Valdez v. United States

320 A.3d 339

Benito M. VALDEZ, Appellant,

v.UNITED STATES, Appellee.

No. 18-CF-1340

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued November 9, 2021

Decided August 15, 2024

West Codenotes

Prior Version Limited on Constitutional Grounds

D.C. Code § 22-3802.

Appeal from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (2016-CF1-002267), (Hon. Judith Bartnoff, Trial Judge)

Daniel Gonen, Public Defender Service, with whom Samia Fam, Alice Wang, and Shilpa S. Satoskar, Public Defender Service, were on the brief, for appellant.

Daniel J. Lenerz, Assistant United States Attorney, for appellee. Michael R. Sherwin, Acting United States Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and Elizabeth Trosman, Suzanne Grealy Curt, Laura R. Bach, Lindsey M. Merikas, and Daniel G. Randolph, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief for appellee.

Before McLeese and Shanker,^* Associate Judges, and Glickman,^† Senior Judge.

Glickman, Senior Judge:

Benito M. Valdez appeals his convictions after a jury trial of three counts of kidnapping while armed, one count of sodomy while armed, and nine counts of first-degree murder while armed, consisting of three counts each of premeditated murder, felony murder (kidnapping), and felony murder (sodomy). The jury found appellant guilty based on evidence that he sexually assaulted one of the victims and then shot and killed her and her two male companions after he believed the men had tried to cheat him in a drug deal. A cooperating government witness, who admitted to having been appellant’s accomplice, provided the jury with a first-hand account of the crimes. The account was corroborated by other evidence—principally, DNA evidence that linked appellant to the sexual assault, ballistics evidence, and the testimony of witnesses who reported appellant’s own incriminating admissions to them.

Appellant asserts several claims of error. First, he contends his constitutional right to present a defense was violated by the trial judge’s denial of a midtrial continuance to enable appellant to present the testimony of a hospitalized alibi witness. Second, appellant challenges several of the judge’s evidentiary rulings during the trial. Third, he also contends that the judge erred by improperly undermining defense counsel’s comment in closing argument on the lack of evidence corroborating certain testimony of his alleged accomplice. Fourth, appellant argues that his convictions for sodomy and felony murder predicated on sodomy must be vacated because the (now repealed) sodomy statute was unconstitutional, and also because the evidence did not support a finding, necessary for a felony murder conviction, that he committed the homicides while perpetrating the predicate felony of sodomy.¹

We conclude that appellant’s claims do not entitle him to a new trial, and we affirm his convictions.

I.

On the night of April 22, 1991, three people—Curtis Pixley, Keith Simmons, and Samantha Gillard—were shot to death in Langdon Park in northeast Washington, D.C. The government eventually charged appellant Benito Valdez with their murders. He was arrested and detained for those murders in February 2016. The prosecution relied heavily at appellant’s trial on the testimony of Michael Green, who also was arrested for the Langdon Park murders in February 2016. By the time of appellant’s trial, Green had pleaded guilty to three counts of voluntary manslaughter for his participation in those murders and to one count of second-degree murder for another, unrelated homicide (which was referred to at trial as the "Edgewood murder"). Green had agreed to plead guilty and to cooperate with the prosecution of appellant in exchange for the dismissal of the greater murder charges he faced, the government’s agreement not to prosecute him for drug dealing in D.C., and the hope of leniency at his eventual sentencing.²

At appellant’s trial, Green testified that, in April 1991, he and appellant were working for a drug dealing operation and were selling crack cocaine in Langdon Park. At that time, the two of them were the only crack sellers in the park, and they worked as a team; this was confirmed at trial by another government witness, Michael Thompson, the person in the drug operation who supplied appellant with the drugs he sold. The park was appellant’s and Green’s particular turf; other drug sellers "wouldn’t come down there," Green testified, because "[t]hey knew we were armed in there."

Appellant and Green were working in Langdon Park on the night of April 22, 1991, "moving around" from place to place "[b]ecause of the police."³ Green was carrying a 9mm handgun, and appellant had both a 9mm handgun and a .22-caliber revolver. They were near the tennis courts on the west side of the park when two men approached them. The men were Curtis Pixley, whom Green knew, and Keith Simmons, whom Green had never seen before. Addressing appellant, Pixley asked to buy "three for 50," which meant three crack rocks for $50. Appellant produced three bags, each containing one rock of crack, and handed them to Pixley.

