MARCUS JAMAL LINDSEY v. STATE OF MARYLAND
Court of Special Appeals, Geter, Jan. 2, 2018,
Doctrine of Completeness – An excerpt from a phone conversation may be admitted under the rule of completeness even if it occurs on a different date than the original conversation. Context is more important than contemporaneity.
Facts:
Montgomery County police were called to a hotel after a housekeeper heard a fight in a room.
The housekeeper testified that the male, later identified as Lindsey, was saying, “you are a hook, you deserve it, who are you going to talk to?” and a female, later identified as “SS”, was screaming for him to get away from her.
An employee at the hotel testified that she was approached by SS, who stated that “someone had hurt her,” “assaulted her in some way,” and that “someone was trying to make her have sex with someone.” Lindsey approached SS and the hotel employee, but turned away when he noticed the employee on the phone with 911.
When police arrived, they noted that the victim had a swollen right eye and redness on one side of her face.
The hotel room was found to contain “boxes of condoms, condom wrappers, condoms in the nightstand drawer, a large piece of braided hair on the floor, a cell phone in a box, a sheet of paper with a list of phone numbers, and a Verizon phone bill.”
The Verizon bill for Lindsey’s mother, who had rented the room.
SS showed police advertisements on Backpage.com for sexual services featuring SS as well as another female with whom she was sharing the room.
Backpage ads were listed to the same number used to check-in at the room. Ads also used Lindsey’s icloud account.
According to the detective, when he asked S.S. if appellant had told her to post the ads, she replied, “He never forces me to do anything. He don’t even want me to do this, so I mean I can take the blame.” Detective Jerman further testified that it is common for prostitutes to take the blame for their pimps.
Lindsey testified that he knew SS and the other female were using the room for prostitution, but that he did not make S.S. prostitute, he did not receive any money or financial benefit from her prostitution, and he did not place her in the Radisson for prostitution.
Lindsey was convicted after a jury trial and sentenced to twenty years in prison for one count of human trafficking and to concurrent ten-year sentences on the remaining counts.
On appeal, argued that there was not enough evidence for him to be convicted of harboring a person for prostitution. He also argued that he should have been allowed to introduce jail calls where he said that he loved SS, that he should have been allowed to introduce evidence that SS kept prostituting herself even after he was arrested, and that the jury instructions were improper.
Held:
The Court of Special Appeals disagreed, holding that the trial judge’s rulings were proper. Sentence affirmed.
Human Trafficking – Placement – A person may not knowingly place, cause to be placed, or harbor another in any place for prostitution
Human Trafficking – Placement – In order to convict the defendant of the crime of human trafficking, the State must prove:
(1) that the defendant knowingly took the victim to a place OR caused the victim to be taken to a place OR placed the victim in a place;
(2) AND that the victim was taken/placed there for prostitution.
From the Case: Where the jury heard evidence that Lindsey was in the hotel room where prostitution was occurring, that he had been responsible for obtaining the room, and that he was heard arguing with SS about prostitution, that the prostitution advertisements were posted using his e-mail address, and that he was “trying to make her have sex with someone,” there was sufficient evidence to convict him of harboring another for prostitution.
From the Case: The jury instructions given at trial were not given in error because they accurately conveyed the crime and because the terms “place,” “harbor,” “prostitution,” and “knowingly” are clear enough that they do not require definition.
Evidence – Doctrine of “Completeness” – In order to provide context, the common law doctrine of completeness ‘allows a party to respond to the admission, by an opponent, of part of a writing or conversation, by admitting the remainder of that writing or conversation.’
Evidence – Doctrine of “Completeness” – In order to be admissible under the “doctrine of completeness,” evidence must be:
(a) Relevant
(b) No more may be admitted than needed to put the admitted portion into context;
(c) The remainder can only be received to help understand the initial utterance, and is not in itself testimony
Evidence – Doctrine of “Completeness” – Usually, an excerpt is admissible under the doctrine of completeness only if it’s part of one conversation or writing. However, in some cases a separate writing or conversation could be used to put a subsequent writing/conversation into context.
From the Case: In this case, “the portions of the phone calls that appellant sought to introduce” (for example, statements that he loved SS or that he had changed his mind and didn’t want her to stay out of the state) “consisted of unrelated, subsequent conversations that did not explain or correct any of appellant’s earlier statements in the calls introduced by the State.” Therefore, the judge did not make a mistake in refusing to allow it into evidence.
Evidence- Character of Victim– Maryland Rules allow a defendant under certain circumstances to “offer evidence of an alleged crime victim’s pertinent trait of character. If the evidence is admitted, the prosecutor may offer evidence to rebut it.” However, the evidence must still be otherwise admissible.
From the Case: “Evidence that S.S. may have been arrested for prostitution months after the March 3, 2016 incident was not relevant to the determination of whether appellant had forced her to prostitute or placed her in the hotel for prostitution on March 3, 2016.” The trial judge, therefore, did not make a mistake in excluding it.