Argued
January 16, 2018
Appeal
from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia
(CF1-13804-14) (Hon. Rhonda Reid-Winston, Trial Judge)
Debra
Soltis, with whom Paul Y. Kiyonaga and Marcus Massey were on
the brief, for appellant.
Kristina Ament, with whom Channing D. Phillips, United States
Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and Elizabeth
Trosman, John P. Mannarino, Kenechukwu O. Okocha, Akhi
Johnson, and Eric S. Nguyen, Assistant United States
Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee.
Before
Glickman and Fisher, Associate Judges, and Ferren, Senior
Judge.
GLICKMAN, ASSOCIATE JUDGE
Appellant,
Levi Ruffin, was convicted after a jury trial of the
following offenses: first-degree burglary while armed;
kidnapping while armed; third-degree sexual abuse while
armed; attempted robbery while armed; assault with a
dangerous weapon; and assault with significant bodily injury.
In this appeal, he contends the evidence was insufficient to
sustain his convictions for first-degree burglary and
kidnapping, and that the trial court erred in denying his
motions to exclude DNA test results and a knife found in his
possession at the time of his arrest. Concluding that these
contentions lack merit, we affirm appellant's
convictions.
I.
The Evidence at Trial
The
complaining witness at appellant's trial, whom we shall
refer to as J.C., testified that a man wielding a silver
folding knife attacked her when she arrived home on the
evening of September 14, 2013. J.C. lived at the time in one
of three apartments in a row house in Northwest Washington,
D.C. Her assailant, who was later identified as appellant,
came up behind her as she was unlocking the front door to the
building. Putting his hand over her mouth and holding the
knife to her face, appellant told her not to move and to drop
what she was holding. He then pushed J.C. through the
entrance into the common hallway of the row house, followed
her in, and closed the door behind them. Alone with her in
the hallway, and continuing to hold the knife to her face,
appellant demanded her money. J.C. started to hand him her
debit and credit cards, but appellant slapped them away. He
then lifted her dress and rubbed his fingers against her
genital area through her underwear.
At that
point, J.C. grabbed the hand in which appellant was holding
the knife and pushed him away. A fight ensued, during which
appellant bit J.C. on her left cheek and her back. She yelled
at him to stop. He pushed her to the floor and fled out the
front door of the row house. After he was gone, J.C. went
into her apartment and called the police.
A
neighbor in an apartment down the hallway heard and saw part
of the attack through the peephole of her door and called the
police. The recording of that call was played at trial. It
captured over 90 seconds of the assault.
J.C.
was taken to the hospital by ambulance. She was treated for
the bite wounds on her cheek and back, and for a lacerated
finger (which required six stitches) and other knife cuts on
her hands. A nurse swabbed J.C.'s bite wounds for
biological evidence that could help identify her attacker.
After
several months, the police acquired information linking
appellant to the assault.[1] In August 2014, officers went to his
apartment to arrest him. In a pair of jeans that appellant
asked to put on, the officers found a folding knife with a
silver blade and a black handle. Over appellant's
objection to its relevance, this knife was admitted in
evidence against him at trial, along with the parties'
stipulation that it had been in appellant's possession
"as early as November 2, 2013" (i.e., about seven
weeks after the assault on J.C.).[2]
DNA
testing identified appellant as J.C.'s assailant. Two
forensic scientists from the District of Columbia Department
of Forensic Sciences (DFS) testified that they received and
tested the swabs taken from J.C.'s cheek and back wounds
and a swab taken from appellant's cheek following his
arrest in this case. These scientists performed the
extraction, quantification, and amplification of DNA from
each of those sources and generated DNA profiles from them
for subsequent interpretation and comparison. They did not
testify to that interpretation and comparison, however,
because flaws had been detected in DFS's statistical
computation procedures. These flaws reportedly "resulted
in DFS's overstating the rarity of certain mixture
profiles, "[3] i.e., profiles obtained from samples
containing DNA from more than one person. A panel of experts
convened by the United States Attorney's Office
identified "systematic concerns with DFS's
interpretations of forensic DNA mixtures,
"[4] and an ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation
Board (ANAB)[5] audit of DFS likewise found serious
problems with its "mixture interpretation
procedures." The ANAB required DFS to suspend DNA
testing until it corrected the problems.
