Opinion ID: 2967883
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Chaconia Shooting

Text: The shooting at the Chaconia nightclub in Washington, D.C., took place approximately two months before the murders. According to the testimony of Wondwossen Kabtamu, Higgs got into an argument with another man and, as Kabtamu was driving away in Higgs’s van, Higgs fired several shots at another vehicle with a .38 caliber handgun. According to the testimony of Domenick Williams, with whom Higgs was housed at the D.C. jail while awaiting trial on the Chaconia charges, Higgs expressed great reluctance to plead guilty to the Chaconia charges because they would try to use the gun in another case. J.A. 975. After Williams learned that Higgs was being indicted for the murders of the three women in this case, Higgs commented to Williams, you see why I can’t plead guilty to that charge? J.A. 979. The victims in the case before us were indeed murdered with a .38 caliber weapon. The bullet recovered from the Chaconia shooting was UNITED STATES v. HIGGS 37 forensically similar to those recovered from the Patuxent murder scene and the victims, in that they shared the same rifling characteristics — five lands and grooves with a right twist. Thus, the evidence of Higgs’s participation in the Chaconia Nightclub shooting was properly introduced by the government as a means to link Higgs to the same caliber weapon that Gloria testified Higgs owned and retrieved from the drawer on the night of the murders, and one which shared the same rifling characteristics as did the murder weapon. See United States v. Grimmond, 137 F.3d 823, 831-32 (4th Cir. 1998) (upholding admission of prior shooting incidents to establish the defendant’s possession of a firearm). In addition, the evidence was admissible under Rule 404(b) as it and the Cherry Lane evidence placed the murder weapon, which was disposed of in the Anacostia River and never found, in Higgs’s hand a short time before the murders and, therefore, served the necessary function of proving his identity as one of the murderers and his use of the firearm in connection with the murders. Consequently, we hold the district court did not abuse its discretion in ruling that the evidence was admissible, nor in ruling that its probative value outweighed its prejudicial effect under Rule 403.