GLICKMAN, Associate Judge:
Shortly after 2 a.m. on August 13, 2011, Dominique Bassil fatally stabbed her boyfriend, Vance Harris, in the kitchen of their apartment. There were no other witnesses to the encounter. Although Bassil told police and testified at her trial that she acted in self-defense, the jury convicted her of murder in the second degree while armed. On appeal, Bassil contends there was insufficient evidence at trial to disprove her claim of self-defense. She argues that no witnesses or other evidence contradicted her account, and that even if the jury did not find her credible, mere disbelief of a witness's testimony cannot justify a finding that the opposite is true. In response, the government argues that there was ample evidence permitting the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Bassil did not stab Harris in self-defense. Viewing the evidence, as we must, in the light most favorable to sustaining the jury's verdict, we agree with the government and affirm appellant's conviction.
The principles of law governing our consideration of appellant's contention are best set forth at the outset to frame our discussion. To find appellant guilty of second-degree murder, the jury must have been persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt that she killed Harris with "malice aforethought,"
"[A] killing in self-defense is excusable only as a matter of genuine necessity."
On appeal, this court "must deem the proof of guilt sufficient if, `after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the charged offense beyond a reasonable doubt.'"
Our obligation to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution almost always "commands that we assume that the jury in its assessment of credibility did not believe [the defendant's] exculpatory testimony, and we must defer to the jury's prerogative in this area."
We acknowledge, however, that "disbelief of a defendant's testimony can, in limited circumstances, give rise to a positive inference of guilt"
At around 2:00 a.m. on August 13, 2011, appellant returned to her apartment with her boyfriend, Vance Harris. The couple had a stormy relationship and they had been quarreling earlier that evening and on their way home. About half an hour after they arrived there, appellant, half-naked and holding a large kitchen knife, fled the apartment. She ran down the stairs and out of the building to a security booth, where she told the guard — and later the police — that Harris had assaulted her and she had stabbed him in self-defense. Taken into custody, appellant repeated this claim to homicide detectives in a recorded interview, during which she learned that Harris's stab wounds were fatal.
The issue in dispute at appellant's trial was not whether she stabbed and killed Harris, but why. Appellant continued to assert that she acted in self-defense, testifying that she loved Harris and did not
The prosecution undertook to establish appellant's motive for stabbing Harris with evidence of her long-standing grievances against him and her temperament and behavior in the hours immediately preceding the homicide. In the process, the jury learned a great deal about a tempestuous and often acrimonious (though non-violent
About three weeks before the homicide, appellant, upset that Harris spent his money to take a trip without her to Miami instead of contributing to the rent, called him while he was there to say she was putting his belongings out on the curb. She texted him that "life will only get even more miserable if you're even thinking about fucking with me." When Harris returned from Miami, she gave him an ultimatum to move out of her apartment in two weeks (though he did not do so, and it appears she relented). On August 1, 2011, twelve days before the stabbing, appellant sent another text to Harris, in which she said, "I'm gonna fuck you up if you don't stop playing with me.... You keep fucking playing with me.... Don't manage to get anyone killed today along with yourself." Yet in other communications, appellant wrote of missing Harris and apologized to him for "acting in [] poor behavior." On July 22, 2011, appellant described her feelings to Harris as follows: "[S]ometimes I feel like when I'm not with you I lose you and I'm very selfish when it comes to my love ... for you. Please accept my apology and love me like never before. I want to see a doc or DR, so I can't [sic] learn how not to be so jealous and selfish when I can't have my way."
On the night of August 12, 2011, appellant and Harris were guests at a wedding reception. Several witnesses who observed them there testified at trial to appellant's unhappiness and annoyance with Harris, who was a groomsman and in a jovial mood. While he had a good time and danced with other women, appellant followed him around "almost like a shadow" and tried in vain to get his attention. Harris avoided and laughed at her. Later in the evening, appellant yelled at Harris, called him names, and "mushed" and smacked his face in front of other wedding guests. But Harris did not respond aggressively and was still in good spirits when he finally bid his friends good night and headed home with appellant.
They argued while on their way. In Capitol Heights, Maryland, two police officers came upon them and found appellant sitting on the sidewalk outside Harris's truck. One of the officers testified at trial
The first person appellant encountered after the stabbing was her building's security guard. The guard testified that she came into his booth and told him to call an ambulance or the police. According to the guard, appellant said her six-foot eight-inch tall boyfriend "was beating on her" and she stabbed him. She also told the guard she was not hurt.