The
government arranged for an accredited private laboratory,
Bode Cellmark Forensics (Bode), to interpret and compare the
profiles generated by DFS in this case. Over appellant's
objection, the court allowed Karin Crenshaw, a forensic
biologist at Bode, to testify that appellant's DNA
profile matched the foreign DNA profiles recovered from the
swabs of J.C.'s back and cheek wounds.[6] According to Ms.
Crenshaw, the probability of randomly selecting an unrelated
African American with the same profile as that of the foreign
DNA from J.C.'s back was 1 in 450 quadrillion; and the
equivalent random match probability for the DNA from
J.C.'s cheek was 1 in 4.1 sextillion.[7]
II.
Sufficiency of the Evidence
Appellant
claims the evidence was insufficient to convict him of the
first-degree burglary and kidnapping charges. Each claim
turns on a question of statutory interpretation.
A.
First-Degree Burglary While Armed
The
crime of burglary in the first degree is defined in D.C. Code
§ 22-801(a) (2019 Supp.) in pertinent part as follows
(emphasis added): "Whoever shall . . . enter . . .
any dwelling, or room used as a sleeping apartment
in any building, with intent . . . to commit any criminal
offense, shall, if any person is in any part of such dwelling
or sleeping apartment at the time of such . . . entering, . .
. be guilty of burglary in the first
degree."[8] Appellant contends there was insufficient
proof that he entered a "dwelling" to support his
conviction of this crime because the evidence at trial
established that J.C.'s assailant entered only the common
hallway of her multi-apartment row house (and not also her or
any other tenant's individual apartment). Appellant
asserts that the common hallway of a residential apartment
building is not part of a "dwelling" as that term
is used in the burglary statute.
The
burglary statute does not define the term
"dwelling," and this is the first time this court
has been called upon to construe it. Its meaning in the
statute, and whether it encompasses a common hallway in a
multi-unit residential building, are questions of statutory
interpretation that we decide de novo.[9] Where, as here,
statutory terms are undefined, we presumptively construe them
according to their ordinary sense and plain meaning, taking
into account the context in which they are employed, the
policy and purpose of the legislation, and the potential
consequences of adopting a given
interpretation.[10] "We may also look to the
legislative history to ensure that our interpretation is
consistent with legislative intent."[11] These
principles have guided our interpretation of other language
in the first-degree burglary statute.[12] They favor
giving the term "dwelling" a broad interpretation
that would render § 22-801(a) applicable here.
To
begin with, the term "dwelling" is not limited to
single-family occupancies. Apartment houses and other
multi-unit residential structures also are included within
standard dictionary definitions of "dwelling,"
particularly when that word is used in burglary and similar
statutes. Black's Law Dictionary, for example, states
that "dwelling" is the short form of
"dwelling-house," a term meaning, in criminal law,
virtually any "building . . ., part of a building . . .,
or []other enclosed space that is used or intended for use as
a human habitation."[13]We think it informative and
noteworthy that a number of federal courts, tasked under the
Sentencing Guidelines with determining the
"generic" meaning of "burglary of a
dwelling," have accepted this definition.[14]
In
construing the District's first-degree burglary statute,
we have no reason to reject the broad ordinary meaning of
"dwelling" as any enclosed space used for human
habitation, nor any reason to narrow the definition of
"dwelling" to exclude some types of habitation.
