Opinion ID: 1509822
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Pre-Reconciliation and Post-Reconciliation Conduct

Text: Appellant also argues that the trial court should have given a unanimity instruction on the pre- and post-reconciliation events revealed by the evidence. Stalking, however, is defined as a series of incidents that are part of a course of conduct extending over a period of time. As the government says in its brief, it is the continuing course of conduct which constitutes the offense, not the individual discrete actions making up the course of conduct. We held in Gray that when a single count is charged and the facts show a continuing course of conduct, rather than a succession of clearly detached incidents, a special unanimity instruction is unnecessary, absent some factor that differentiates the facts on legal grounds. 544 A.2d at 1258. No such factor is present here. Our opinion in Gray differentiates between the two situations that may require a special unanimity instruction. Incidents have been found to be factually separate when separate criminal acts have occurred at different times and were separated by intervening events. . . . Incidents are legally separate when the appellant presents different defenses to separate sets of facts underlying the charge... or when the court's instructions are ambiguous but tend to shift the legal theory from a single incident to two separate incidents. . . . Id. at 1257 (citations omitted; emphasis in original). Neither definition fits this case. Appellant engaged in a consistent pattern of behavior which amounted to stalking under the statute. Although the events occurred at different times, the statute specifically requires that the behavior be on more than one occasion and must occur repeatedly. D.C.Code § 22-504(b). The charge set forth in the information encompassed a period of almost two and a half years, from August 1994 to January 1997. Thus we cannot say as a matter of law (as we must in order to find plain error) that the acts committed by appellant before the brief reconciliation were separate criminal acts from those committed after the reconciliation. Nor did he present separate defenses to these acts; rather, he offered only a limited defense concerning the encounter at the school, and no defense as to anything else. There was nothing in the judge's instructions to the jury from which anyone could conclude that there were two separate legal theories. Nor was there any legally significant difference between the pre- and post-reconciliation acts. The fact that Ms. Hall chose to have lunch with appellant and agreed to be friends with him  a friendship which, all too predictably, lasted only a few weeks  does not negate the criminal nature of his previous acts, as appellant suggests. We hold that appellant's behavior was a continuing course of conduct from the middle of 1994 until his arrest in January 1997, that it constituted a single offense (not two separate offenses), and that he was therefore not entitled to a special unanimity instruction on the pre- and post-reconciliation facts. See, e.g., Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 169, 97 S.Ct. 2221, 53 L.Ed.2d 187 (1977); Glymph v. United States, 490 A.2d 1157, 1160-1161 (D.C. 1985); Parker v. United States, 476 A.2d 173, 176 (D.C.1984).