Green testified that Pixley "looked at it for a while and decided he didn’t want it," so he purported to hand the drugs back to appellant. Appellant examined what he received and claimed Pixley had not returned all the crack to him. Pixley insisted he had done so, and the two men began to argue. Appellant became upset, started cursing, and told Pixley "he better find it." Pixley and Simmons began looking for the missing crack on the ground, and appellant and Green pulled their guns out. Pixley pulled his pockets inside out to show that he did not have the supposedly missing crack in them. In doing so, Pixley revealed to Green and appellant that he also did not have any money with which he could have paid for the crack he supposedly had come to buy.

At some point in this standoff, a woman whom Green did not know came up to them. This was Samantha Gillard, a friend of Pixley’s. Pixley told her to go back to the car, but according to Green, appellant said "no, she’s going to have to do something for the drugs that are missing." Pixley told Gillard to "go ahead and do it" so that they could leave. While Green stayed with Pixley and Simmons and stood guard over them, appellant walked Gillard, who had begun crying, to a spot by the tennis courts. Green saw appellant force Gillard, at gunpoint, to perform oral sex and what Green described as "sex from behind."

Appellant then returned with Gillard, who was still crying, and asked Green whether he wanted to have sex with her; Green testified that he declined. Green testified that he expected the three individuals now would be free to go, but appellant ordered Gillard to get down on the ground with Pixley and Simmons. They obeyed, lying face down next to each other. Ignoring their pleas to be allowed to leave, appellant then shot all three of them, first with the 9mm handgun, then with the .22-caliber revolver. Green testified at trial that he just stood there and did not fire any of the shots. Appellant and Green then ran to appellant’s car, which was parked on the east end of Langdon Park, and drove away.⁴

The bodies of the three murdered persons were discovered the morning after they were shot. Each victim had received multiple gunshot wounds. The ballistics evidence recovered by police from their bodies and at the scene consisted of thirteen 9mm bullet casings, nine 9mm bullets, and four .22-caliber bullets. A firearm and tool-mark identification expert opined that all the 9mm bullets and casings were fired by the same firearm, and that the same was true of all the .22-caliber bullets.⁵ The absence of any .22-caliber casings indicated that the bullets were fired by a revolver.

Semen was found on the left lower arm and the right upper arm of Gillard’s jacket, and on the front right thigh and back left knee of Gillard’s jeans. Appellant’s DNA matched the DNA that later was recovered from semen on the lower left arm, front right thigh, and back left knee, and it was excluded as a contributor to the semen on the right upper arm. Green was excluded as a contributor to any of the semen found on Gillard’s clothing (as were a number of other potential sources, including Pixley and Simmons). Green testified that in his first debriefing by the government, which occurred in August 2016, he predicted that the then-pending DNA analysis of Gillard’s clothes would show the presence of appellant’s DNA. Green also testified that appellant had told him (prior to his first debriefing) that he would explain any such finding by saying he had been "trick[ing]" Gillard, meaning he had given her drugs in exchange for sex on an earlier occasion. Green denied that appellant told him he actually had been "tricking" Gillard.⁶

Four witnesses testified at trial that appellant had made admissions about the Langdon Park killing directly to them or to other persons in their presence. Three of these witnesses were called by the government. One of them was Samuel Edmonds. He met appellant in 2001 and sold drugs with him before they both were charged in 2003 in federal district court with conspiring to distribute cocaine. Edmonds pleaded guilty in that case, agreed to cooperate with the government, and testified before a grand jury in 2005 about appellant’s admissions to the homicides, among other matters. Edmonds recapitulated that testimony at appellant’s trial. He testified that, in a conversation in 2001 regarding money they were owed for drugs, appellant declared, "Well, these motherfuckers will get killed. I already did it once, three times as a matter of fact at one time. So I’ll do it again." Edmonds testified that, in subsequent conversations around the same time, appellant said he committed the killings in Langdon Park. (He also acknowledged prior grand jury testimony in which he stated that he thought appellant had said the victims were "two males and one female," but Edmonds could not remember as of trial whether appel...