The guard called the police. One of the officers who responded testified from notes he made at the scene that appellant told him she went to bed when they got home before Harris "came in the room and started... hitting me in the face and neck." According to the officer's contemporaneous notes, appellant said Harris "grabbed me by my feet and dragged me out of the bed. I was trying to run away but he followed, hitting me again in the kitchen. I grabbed the kitchen knife and stabbed him in the lower stomach so I could get away." The officer also testified that appellant had no injuries and complained of no injuries (she "refuse[d EMS] treatment on the scene"), and that he noticed her sleeping cap "was neatly on her head." Another officer who took notes at the scene testified that appellant said her boyfriend "was pushing me and choked me with his hands around my neck. He's 6, 8 [sic] and too big for me to push him off. I had to stab him." This officer, too, testified that appellant was unhurt.
The two homicide detectives who next interviewed appellant also testified at trial, and the video recording of the interview was admitted in evidence. Both detectives testified that appellant had no injuries (and none are visible in the video recording).
Appellant told the detectives that Harris got on top of her in the bed and repeatedly smacked her in the face. She said he then dragged her off the bed by her legs, at which point she stood up, grabbed a shoe, struck Harris with it, dropped the shoe, and ran into the kitchen. There, appellant explained, she picked up a knife and told Harris (who had followed her) to stop hitting her before he "leaped" at her, at which point she stabbed him. Appellant went on to say that she was not fighting Harris off when she stabbed him, but was reacting to his "leap" toward her. At the end of the interview, she said she only grabbed the knife when Harris entered the kitchen and "looked like he was going to hit me again" because "he went to lean in toward[] me." Appellant stated, "I don't remember if he was trying to swing at me or what."
Appellant also told the homicide detectives about her argument with Harris in Capitol Heights on the way home from the wedding reception. She said that after she grabbed Harris's phone and jumped out of his truck, he pushed her to the ground and pulled her hair, and that her dress was "all pulled apart and stuff." She said she was dragged by the vehicle as Harris pulled off when she opened the door to get back inside.
Appellant took the witness stand in her own defense at trial. In her brief direct examination, she said she stabbed Harris because she was "scared" and did not elaborate on how it happened. On cross-examination, the prosecutor pressed her to divulge what occurred in greater detail.
In response, appellant provided the following account: Upon returning to her apartment, she went into a separate bedroom because she was upset with Harris. She remained there by herself, lying in bed, for approximately ten minutes. During this period, she testified, she was calm and not upset. Then she got up and went into the bedroom where, she said, Harris was watching television. After taking off her clothes and lying down next to him, appellant started "tapping" Harris and trying to engage him in conversation. He told her to stop. Appellant said she stopped tapping but continued talking. Harris, whose back was turned to appellant, "swung his arm over back toward" her. Appellant understood that he wanted her to leave him alone, but she persisted in talking to him. Harris then suddenly climbed on top of her ("He put his full body on top of me," she testified), pinned her hands up, and began "[s]macking [her] in [her] face ... with force," leaving her face "swollen and red." He smacked her in the face approximately six times before he stood up and dragged her off the bed. At that point, though Harris was no longer hitting her or "touching [her] at all," appellant picked up a "heeled boot" and struck Harris with it. She said it was not her boot and she did not know how it happened to be in the room or where on Harris's body she hit him with it.
Appellant testified that she then ran into the kitchen. She claimed that despite her fear, she did not run out of the apartment because she "thought [Harris] would stay in the [bed]room and leave [her] alone," but he followed her to the kitchen. Although the front door to the apartment was only a few steps ahead of her, she still did not leave the apartment. Instead, she grabbed a knife. She then turned to face Harris and "asked him to stop hitting [her]."
Appellant testified that Harris was "still coming and swinging" at her "all at once" when she stabbed him. Then, however, after the prosecutor confronted her with her contrary statements to the homicide detectives — she told them she thought Harris was going to hit her "because he went to lean in toward[] me" but did not "remember if he was trying to swing at me or what" — appellant ultimately agreed that Harris "wasn't doing anything" to her in the kitchen "but leaning in." She also said she "wasn't sure what he was going to do" there. Appellant conceded that Harris never struck her after she hit him with the boot in the bedroom. Nor did appellant claim he said anything threatening to her before she stabbed him.
