Opinion ID: 2321578
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Pérez's Argument for Severance: De Minimis Evidence and Misjoinder

Text: Pérez raises a different argument for severance, that the government's case against him was much weaker than the case against the other codefendants. Manifest prejudice [requiring severance] occurs only where the evidence of a defendant's complicity in the overall criminal venture is de minimis when compared to the evidence against his codefendants. Bush v. United States, 516 A.2d 186, 192 (D.C. 1986) (internal quotations omitted). We disagree, however, that the evidence against Pérez was de minimis: three of the four eyewitnessesJosé Pérez, Benítez, and Hugo Alemántestified that they saw Pérez attack both the homeless man and Helm. On this record, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion for severance. [44] We also reject Pérez's claim of misjoinder. Under Rule 8(b), defendants may be joined only if the charges against them `are based on the same act or transaction or series of acts or transactions[,]' i.e., `where one offense logically leads to another.' Taylor v. United States, 603 A.2d 451, 455 (D.C.1992) (quoting Super. Ct.Crim. R. 8(b); Settles v. United States, 522 A.2d 348, 352 (D.C.1987)). Though Pérez was not charged as an aider and abettor for Robles-Benevides's kicking Hallner or Salamanca's threats to Rosa García, those offenses were logically connected to the assaults on the homeless man and Helm, with which Pérez was charged. We nonetheless guard against undue prejudice to a defendant in a joint trial if evidence of crimes neither charged against him nor related to him [is] introduced at his trial under circumstances that inevitably would lead the jury to consider him in fact a participant. Davis v. United States, 367 A.2d 1254, 1263 (D.C.1976). The charges against Robles-Benevides and Salamanca and the evidence related to Hallner and Rosa García, however, were so distinct that, on this record, we cannot say that they inevitably would lead the jury to convict Pérez of the crimes with which he was charged, assaulting the homeless man and killing Helm. Pérez's argument that the jury would have been unfairly prejudiced against him as a result of the joinder, rests on his unsupported characterization of his role in the assaults as tangential to the other codefendants. The eyewitnesses, however, described him as an integral participant in the assaults on the homeless man and on Helm, which were the central focus of the prosecution. The trial court did not abuse its discretion, therefore, in permitting Pérez to be tried jointly with the other defendants.