Gray v. United States (decided March 16, 2017)
The Players: Associate Judges Beckwith and McLeese, and Senior Judge Farrell. Opinion by J. Beckwith, concurrence by J. Farrell, and dissent by J. McLeese. Sydney J. Hoffmann for Mr. Gray. Trial Judge: William M. Jackson.
Facts: Security-camera footage showed a man, identified by the complaining witnesses as Mr. Gray, enter a convenience store one evening and “engage in a series of bizarre acts.”
According to the footage and witness testimony, he approached two women and their children (two of whom were in strollers), first reaching into one of the strollers, and then gesturing towards the group, holding his hands in front of his body while forming a diamond shape with his thumbs and forefingers. He next touched the two women and one of the children on the forehead with his palm. Then, he reached into the second stroller, pulled a bottle out of the mouth of the baby in the stroller, and told the mother not to give the baby the bottle because the baby would die.
After this strange sequence of events, he then picked up a wallet the one of the mothers had left on it. He then sat down, rummaged through the wallet and removed $7. He tossed the wallet back on the counter, stood up, and walked out of the store. As he left, he pointed to the owner, and said something like “you’re going to die.”
Mr. Gray was convicted at trial of one count of robbery, one count of threats to do bodily harm, and three counts of simple assault. The defense’s request that the jury be instructed on the lesser-included offense of second-degree theft was denied.
Issue 1: Did the trial court err in not giving an instruction on the lesser included offense of second-degree theft because the evidence would have supported a finding by the jury that the assaults and taking of the complainant’s money were distinct from one another.
Answer: Yes. On the “unusual facts of this case,” the DCCA held that the evidence supported a rational conclusion that Mr. Gray neither assaulted the complainants with the intent of effectuating a subsequent taking, nor consciously exploited the fear created by the assaults when taking the money.
The DCCA found that based on the evidence presented—particularly the camera footage—the jury could rationally have concluded that “the assaults and the theft were not connected but rather resulted from a series of separate, erratic impulses.” In other words, Mr. Gray’s behavior was so strange that the jury could well have believed that the theft of the $7 dollars was spontaneous and unconnected to this touching the complainants with the palm of his hand.
Note: The majority opinion draws two important legal conclusions about the robbery statute in the course of its analysis on this point. First, while case law makes clear a defendant can commit a robbery when she takes advantage of the fear created by assaultive acts that were committed with no robbery in mind, the defendant must purposefully take advantage of that fear, not simply coincidentally benefit from it. The second is that simply taking something from a victim’s “immediate actual possession” (as opposed to the victim’s person) does not constitute robbery because “such a principle would completely nullify the ‘by force or violence’ element of robbery.”
Judge Farrell’s concurrence also stresses the unique facts of this case, and the unlikelihood that a similar scenario would present itself.
Issue 2: Was the failure to give the lesser-included offense harmless?
Answer: No. The error was not harmless for two reasons. First, the instruction would have lent credence to the defense’s claim in closing that the assaults were not intended to effectuate a robbery. Second, by giving the jury a middle ground between robbery and acquittal, the instruction would have prevented the jury from making the decision to convict simply because it was all or nothing—either convict for robbery or allow obviously illegal behavior to go unpunished.
Other Issues: Mr. Gray also challenged the sufficiency of the evidence on the robbery charge, as well as the voluntariness of his waiver of his Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify. The DCCA denied both challenges. CP
No comments:
Post a Comment