection of West Street and Tenth Street, where he crested the hill. She then lost sight of his car. Almost immediately thereafter, however, she saw appellant running down that hill. The following morning, she learned that Mr. Moses had been stabbed.

At appellant's first trial, appellant's defense counsel cross-examined Ms. Daniels extensively. As part of this cross-examination, counsel presented Ms. Daniels with prior statements she had made to detectives and to the grand jury. Many of these statements were inconsistent with her trial testimony. Ms. Daniels explained most of these inconsistencies by saying that she had been brought up not to cooperate with police and had decided recently to cooperate for moral reasons.

Lisa Jones testified at the second trial as follows. Ms. Jones met appellant in 2001, and they became friends and sometimes romantic partners. On September 15^th, 2005, appellant asked to borrow her car. He told her that he needed it to go to the Grove, because somebody there owed him something. He said he would bring the car right back. He left with the car around 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. but did not return until the early morning hours.

When appellant returned with her car he was very dirty, and he said that he needed to "lay low" to avoid the police. When she asked him why he was late, he said that "something had happened." When she went to check on her car, she noticed that there was no gas in it, and that the steering wheel had blood on it. When she confronted appellant about the blood, he told her it was not his blood.

Ms. Jones further testified that, after that night, appellant on three or four occasions told people that "Mo" "never saw it coming," and imitated stabbing someone-siting in a car-in the chest. At the time, she knew of two different people named "Mo" that regularly visited the Grove. Appellant elaborated that that this man-who he had stabbed-had cheated him.

In the weeks following Mr. Moses's death, she began to hear rumors that appellant, who some people thought was her boyfriend, had killed somebody. About a month after Mr. Moses's death, she and appellant were passing a funeral together when appellant told her "that's who I took care of."

Ms. Jones and appellant lost contact after 2005. Then, in 2016, police contacted Ms. Jones about appellant. Police provided Ms. Jones with appellant's phone number and recorded two phone calls she made to him. In one of those phone calls, Ms. Jones asked appellant if he had gotten rid of a knife, and appellant responded "[t]hat done been gone." On that same call, appellant instructed Ms. Jones not to provide the police with any information.

At trial, appellant objected to the introduction into evidence of...