Section 22-801(a) states that it applies to entries into
"any dwelling" without qualification or
exception. "[T]here is no indication in the legislative
history to the contrary."[15] Congress enacted the
first-degree burglary statute in 1967.[16] As explained
in the report on the bill by the Senate Committee on the
District of Columbia, up until then, "the crime of
breaking and entering in the District of Columbia [was]
called housebreaking" and did "not distinguish
between dwellings and other premises."[17] The
authorized penalty for housebreaking, imprisonment for up to
15 years, was the same regardless of the character of the
premises.[18] The 1967 enactment amended the
housebreaking statute to create two degrees of burglary and
specify different minimum sentences for each.[19] The graver
offense, first-degree burglary of an occupied dwelling or
sleeping apartment, carried an enhanced penalty of no less
than 5 nor more than 30 years of imprisonment. Burglaries of
other premises were covered by the second-degree statute,
which tracked the previous housebreaking statute and
continued to carry a maximum penalty of 15 years'
imprisonment.[20]
Accepting
the broad, ordinary definition of "dwelling" best
serves the evident legislative purpose behind the enactment
of the first-degree burglary statute. Burglaries of occupied
residences are singled out for heightened punishment because
they "pose an increased risk of physical and
psychological injury."[21] In such burglaries "there
is a much greater possibility of confronting the resident and
a substantial risk that force will be used and that someone
will be injured, than if one burglarized a building that was
not intended for use as habitation, such as an office
building after office hours or a
warehouse."[22] This elevated risk exists whether the
human habitation in question is a single-family home or
apartment, a row house with a few units, or a multi-unit
apartment building. "[T]he unique wounds caused by
residential burglary are independent of the size or
construction of the dwelling. They are the same for the
mansion house and the boarding house, the tract home and the
mobile home."[23]
So
J.C.'s row house was a "dwelling" within the
meaning of our first-degree burglary statute. The evidence
clearly sufficed to prove that her assailant entered this
dwelling with the intent to commit a crime inside it, and
that someone else was present there when he did so. This
latter statutory requirement, which is not in dispute, was
satisfied in two ways. First, it suffices that J.C.'s
neighbor was in the row house even though she was in her own
apartment; a residential burglary violates § 22-801(a)
"if any person is in any part of [the] dwelling" at
the time of entry. Second, as in Edelen, this
requirement also was met (even if no one else had been in the
building at the time) because J.C.'s assailant pushed her
into the row house ahead of him and she therefore was in the
dwelling herself when he followed her in.[24]
It is
immaterial that the entry and the subsequent assault went no
further than the interior common hallway of the row house.
This hallway was behind a locked door; in no way was it a
space so open to the public at large as to be considered
outside and not part of the private dwelling area. And as far
as § 22-801(a) is concerned, an entry is an entry; it
does not matter where in a dwelling the invasion occurs, for
all such intrusions pose the heightened risk of violent
confrontation and other harms that the first-degree statute
is meant to deter and punish. We thus readily agree with the
holdings of several other courts that, under burglary
statutes comparable to ours, "an apartment dweller's
'dwelling house' does include secured common
hallways."[25]
Appellant
argues that this conclusion is foreclosed by our decision in
Edelen, in which this court held that the defendant
committed first-degree burglary when he entered the
complainant's apartment, even though he began his attack
on her in the common hallway outside her
apartment.[26] This argument is not correct. In
Edelen, this court had no occasion to consider, and
therefore did not consider, whether the defendant committed a
first-degree burglary when he entered the apartment building.
The issue before the court was only whether his entry into
the apartment constituted a first-degree burglary. The two
possibilities are not mutually exclusive. Section 22-801(a)
recognizes both possibilities by specifying that a
first-degree burglary can be committed by entering either
"any dwelling" or any "room used as a
sleeping apartment in any building."
We
reject appellant's restrictive interpretation of D.C.
Code § 22-801(a) and hold that the evidence was
sufficient to sustain his conviction for first-degree
burglary.
B.
Kidnapping While Armed
To
convict appellant of kidnapping J.C. in violation of D.C.
Code § 22-2001 (2019 Supp.), the government had to prove
that he "intentionally seized, confined, or carried
[her] away, and that [he] held or detained [her] against her
will."[27]There was
ample evidence that appellant did all of those things by
forcing J.C. into the hallway of her row house, closing the
door behind him, detaining her there at knifepoint, and
violently resisting her attempt to escape. Appellant
contends, however, that there was insufficient evidence to
sustain his kidnapping conviction because J.C.'s
detention lasted only about a minute-and-a-half and was
"incidental" to and "wholly coextensive
with" the assault and attempted robbery. Appellant
argues that offenses like robbery and sexual assault almost
always include some detention of the victim (though detention
is not an element of them), and the legislature could not
have intended the kidnapping statute to apply to such
detentions that are "not distinct from another
offense" of which the defendant is guilty.[28]
This
argument is not a new one. It has been made to us before, and
we have rejected it. As this court stated in
Richardson, the argument is "foreclosed"
by "binding precedent."[29] We have held that "[t]he plain
language" of D.C. Code § 22-2001
contains no exception for cases in which the conduct
underlying the kidnapping is momentary or incidental to
another offense. . . . "[T]here is no requirement that
the victim be moved any particular distance or be held for
any particular length of time to constitute a kidnapping; all
that is required is a 'seizing, confining' or the
like and a 'holding or detaining for ransom or reward
'or otherwise'"[30]
Accordingly,
we hold that the evidence in this case was sufficient to
sustain appellant's conviction for kidnapping while
armed.
III.
...