Opinion
J. S29040/19 No. 1256 EDA 2017
09-10-2019
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA v. NAADIR HANIF ABDUL-ALI, Appellant
NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37
Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence, November 15, 2016, in the Court of Common Pleas of Montgomery County
Criminal Division at No. CP-46-CR-0008102-2015 BEFORE: BENDER, P.J.E., LAZARUS, J., AND FORD ELLIOTT, P.J.E. MEMORANDUM BY FORD ELLIOTT, P.J.E.:
Naadir Hanif Abdul-Ali appeals from the November 15, 2016 judgment of sentence of life imprisonment plus a consecutive term of 10 to 20 years' imprisonment imposed after a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder, burglary, aggravated assault, criminal trespass, simple assault, and five counts of criminal conspiracy. After careful review, we affirm the judgment of sentence.
18 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 2502(b), 3502(a)(1), 2702(a)(1), 3503(a)(1)(ii), 2701(a)(3), and 903(a), respectively.
The trial court summarized the relevant facts of this case as follows:
On Wednesday, September 23, 2015, after enduring weeks of physical and emotional abuse from [a]ppellant, eighteen (18) year old Egyniah Muhammad, ended their relationship and returned to live in her parents' home in Lower Moreland Township, Montgomery County. After
spending the next four (4) days trying unsuccessfully to convince Egyniah to come back to him, [a]ppellant told her, "If we can't be together, somebody got to go."[Footnote 11] Egyniah's older sister corroborated that conversation.
[Footnote 11] A download of Egyniah's cellular phone revealed nineteen (19) phone calls between Egyniah and [a]ppellant on Sunday, September 27, 2015.
At approximately 7 p.m. on Sunday, September 27, 2015, [a]ppellant removed his grandmother's black Toyota Camry sedan from its parking spot in a Philadelphia garage on Upsal Street and drove two (2) of his coconspirators out to Egyniah's home. The three men drove back to Philadelphia, where they picked up a fourth man, and returned to Egyniah's home.
At approximately 11:00 p.m., Kevin Brown and his wife, Cassandra Brock, were preparing to go to sleep in the second floor bedroom of their home. Their son, Symir Brown, had just left the house through the back door to walk to the local Wawa where he worked the night shift. Also in the house with them were their daughters, Ruquaiyyah and Egyniah, along with Egyniah's baby son. As Egyniah entered the downstairs kitchen to throw out an ice cream container, she saw a masked man outside the back door. She thought she recognized the masked man as [a]ppellant's close friend, codefendant Desmond Smith ("Smith"). Egyniah quickly locked the inside door and ran up to the second floor to alert her family to an intruder before hiding in her bedroom closet with her baby son. Egyniah's father confronted the intruders at his bedroom door. Kevin Brown yelled at his wife to climb out through the window out onto the roof, which she did. One of the intruders fired several shots from a .22 caliber handgun through the bedroom door, with one bullet striking Mr. Brown in the throat, fatally wounding him. Cassandra Brock heard a noise as she watched her husband stumble
out of the second story window and fall into the bushes below. Appellant and his codefendants fled the house from the back door, jumped into the black Toyota sedan and drove away with the lights off. After driving less than one (1) block, [a]ppellant stopped the car and told his coconspirators "Got to go back there. The job's not finished." The other three (3) men told [a]ppellant to drive away. Appellant returned his grandmother's car to its parking spot in the Philadelphia garage before going their separate ways.Trial court opinion, 7/11/18 at 2-6 (citations to notes of testimony and additional footnotes omitted).
Paul Hoyer, M.D. performed the autopsy on Kevin Brown on September 28, 2015, and determined the fifty-four (54) year-old's manner of death to be homicide. Based on the evidence gathered from witnesses and surveillance video, detectives focused their investigation on [a]ppellant, Desmond Smith, Abdurrahman Amin and Majahid Mathews. Detectives obtained a warrant for [a]ppellant's arrest along with his codefendants on October 1, 2015. Detectives arrested codefendant Smith early in the morning at his residence in Philadelphia on October 2, 2015. On the same day, Detective Gregory Henry took codefendant Smith's statement in which he implicated [a]ppellant at the Montgomery County Detective Bureau. Codefendant Mujahid Mathews ("Mathews") also gave a statement to police implicating [a]ppellant.
Appellant turned himself in to the Lower Moreland Township Police Department at approximately 10:00 p.m. on October 7, 2015. Detective Henry read and explained [a]ppellant's Constitutional Rights and obtained a waiver at 11:07 p.m. Appellant proceeded to give a statement to the detectives implicating himself in the homicide. At 7:01 a.m. on October 8, 2015, [a]ppellant declined to give his consent to videotaping his statement.
Appellant was charged with second-degree murder and related offenses in connection with this incident and ultimately proceeded to a jury trial on July 5, 2016. Following an 11-day trial, the jury found appellant guilty of second-degree murder, burglary, aggravated assault, criminal trespass, simple assault, and five counts of criminal conspiracy. Appellant was found not guilty of firearms not to be carried without a license and two counts of possessing instruments of crime. As noted, appellant was sentenced to life imprisonment plus a consecutive term of 10 to 20 years' imprisonment on November 15, 2016. Appellant filed timely post-sentence motions that were denied by the trial court on March 22, 2017. This timely appeal followed.
18 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 6106(a)(1) and 907(a) and (b), respectively.
