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

Heading: facts

Text: The victims of all of the alleged shootings, except for John Green, were shown to be members of the rival T Street Crew (“or TSC”), which the Todd Place Crew held responsible for the killing of William Foster. The two crews, while engaged in drug trafficking in their respective neighborhoods, had begun “beefing” by 2008, with frequent altercations and assaults that came to a head on April 14, 1 Jenkins was found not guilty of the street gang charge corresponding to his PFCV conviction for the assault on Green. Jenkins and Warren were convicted of obstructing justice on April 18, 2008, for attempting to dispose of firearms, but the government now concedes – and we agree – that the evidence did not support those convictions. See Wynn v. United States, 48 A.3d 181, 190-91 (D.C. 2012). Accordingly, they must be vacated on remand along with the corresponding street gang conviction. 4 2008, when Foster was shot to death by someone the TPC believed was associated with the T Street Crew. According to Robert Davenport, a TPC insider who testified for the government, there was an immediate “mutual understanding within the [TPC]” that a TSC member would be killed in retaliation. The day after the shooting, Davenport testified, TPC members gathered at the house of crew member Ernest Benjamin. Having learned the location of a TSC member, they left the house in two cars, with Bates driving and Anderson and Jenkins occupying the first vehicle, a white Chevrolet HHR or PT Cruiser. (All three defendants had been seen in that car earlier the same day.) An eyewitness who knew Bates, Raymond Devese, saw him at the wheel of the car as it pulled up to where TSC member Gary English had just parked his car. Multiple gunshots from two handguns, a .45 caliber Sturm Ruger semi-automatic and a Hi-Point .45 caliber, were fired from the white car, striking English repeatedly and killing him, and grazing Green, a bystander. According to Davenport, he and the three other occupants (including appellant Warren) of the second car, a blue Mercury Grand Marquis, arrived after the white car had fled the shooting scene. When they returned to Benjamin’s 5 house Bates, Anderson, and Jenkins were there and Anderson gestured with a Ruger .45 caliber pistol as if to say “we just got finished shooting at somebody.” 2 Bates appeared nervous and concerned that eyewitness Devese had seen his face. Davenport and the others “didn’t feel as though it was settled” with the English shooting, and Davenport believed a “lot more had to take place.” Further evidence linking Jenkins and Anderson to the English homicide and Green assault came from two related sources. In the week or so after the homicide, police recovered the two handguns used in the shootings from the ground inside the fence line of Mount Olivet Cemetery in the District. This occurred after Davenport, Anderson, Warren, and co-defendant Obie English, riding in the Grand Marquis and armed with pistols,3 found themselves pursued by police near the cemetery. Davenport and Anderson bailed out of the car, and as they ran a police officer chasing them saw each man reach toward his waist and toss an object. In a later recorded telephone call from jail after his arrest, Anderson expressed concern 2 The Ruger, according to Davenport, was a distinctive gun with a customized clip and a black grip that he had seen in Anderson’s possession before. 3 Davenport testified that he had a .45 caliber Hi-Point, Anderson had a .45caliber Sturm Ruger, and Warren had a 9-mm Lorcin. A girlfriend of appellant Warren testified that she had seen him firing a gun determined to be a 9-mm Lorcin behind a house on April 16. 6 to Jenkins about the guns, and when Jenkins stated that he had “tried to go back” to find the guns, Anderson replied that the police had “scooped them.” A week later Anderson complained in a recorded call that Warren had not “even go[ne] back . . . [to] look for” the gun Warren had thrown into the cemetery and which the police had also recovered. Warren “was suppose[d] to go back . . . and . . . scoop that [gun],” Anderson stated, to which Jenkins replied, “[W]e did, [but] it wasn’t there.” On May 10, 2008, Antonio Ingram, a member of the T Street Crew, was shot repeatedly in an altercation in which Warren was also shot. Jenkins confessed to his sister that Warren had been leaving a carry-out when “somebody started shooting,” so Jenkins returned fire. Although the government saw the Ingram shooting as a second retaliation for the Foster homicide, the jury convicted both Jenkins and Warren of only weapons offenses and related street gang charges, evidently accepting their partial defense that regardless of what motivated them to bring guns to the scene, Ingram was shot in self-defense. Finally, Bates was found guilty of shooting TSC members Ricardo Russell and Chaquon Wingard from a dark-colored car on May 26, 2008, based on 7 testimony by Jamila Hughes – admitted without objection – that she was present and heard the gunshots, then overheard Russell say that Bates had been the shooter.4