Opinion ID: 6498358
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Protracted Disfigurement.

Text: perceived tension between what a precedent held on its own terms and how we have subsequently interpreted that precedent). 4 While we are focused on the severity and prominence of the disfigurement here, rather than its mechanism, the mechanism of an injury can shed light on its severity. One might reasonably infer that a hand crushed by a bulldozer is more seriously injured than one crushed by a shod foot, just as they might infer that stab wounds to the face are generally more serious than those inflicted via flip flop. 18 Whether Sanchez’s disfigurement was protracted presents a somewhat trickier question. There is no particular duration that a disfigurement must last to be considered protracted, though it must, at a minimum, persist “beyond a brief recovery period.” Jackson, 940 A.2d at 981. In applying that principle, we said in Jackson that where scarring was still present eight months after the assault, it was beyond doubt that the disfigurement was protracted. Id. at 991. Similarly, in Gathy, we relied on a photograph of the facial lacerations taken one week after the attack as evidence that the disfigurement was “long-lasting—‘protracted,’ in the language of the statute—even if not permanent.” 754 A.2d at 919. By contrast, in Swinton, we held that mere bruises were not sufficiently protracted after noting that “bruises fade, often rapidly,” and there was no evidence of how long the victim’s “bruises remained prominent, or even visible.” 902 A.2d at 777. A deep and jagged stab wound in the middle of one’s face, nearly five inches in length, would seem to invariably fall on the protracted side of that dividing line. Yet, this issue is not open-and-shut, because the government presented virtually no evidence regarding how long Sanchez’s facial scars remained visible. It did not ask Sanchez, or any other witness, how long the scars were apparent. On appeal, the government urges us to rely on the fact that “scarring was evident on Ms. Sanchez’s face at trial, almost three years after the attack,” pointing out that “both 19 the prosecutor and the trial court made note of these scars” without refutation. We cannot do that because the representations the government references were not evidence, and were not even made in the jury’s presence. While all signs suggest that there was visible scarring on Sanchez’s face when she testified, 5 the government neither tied those scars to this incident nor described them in any way that would permit us to discern whether jurors could reasonably make that link themselves. As the trial court reasoned when granting judgment of acquittal on the malicious disfigurement charge, the government did not make “a record of any kind whatsoever about the scarring [visible at trial] or that it was tied to this incident.” Despite that record deficiency, we conclude that a jury could reasonably find that the disfigurements were protracted, based on the photographs and descriptions of Sanchez’s injuries along with the medical testimony. The photographic evidence showed a long and jagged stab wound cutting across the center of Sanchez’s face, and the medical testimony was that it was a deep cut requiring multiple layers of stitches. Unlike the bruises we discussed in Swinton, “common experience teaches 5 At sentencing, Sanchez left little doubt that she still had visible scarring on her face from the attack, though that too was not evidence before the jury. In her victim impact statement, she said: “Every day when I look in the mirror, I am reminded by what happened that day,” “I hate that people can look at my face and just know that something horrible happened,” and “I think that when people see me they must think that it is difficult for me to go around looking like this.” 20 that wounds requiring multiple stitches are likely to leave some scarring, however faint, and that scars in the center of one’s face are more visible and prominent—and thus more disfiguring—than they might be elsewhere.” Gathy, 754 A.2d at 918. Additionally, Dr. Siram testified that in suturing the long cut across Sanchez’s face, his efforts were directed to ensuring “that the scarring w[ould] be much less,” and to prevent “any rigorous scarring.” Implicit in that testimony is that some long-term scarring was unavoidable. Dr. Siram’s testimony, taken in conjunction with photographic evidence of the multiple stab wounds to Sanchez’s face, leads us to conclude that reasonable jurors could conclude Sanchez suffered a protracted and obvious disfigurement. The dissent disagrees, but offers no persuasive way to distinguish Gathy. In an effort to circumvent it, the dissent stresses that the evidence in Gathy included one picture that was taken a week after the injury—which “could give a sense of how the injuries were healing and how they would heal”—whereas here, we have only day-of photographs. 6 Post at 26-27. That is a hollow distinction, given that the 6 The dissent also alludes to unspecified “[m]edical advancements” that may have rendered obsolete Gathy’s guidance that deep wounds to the face requiring layered stitches “are likely to leave some scarring.” Post at 25 n.10. The dissent’s musings aside, we see no basis for doubting the continued vitality of that observation. 21 only description of the week-after photograph in Gathy is that it “showed the scars and stitches on [the victim’s] face,” and from that the court concluded “that the disfigurement of [the victim’s] face was obvious and long-lasting—‘protracted,’ in the language of the statute.” 754 A.2d at 915, 919. There can be no serious doubt— no reasonable doubt—based on the contemporaneous photographs of Ms. Sanchez, that she had prominent scarring on her face a week after the attack. A week-after photograph showing as much would have been redundant of the already obvious, and its absence here is thus no basis for distinguishing Gathy. The dissent also repeatedly mislabels natural and reasonable inferences as speculation, in contravention of our obligation to “view the evidence in the light most favorable to the government” on sufficiency review, allowing for “justifiable inferences of fact.” Taylor v. United States, 267 A.3d 1051, 1058 (D.C. 2022). 7 Jurors need not check their common sense at the courthouse doors, but are permitted 7 That includes when the dissent seems to cast doubt on whether there were “dozens of stitches” on Sanchez’s face, despite that requiring no inference at all. Post at 25 n.10. All one needs to do is look at the photographs attached to this opinion and count the stitches that are readily apparent. There are at least a dozen stitches mending Sanchez’s forehead wound alone—fourteen by Dr. Siram’s count—plus several under her right eye, and still several more on the left side of her face and forehead. The “dozens” descriptor is thus fitting even if we disregard the longest and deepest wound cutting across the middle of Sanchez’s face, and even if we ignore the natural inference that longer and deeper wounds with layered stitches require more sutures than shorter and shallower wounds without them. 22 “to use ‘the saving grace of common sense’ and their ‘everyday experience’ to draw reasonable inferences from the evidence presented.” Long v. United States, 156 A.3d 698, 714 (D.C. 2017) (quoting Hebron v. United States, 837 A.2d 910, 914 (D.C. 2003)). Deep and jagged stab wounds spanning five inches across the middle of one’s face are bound to leave a prominent mark, for a protracted period of time. The dissent is free to disagree with that assessment, but to conclude that the jurors who shared it acted irrationally simply blinks reality. See generally Rivas v. United States, 783 A.2d 125, 134 (D.C. 2001) (en banc) (sufficiency review asks whether “any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt”).