Appellant denied ambushing Harris as he entered the kitchen, but she conceded that Harris was "way stronger" than she was and "could have easily disarmed [her] if [she] held a knife at him." Yet when the prosecutor suggested "the reason why he was unable to disarm [her] ... was because [she] stabbed him without any notice," appellant denied it without providing any alternative explanation for how she was able to stab him. Appellant said Harris was not afraid when she threatened him with the knife. She also testified that Harris did not realize at first that he had been stabbed, and that it was only after
Appellant ran out of the apartment after Harris armed himself with a knife. She testified that she fled because she feared death or serious bodily injury. She professed to have had that same fear before Harris grabbed a knife, but she had not tried to leave the apartment before then.
The prosecutor also cross-examined appellant extensively about her grievances with Harris and about the events in the hours before the stabbing, tripping appellant up and causing her to contradict herself. For instance, appellant repeatedly denied or minimized her conflicts with Harris and her dissatisfaction with their relationship. Despite being confronted with her text messages strongly suggesting otherwise, appellant — who agreed on the witness stand that she wanted Harris all to herself — claimed she did not mind his having sex with other women. She explained her text about wanting to see a doctor to help her address her "poor behavior" resulting from jealousy and not getting her way as just a lie she told Harris to mollify him. Appellant denied being upset with Harris when he went to Miami.
Appellant similarly denied being fed up with Harris and his treatment of her on the night they attended the wedding reception. Contradicting other witnesses, appellant denied calling Harris names, smacking him, and "mushing" his face at the reception. She insisted that she was "having fun" there and had danced a lot with Harris. She retracted much of what she had told the homicide detectives about her fight with Harris after the reception on the trip home.
Surveillance footage of appellant's flight from her apartment showed her throwing a knife into a trash can before she ran to the security booth. The knife, which had an eight-and-one-half-inch blade, was admitted as an exhibit at trial. The medical examiner testified that Harris's death resulted from "rapid blood loss" caused by the stabbings. One of the stabbings punctured the right side of Harris's abdomen, traveled five to seven inches through his skin, subcutaneous tissue, muscle, and large intestine, and penetrated one-and-one-half inches into his liver. The track of the other stab wound went through Harris's right forearm and into his right bicep above the elbow, cutting through his skin, subcutaneous tissue, and muscle, and severing his brachial artery. Harris also had two abraded contusions on his right arm, a cut on the back of his left finger that was consistent with a defensive wound, and a laceration above his left eye. In the medical examiner's opinion, the laceration most likely was the result of being struck in the forehead with a blunt object.
Other relevant physical evidence included the medical examiner's testimony that she measured Harris's blood alcohol content at 0.08 grams per hundred milliliters and the crime scene technician's testimony in the government's rebuttal case that the television was off when the police entered the apartment. These facts, the government argued, lent additional support to the prosecution's theory that Harris was not watching television when appellant entered the bedroom to talk to him (as she claimed, apparently for the first time, during her cross-examination) but rather was asleep when she attacked him with the boot.
Appellant's trial encompassed six days of testimony. After the government's rebuttal case, the court took appellant's renewed motion for judgment of acquittal under advisement. The jury deliberated for four days before finding appellant guilty of murder in the second degree while armed. The trial court then denied appellant's motion, explaining that "the reality of this case is this was a credibility determination made by the jury in determining whether the Defendant's explanation about the events ... would be credited by the jury, and [it] was not. And the Court cannot find that that determination, at this point, was unreasonable."
For several reasons, we conclude that the evidence at trial was sufficient to disprove appellant's claim that she stabbed Harris in self-defense, even though appellant provided the sole eyewitness account of the stabbing and said she acted in self-defense.
