Opinion ID: 2796318
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The “Criminal Street Gang” Instruction

Text: Like the other appellants, Warren was convicted of “criminal street gang” charges corresponding to each of his other convictions, i.e., obstruction of justice and carrying a pistol without a license (CPWL). The government concedes that, with the failure on review of the former conviction, see note 1, supra, only Warren’s street gang conviction predicated on the CPWL conviction is at issue. Although the street gang statute is new in this jurisdiction and has not been construed or applied before by this court, Warren, joined by other appellants who adopt his argument, contests only the trial court’s refusal to give a special unanimity instruction on a main component of the statute. As relevant here, D.C. Code § 22-951 (b)(1) makes it an independent crime for any person “who is a member of or actively participates in a criminal street gang to knowingly and willfully participate in any felony or violent misdemeanor committed for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with any other member or participant of that criminal street gang.” Warren argues that the trial judge erred in refusing to instruct the jury that it had to agree unanimously on whether he committed the underlying crime “for the benefit of” or, instead, “in 32 association with” another gang member or participant. (With the parties’ agreement, the judge omitted “at the direction of” from the alternatives, as no evidence pointed to such “direction” regarding any of the § 22-951 (b)(1) charges). The argument is without merit. Section 22-951 (b)(1)’s purpose on its face is to deter membership or participation in a “criminal street gang,” defined elsewhere as “an association or group of 6 or more persons” having, in part, “as one of its purposes or frequent activities, the violation of the criminal laws of the District . . . or the United States . . . .” Section 22-951 (c)(1)(B). The statute carries out that deterrent aim by punishing separately – in effect, enhancing punishment for – a gang participant’s commission of a felony or violent misdemeanor,16 but with an important qualification. A crime that happens to have been committed by a gang participant falls outside of the statute’s reach. To be punishable under it, the crime must be linked to the defendant’s participation in the street gang by being done in one of three ways: for the benefit of the gang (by a defendant acting alone), or at the direction of or, at least, in association with another gang participant. Any of these 16 Section § 22-951 (e)(2) defines “violent misdemeanor” to include, among other things, simple assault and possession of a prohibited weapon. 33 ways of committing the crime satisfies the required link – the gang-relatedness – between the defendant’s participation in the street gang and commission of the predicate crime. Our decisions do not demand a special unanimity instruction for these separate ways or means. An instruction requiring more than general unanimity in the verdict is necessary when a single charge “encompasses two separate incidents,” requiring the jury to “be unanimous as to which incident or incidents they find the defendant guilty [of].” Scarborough v. United States, 522 A.2d 869, 871 (D.C. 1987) (en banc) (citation omitted). The instruction “should be given when distinct incidents go from being different means of committing the same crime to being different crimes.” Hagood v. United States, 93 A.3d 210, 217 (D.C. 2014) (citation and internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). In (David) Williams v. United States, 981 A.2d 1224, 1229 (D.C. 2009), the court drew “helpful guidance” from the Supreme Court’s analysis in Richardson v. United States, 526 U.S. 813 (1999), “for determining when that point of demarcation is reached.” The Court there explained that the “jury need not always decide unanimously which of several possible sets of underlying brute facts make up a particular element, say, which of several possible means the defendant used to 34 commit an element of the crime.” Id. at 817. The question becomes “whether the statute’s [language] . . . refers to one element, . . . in respect to which the [listed possibilities] constitute the underlying brute facts or means, or whether those words create several elements, in respect to each of which the jury must agree unanimously and separately.” Id. at 817-18 (emphasis in original). The separate ways by which § 22-951 (b)(1) links the commission of an underlying crime to street gang participation are not separate elements of the street gang offense, but only different means by which the predicate crime may be shown to stem from the defendant’s participation in a gang rather than just being coincidental or fortuitously connected with it. Appellants’ view that the alternatives are indeed elements would force a jury to distinguish unanimously, say, between a defendant’s acting “for the benefit of” the gang and acting “in association with” other gang members, a distinction that has no point when the obvious effect of either is the same: to further the gang’s criminal objectives. The Sixth Amendment does not require unanimity on subsidiary (“brute”) factual issues such as these, and the trial judge correctly refused to instruct the jury otherwise. 35