Case Name: Saul A. LAZO, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee
Court: District of Columbia Court of Appeals
Jurisdiction: District of Columbia
Decision Date: 2007-08-02
Citations: 930 A.2d 183
Docket Number: No. 05-CF-558
Parties: Saul A. LAZO, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.
Judges: Before WASHINGTON, Chief Judge, and FARRELL and RUIZ, Associate Judges.
Reporter: West's Atlantic Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 930
Pages: 183–194

Head Matter:
Saul A. LAZO, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES, Appellee.
No. 05-CF-558.
District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
Argued March 20, 2007.
Decided Aug. 2, 2007.
Sharad Khandelwal, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Kenneth L. Wainstein, United States Attorney at the time, and Roy W. McLeese III, Elizabeth Trosman and Youli Lee, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee.
Before WASHINGTON, Chief Judge, and FARRELL and RUIZ, Associate Judges.

Opinion:
FARRELL, Associate Judge:
Appellant was found guilty by a jury of assault with intent to kill while armed, aggravated assault while armed, and carrying a dangerous weapon outside the home or place of business. Evidence permitted the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant was one of a group of persons who, believing that the victim, Miguel Garay, was a member of a particular gang, chased him into a barbershop where appellant repeatedly stabbed him with an object resembling a screwdriver. A patron of the barbershop pointed out appellant to nearby police as he fled the scene moments later; they caught him and returned him to the shop, where he was identified by two patrons — one from his clothing, the other from his full appearance — as the man wearing a blue, hooded shirt or windbreaker who had stabbed Ga-ray.
On appeal, Lazo raises several grounds for reversal of his convictions, none of which, we conclude, warrants that relief. We remand for correction of his sentence.
I.
At trial, the judge allowed Miguel Garay to testify, over objection, that shortly before the assault he had passed near a group of some ten people on the street corner, one of whom asked him "if [he] was V.L.," which Garay understood to mean "Vocos Locos, . the name of a gang." When Garay ignored the question, the group began chasing him. He ran into the barbershop for refuge, but several men followed him in and assaulted him; during the assault he heard a young woman yell, "[S]top, . leave him alone, he's not in the gang, he's not in the gang."
Appellant contends that these references to "Vocos Locos" and a "gang" were not relevant to any issue in the case — they were "not required to prove any element of the [charged] offenses" (Br. for App. at 15) — and served only to inflame the passions of jurors perhaps too familiar with gang activity. He is mistaken. The limited references to a gang by Garay "supplied] to the jury a motive for an otherwise unexplained [stabbing]," Plummer v. United States, 813 A.2d 182, 189 (D.C.2002), and thus were relevant to appellant's identity as one of the assailants. Specifically, of the universe of persons who hypothetically might have had a motive to assault Garay, the brief references to "Vo-cos Locos" enabled the jury to narrow that class to persons from among the group that had identified him with a gang they evidently disliked, and who had chased him into the shop for that reason. Garay himself did not link appellant directly to the stabbing: he did not know him and could not identify him (or anyone) as his assailant. The direct identification evidence came from the two barbershop patrons who observed the stabbing, saw appellant flee, and identified him when he was returned to the shop by the police. The relevance of the motive evidence, by contrast, lay in countering the argument a competent defense attorney surely would have made in its absence that reasonable doubt existed because no reason had been shown for appellant to assault Garay. The references to "Vocos Locos," in short, provided circumstantial evidence of appellant's identity, because it is hornbook law that "[t]he presence or absence of a motive on the part of the defendant which might tend to commission of . a [criminal] deed may always be considered by the jury on the question of whether he did commit it." Rollin M. Perkins & Ronald N. Boyce, Ceiminal Law 928 (3d ed.1982).
The test for relevance is a minimal one; evidence is relevant if it has "any tendency to make the existence of any fact . of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence." Street v. United States, 602 A.2d 141, 143 (D.C.1992). Here the motive evidence undeniably had some "tendency" to make appellant's identity as the stabber more probable than it otherwise would have been, by "supplying] . a motive for an otherwise unexplained [assault]." Plummer, supra.
Beyond determining relevance, the trial judge was obliged to balance the probative value of the gang references against their potential for prejudice. See, e.g., Plummer, 813 A.2d at 189. The judge carefully did so, recognizing the probative value of the motive evidence but also the potential prejudice to a defendant from any reference to gang activity or affiliation. The judge, therefore, strictly limited testimony on the subject to the few matters described above, at one point admonishing the prosecutor that "we are not going to be talking about any gang activity." There was no abuse of discretion in this careful balancing. See, e.g., Freeman v. United States, 689 A.2d 575, 580 (D.C.1997). And, it goes without saying, we reject appellant's reliance on those decisions that have condemned mention of gang membership where, in the circumstances, it created a "significant danger that conviction rested merely on guilt by association." Id. at 582 (discussing such cases). The references to "Vocos Locos" were only one piece of the mosaic of evidence strongly demonstrating appellant's guilt.