As a starting point, the evidence permitted the jury to reject appellant's self-defense claim even if it fully credited her account. That is, even if the jury believed (1) Harris was the initial aggressor, (2) he pinned her down on the bed, smacked her six times, dragged her to the floor, and came at her swinging in the kitchen, and (3) appellant stabbed him to protect herself because she was afraid for her life, the jury nonetheless could find beyond a reasonable doubt that she did not have an objectively reasonable fear of imminent death or serious physical injury and that her use of lethal force was excessive. Those conclusions were supported by the evidence that Harris had not been physically abusive to appellant in their relationship, had never seriously injured her in the past, and did not seriously injure her or verbally threaten to do so before
The foregoing evidence, being sufficient to prove it was not objectively reasonable for appellant to believe she was in imminent peril of death or serious bodily harm and that she needed to use lethal force to save herself, ipso facto also constituted some evidence that she did not actually believe either of those things. Indeed, although appellant testified that she told Harris to "stop hitting" her and that she stabbed him because she was "scared," she never explicitly told the jury that she stabbed Harris because she honestly thought at that time that he was about to kill her or seriously injure her. This omission, combined with appellant's testimony that she "wasn't sure what he was going to do," was further evidence that, even accepting the facts as she described them, she did not truly believe herself in immediate danger of death or serious bodily harm.
Moreover, the additional evidence presented at trial permitted the jury to disbelieve appellant's account and instead find beyond a reasonable doubt that she herself was the first aggressor (when she struck
Motive evidence does a lot of work in this case because "a self-defense claim raises the issue of whether the defendant was acting out of an actual and reasonable fear of imminent bodily harm, or whether, instead, the defendant had some other motive and was, in fact, the aggressor."
As for his conduct in the bedroom, while appellant testified that he smacked her face, leaving it "swollen and red," and then dragged her off the bed, multiple witnesses testified that she had no injuries. This evidence, seemingly incompatible with appellant's account, permitted the jury to disbelieve her and conclude that Harris did not assault her. That conclusion was reinforced by the crime scene technician's testimony that the television in the bedroom was off when the police arrived, which contradicted appellant's story that Harris was awake and watching television when she came in to the bedroom. The foregoing evidence, along with the decedent's elevated blood alcohol level, the lateness of the hour, and appellant's testimony that she stayed outside the bedroom for some time before going in and confronting Harris, supported the prosecution's theory that Harris did not assault her and was asleep (or barely roused and still unresponsive) when, out of frustration, she attacked him with the boot.
The jury reasonably could disbelieve appellant's account of the stabbing as well and conclude that she was not defending herself from Harris. Critical to her self-defense claim was her testimony that she brandished her knife at Harris and warned him to leave her alone before she felt she had to stab him in self-defense. But as appellant conceded, Harris was "way stronger" than she was, and he "easily" could have disarmed her if she held a knife on him. The jury reasonably could have found it unbelievable that appellant managed to inflict two very deep stab wounds, one in Harris's stomach and the other in his arm, if he was forewarned of the danger in the manner she described. Instead, the jury could have inferred that appellant was able to drive her knife several inches into Harris's abdomen only because she took him by surprise — a conclusion further supported by appellant's statement that Harris did not realize he was stabbed the first time. The jury similarly could have inferred that the stab wound driving completely through Harris's right forearm and continuing into his upper arm was a defensive wound, sustained while he was holding his arm up to protect himself and trying to block the knife with his left hand (which also appeared to have received a defensive wound).
Finally, the jury could find that appellant made numerous false and exaggerated exculpatory statements implying consciousness of guilt. For example, immediately after the stabbing, appellant told police that Harris came into her room and started hitting her in the face and neck; that he put his hands around her neck and choked her; and that he hit her again in the kitchen before she stabbed him to escape. She initially told the homicide detectives that Harris "leaped" at her in the kitchen. These statements all were contrary to appellant's trial testimony, in which she said nothing at all about being choked and ultimately conceded that "at the kitchen [Harris] wasn't doing anything to [her] but leaning in."
The jury could reach the same conclusion with respect to much of appellant's trial testimony. Her attempt to minimize her grievances over Harris's behavior in their relationship was difficult to credit.
There is a big difference between believing the content of a witness's testimony to be untrue and believing the witness to be lying to exonerate herself. When the latter determination is reasonable, it permits a powerful consciousness-of-guilt inference. This inference, considered along with the crime-scene evidence and the evidence of appellant's motive arising from her unsatisfactory relationship with Harris, provided sufficient evidence for a jury to disbelieve beyond a reasonable doubt that appellant acted in self-defense.
Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to sustaining the jury's verdict, we hold it sufficient to permit a rational trier of fact to find each of the elements of murder in the second degree while armed beyond a reasonable doubt. For the reasons we have adduced, we specifically hold that the evidence in its totality sufficed to disprove appellant's claim that she stabbed Harris in self-defense. We affirm her conviction.
So Ordered.
