Opinion ID: 1546590
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Immediate Actual Possession

Text: Given the requisite force or violence, therefore, Sutton's sufficiency contention turns on the third statutory element: whether Dwayne Cox's car was in his immediate actual possession at the time it was taken. The jury was instructed verbatim without objectionfrom standard instruction 4.51: [11] A motor vehicle is in the immediate actual possession of the complainant if it is located close enough that one could reasonably expect the complainant to exercise physical control over it. We deemed the jury properly instructed with that instruction in Winstead v. United States, 809 A.2d 607, 610 n. 4 (D.C.2002), where we affirmed a conviction for carjacking by a defendant who had assaulted the victim, initially, in the security-guard booth where she was working, and then appropriated her car only a few feet away from the booth. Id. at 611. That was near enough, we said, for the car to be in [the victim's] `immediate actual possession' then and there. Id. Winstead, therefore, confirms carjacking when a defendant assaults someone several feet from her car and then straightaway takes the vehicle. [12] In the present case, however, among the factual distinctions from Winstead and the other carjacking cases we have decided, [13] Cox was three car lengths, or forty-five to fifty feet, from his carand continuing to walk awaywhen accosted by Sutton and his cohorts. The question thus becomes whether, at that distance under the circumstances, the government meets the close enough or near enough test required for a finding of immediate actual possession.