Johnson v. State

ANTONIO JOHNSON v. STATE OF MARYLAND

No. 984

COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS OF MARYLAND

September Term, 2017

July 10, 2018

Circuit Court for Baltimore City

Case No. 112345007

UNREPORTED

Eyler, Deborah S., Friedman, Alpert, Paul E. (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), JJ.

Opinion by Eyler, Deborah S., J.

*This is an unreported opinion and therefore may not be cited either as precedent or as persuasive authority in any paper, brief, motion, or other document filed in this Court or any other Maryland court. Md. Rule 1-104.

A jury in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City convicted Antonio Johnson, the appellant, of first-degree felony murder and robbery. The court sentenced Johnson to life in prison for the felony murder conviction and merged the robbery conviction for sentencing. Johnson noted a timely appeal, presenting four questions, which we have rephrased as five:

1. Did the trial court err by refusing to hold a Frye-Reed hearing on the State's expert's bloodstain pattern analysis testimony?

2. Did the trial court abuse its discretion by refusing to hold a hearing on whether the State's expert's bloodstain pattern analysis testimony was admissible under Rule 5-702?

3. Did the trial court abuse its discretion by admitting testimony that there were bloodstains on Johnson's clothes when those bloodstains had not been DNA tested?

4. Did the trial court abuse its discretion by limiting the defense's questioning of the lead detective?

5. Did the trial court abuse its discretion by permitting the lead detective to testify about surveillance videos?

For the following reasons, we shall affirm the judgments of the trial court.

FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS

On November 3, 2012, Deborah Simon, age 55, went out to dinner with her parents, Gerald and Nancy Cox. Afterward, she returned to her home at 1228 Washington Boulevard, in Baltimore, where she had recently moved in. At around 7:55 p.m., she called her parents to let them know she had made it home safely. Her parents did not hear from her the next day, which was unusual. They called her and left voicemails, but Simon did not return the calls. Finally, on November 5, after learning that Simon had failed to show up to work, her parents went to her house to check on her.

The front door to Simon's house was locked, so Mr. Cox hired a locksmith to gain access. Upon entering Simon's house, Mr. Cox found his daughter, dead, lying in a pool of dried blood on the kitchen floor. She had been stabbed 28 times and her throat had been slashed. The police determined that Simon had been murdered on the night of November 3, sometime after 9:20 p.m., when she made a two-minute call from her cell phone to Comcast. Her house had been ransacked and items of property were missing, including her HP printer, laptop, combination television-DVD player, cell phone, and a new piece of black Samsonite luggage.

At the relevant time, Johnson was living on the same block as Simon, at 1246 Washington Boulevard, with his girlfriend, Peggy Cash.¹ Between November 1 and 3, 2012, Johnson and Cash were involved in an ongoing domestic dispute. Johnson, a drug addict, had tried to sell Cash's living room furniture set for $20. He also had demanded that Cash give him money and had threatened to kill her when she refused. Cash had reported the domestic assault to the police, and a warrant had been issued for Johnson's arrest. On November 3, Cash threw Johnson out of the house. At 10:30 p.m. that night, Johnson returned to the house and knocked on the door. Cash called the police and asked for an officer to come and escort him away. Officer Dien Pham responded to Cash's house at 11:20 p.m., but by then Johnson already had left. Cash gave Officer Pham a description of Johnson and what he had been wearing that night—a black hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and a black knit hat. Officer Pham and his partner searched the 1200 block of Washington Boulevard and the surrounding area. Around midnight, they found Johnson near 1201 Washington Boulevard. He was pulling a piece of black Samsonite luggage that still had sales tags on it.

Officer Pham stopped Johnson and explained that he had responded to Cash's allegation of domestic assault. Johnson appeared calm. Officer Pham ran Johnson's information, discovered that there was an active warrant for his arrest, and arrested him. The officer informed Johnson that he was going to be taken to Central Booking to be processed and that his luggage would not be accepted there. Johnson told Officer Pham that the luggage belonged to him and asked if Officer Pham would take it to Cash's house. Officer Pham took an inventory of the luggage contents, noting that it contained a printer, a lighter, and packs of cigarettes. He then took the items to Cash's house. Cash did not recognize the luggage but agreed to hold onto it.