Our dissenting colleague asserts that only "[i]f there had been evidence presented that appellant was a member of a gang . would [we] be correct in stating that the gang references were probative." Post at 188. This oddly implies that only overtly prejudicial evidence of his gang membership — evidence the trial judge might well have excluded as more prejudicial than probative — would have sufficed to meet minimal standards of relevance. In fact, though, it was not important whether appellant belonged to a gang or not; what mattered was that, by reasonable inference, he was part of the group of persons who accosted Garay believing (mistakenly, it appears) that he was a member of a gang they disliked, and who therefore chased him into the barbershop where one or more of them assaulted and stabbed him. That evidence — Toliver evidence, if you will — of the circumstances surrounding a stabbing linked to appellant by two eyewitnesses explained an action that otherwise would have been argued to be motiveless on his part and thus open to reasonable doubt on identification. The proof of why Garay was assaulted was an inextricable aspect of the picture the jury was entitled to see, introduced in minimally inflammatory fashion. There was no error.
II.
Appellant next argues that testimony by the barbershop patrons reporting statements by Garay as he sought refuge in the shop should not have been allowed because the requirements of the excited utterance exception to the hearsay rule were not met. To the contrary, an adequate foundation existed for the trial judge's conclusion that the statements— chiefly Garay's exclamation "they're after me, they're after me" as he entered the shop — met the requirements of shock or nervous excitement and spontaneity for admission of a statement as an excited utterance. See generally Bryant v. United States, 859 A.2d 1093, 1106 (D.C.2004); Nicholson v. United States, 868 A.2d 561, 564 (D.C.1977).
Further, the judge did not err, and certainly not reversibly, when he suggested to defense counsel in the jury's presence that "[w]e will have to . try to pare down" the number of witnesses counsel had declared his intention to call. Even if, as appellant argues, the jury should not have heard this implied "criticism . of the number of potential defense witnesses and the quality of their testimony" (Br. for App. at 27), any resultant prejudice was too slight to warrant reversal. See Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 776, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946).
Appellant contends, additionally, that the judge erred in permitting the prosecutor to remark upon appellant's change of appearance in closing argument by twice comparing it to his flight from the scene of the assault, as in: "He fled on foot. He's fleeing with the change of his appearance, or at least he's trying to." The basis for the prosecutor's change of appearance argument, see Criminal JuRY INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, No. 2.46 (4th ed.2001), was the testimony of the arresting officers and photographic evidence indicating that appellant had greatly shortened his_ hair between the time of arrest and trial. When supported by the evidence, we have recognized the legitimacy of such argument. See Scott v. United States, 619 A.2d 917, 928 (D.C.1993); see also United States v. Carr, 362 U.S.App. D.C. 303, 306, 373 F.3d 1350, 1353 (2004) ("Because there was independent evidence indicating that the defendant . changed his appearance, the jury could reasonably infer that he did so in order to avoid identification at trial and thereby evinced [a] consciousness of guilt.") (ellipses and brackets in original; internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Even if, as appellant argues, the prosecutor overstepped proper limits when he asserted that "Mr. Lazo was running again when he changed his appearance . [a]nd [he has] been running throughout this trial. Do not let [him] get away" (emphasis added), the trial judge immediately cautioned the jury that "if you think a lawyer expressed an opinion during argument, disregard the personal opinion and judge this case only on evidence produced in this courtroom." Again, any prejudice from the prosecutor's over-zealous rhetoric was insufficient to justify reversal. Kotteakos, supra.
Finally, appellant faults the judge for overruling his objection to the prosecutor's remarks about a mask that one eyewitness claimed to have seen him wear. The two barbershop patrons had given conflicting testimony as to whether appellant wore a mask at the time of the stabbing. After defense counsel remarked on the discrepancy about the mask evidence in summation and added, "You don't see a mask in evidence. No mask was recovered from my client after his arrest," the prosecutor countered: "Why is it that there is this discrepancy, this inconsistency with regard to the mask. The answer is we don't know. Where did the mask go? I don't know. The defense hasn't told you and you don't have any witnesses who have told you that . You shouldn't speculate about that." Contrary to appellant's argument, the prosecutor did not shift the burden of proof here by acknowledging the discrepancy in the government's own evidence and then telling the jurors not to "speculate" about what had become of the mask. See Coleman v. United States, 515 A.2d 439, 450 (D.C.1986) (prosecutor may respond in rebuttal to defense counsel's assertions).
III.
The government agrees that appellant's five-year prison sentence for carrying a dangerous weapon (CDW) was improper. By operation of D.C.Code § 24-403.01 (2006 Supp.), the maximum prison sentence for (unenhanced) CDW is three years. Except for the remand we order to effect that correction, the judgment of conviction is
Affirmed.
. See Toliver v. United States, 468 A.2d 958, 960 (D.C.1983).