On November 6, 2012, Cash found a butcher knife in her backyard. She called the police and Detective Christopher Brockdorff, the lead investigator on Simon's case, arrived at Cash's house to collect the knife. While he was there, Cash pointed out the piece of luggage Officer Pham had dropped off a few days earlier. She told Detective Brockdorff that the luggage and its contents were likely stolen. Detective Brockdorff thought that the luggage and the printer could have belonged to Simon. He confirmed with Simon's parents that those items had been taken from her house. Detectives returned to Cash's house later that day to recover the luggage and its contents. Cash had sold all but one of the cigarette packs that were in the piece of luggage. One of Simon's fingerprints later was found on the remaining cigarette pack.

On November 9, Detective Brockdorff and his partner interviewed Johnson. The interview was audio recorded. Johnson told the detectives that on November 3, 2012, he woke up at noon, cleaned some of his neighbors' cars to earn some money, and bought some heroin and cocaine, which he smoked. Later that day, he went to his mother's house and asked her for some money, so he could stay at a shelter. He used that money to buy more drugs. After smoking those drugs, Johnson returned to his mother's house and told her the shelter was closed for the night. His mother gave him some more money. Johnson made his way to East Baltimore, near The Johns Hopkins Hospital, and then caught a bus back to the area of Cash's house. At "around 8:00/8:30" p.m., he got off the bus near Baltimore Behavioral Health ("BBH"), which is located at 1101 West Pratt Street, several blocks north of the 1200 block of Washington Boulevard. Johnson said he had found the black Samsonite luggage beside a trashcan on a pathway next to BBH. He looked inside the luggage and saw that there were cigarette packs. He took the luggage and walked south on Carey Street toward Washington Boulevard. He stopped by a few establishments and unsuccessfully tried to sell the cigarettes. Eventually, he made his way to Cash's house, where Cash saw him and called the police. He continued trying to sell cigarettes in the area until he was arrested by Officer Pham.

During the interview, Johnson admitted that he knew Simon. He said he had washed her car for money a few times and had helped move a mirror into her house three or four days before she was murdered.

Within a week of interviewing Johnson, Detective Brockdorff retraced the path Johnson claimed to have walked after getting off the bus near BBH. He attempted to collect surveillance footage from businesses along that route. He obtained video footage from two BBH cameras that were focused on the area where Johnson said he had found the luggage. The footage from both cameras lasted from a little before 8:00 p.m. on November 3 to around 12:00 a.m. on November 4. Detective Brockdorff watched all of the footage. It did not show anybody leaving luggage near a trashcan, nor did it show Johnson.

In January 2013, William Young, a serologist for the Baltimore City Police Department, examined the clothing Johnson had worn on the night of November 3, 2012. Young swabbed stains on the clothing to test for the presence of bodily fluids. On Johnson's hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and right sneaker, he found 12 stains that tested positive for human blood. Five of the 12 stains were submitted for DNA testing. Simon was the source of the major female DNA profile from four of the five blood samples. Johnson was the source of the major male DNA profile from the fifth blood sample, which was swabbed from a blood stain on the interior of his jeans.

Johnson was charged with murder and related crimes and was tried for the first time in August 2014. At trial, he testified, giving a different story from what he told Detective Brockdorff on November 9, 2012. He stated that when he got off the bus near BBH, he walked along a path between BBH and the Social Services building. On that path, he encountered a "familiar" man whose name he did not know but who he had seen in the area "[m]aybe two times before." The man had the piece of luggage with him and was holding an apparatus used for smoking drugs. Johnson and the man shook hands and embraced. Johnson did not notice whether the man had blood on him. The man offered Johnson some drugs, and the two smoked four or five dime bags together. After they finished smoking, they decided to try to sell the cigarettes that were in the luggage. Johnson and the man wandered into bars on Carey Street and Washington Boulevard, asking patrons whether they wanted to buy cigarettes. Johnson exited one bar on Washington Boulevard without the man. Soon after that he was stopped by Officer Pham. Johnson lied to police because he did not trust them.

Johnson's first trial ended in a mistrial. He was tried again in 2015, but a second mistrial was declared. In 2017, the State tried Johnson for a third time. The trial began on January 24 and lasted for eight days. The jury found Johnson guilty of first-degree felony murder and robbery.

We shall include additional facts in our discussion of the...