Following an extension, appellant complied with the trial court's Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b) order and filed his "concise" statement on June 6, 2018, raising 17 multi-layered issues. Thereafter, on June 20, 2018, the trial court denied appellant's request for an extension of time to file a supplemental Rule 1925(b) statement. On July 11, 2018, the trial court filed its comprehensive Rule 1925(a) opinion disposing of all of appellant's claims.
Appellant raises the following issues for our review:
I. Did the trial court err in permitting the Commonwealth to introduce testimony concerning an August 2015 alleged sexual assault between [a]ppellant and co-defendant Desmond Smith against the decedent's daughter as res gestae evidence and/or motive for the home invasion resulting in the decedent's death?
II. Did the trial court err in failing to grant [a]ppellant's motion for a mistrial after co-defendant Abdurrahman Amin pleaded guilty mid-trial?
III. Did the trial court err in permitting the Commonwealth to introduce non-testifying co-defendant Desmond Smith's redacted statement that expressly implicated [a]ppellant in the sexual assault and burglary in violation of Bruton [ v. United States , 391 U.S. 123 (1968)?]Appellant's brief at 3.
Appellant has not briefed the remaining 14 issues raised in his Rule 1925(b) statement and has, therefore, abandoned them on appeal.
Appellant's first and third claims on appeal concern the admissibility of evidence.
Questions concerning the admissibility of evidence are within the sound discretion of the trial court . . . [and] we will not reverse a trial court's decision concerning admissibility of evidence absent an abuse of the trial court's discretion. An abuse of discretion is not merely an error of judgment, but is rather the overriding or misapplication of the law, or the exercise of judgment that is manifestly unreasonable, or the result of bias, prejudice, ill-will or partiality, as shown by the evidence of record. [I]f in reaching a conclusion the trial court over-rides [sic] or misapplies the law, discretion is then abused and it is the duty of the appellate court to correct the error.Commonwealth v. Belknap , 105 A.3d 7, 9-10 (Pa.Super. 2014) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted; brackets in original), appeal denied , 117 A.3d 294 (Pa. 2015).
Likewise, "[o]ur standard of review for the denial of a motion for a mistrial is limited to assessing whether the trial court abused its discretion." Commonwealth v. Scott , 146 A.3d 775, 778 (Pa.Super. 2016) (citation omitted), appeal denied , 166 A.3d 1232 (Pa. 2017).
Here, the trial court authored a comprehensive, 44-page opinion that thoroughly addressed and disposed of all of appellant's claims on appeal. Specifically, the trial court found, inter alia , that testimony concerning the August 2015 sexual assault of Egyniah by appellant and codefendant Smith was relevant to establish: the res gestae of the case; "why Egyniah left him and moved back in with her parents"; and appellant's motive for seeking revenge upon Egyniah and her family by engaging in the September 27, 2015 home invasion that resulted in the murder of her father. ( See trial court opinion, 7/11/18 at 30-34.) The trial court reasoned that any prejudice that resulted from the introduction of this "prior bad acts" evidence was cured by its limiting instructions to the jury. ( Id . at 34.)
The trial court also found that appellant's contention that he was entitled to a mistrial after codefendant Amin entered an open guilty plea to third-degree murder at the close of the fifth day of trial is unavailing. ( Id. at 30.) In reaching this conclusion, the trial court reasoned that:
1) codefendant Amin's statement to police did not implicate himself or any of his codefendants; 2) Counsel for codefendant Amin deferred to his client's decision on which potential jurors to strike; 3) both codefendant Amin and codefendant Smith rejected a plea offer on Wednesday, July 6, 2016; 4) on Friday, July 8, 2016, Amin's Counsel asked the Commonwealth for a plea offer; [5)] Deputy District Attorney McGoldrick did not participate in the plea negotiations, and [6)] codefendant Amin absolutely
and unequivocally refused to cooperate with the Commonwealth.Id. at 29-30.
We further note that the record reflects that codefendant Amin pled guilty outside the presence of the jury, and the jury was never informed of his guilty plea. Additionally, the trial court gave a limiting instruction to the jury before testimony resumed on July 12, 2016, cautioning them that they were not to draw any conclusions from codefendant Amin's absence from the remainder of the trial, and should not consider it as evidence of the guilt of appellant and codefendant Smith. ( See notes of testimony, 7/12/16 at 19-20.) Courts in this Commonwealth have long recognized that "when examining the potential for undue prejudice, a cautionary jury instruction may ameliorate the prejudicial effect of the proffered evidence." Commonwealth v. Hairston , 84 A.3d 657, 666 (Pa. 2014), cert. denied , 135 S.Ct. 164 (2014) (citations omitted). Jurors are presumed to follow the trial court's instructions. Commonwealth v. Elliott , 80 A.3d 415, 445 (Pa. 2013), cert. denied , 135 S.Ct. 50 (2014).
Lastly, it is clear from the trial court's opinion that appellant's contention that codefendant Smith's statement, which implicated him in the August 2015 sexual assault of Egyniah and the September 27, 2015 home invasion, was inadmissible under Bruton , is meritless. ( See trial court opinion, 7/11/16 at 35-36.) As noted by the trial court, at trial "[t]he Commonwealth moved for the admission of codefendant Smith's [s]tatement without objection." ( Id. at 35 n.18.) Moreover, Smith's redacted statement at trial did not give rise to a Bruton violation because it did not explicitly reference or incriminate appellant in any way, and prejudicial effect of this statement was ameliorated by the trial court's cautionary instruction to the jury that this statement could only be considered as evidence against Smith and no one else. ( See notes of testimony, 7/18/16 at 190-191; see also Hairston , 84 A.3d at 666.)
In Bruton , the United States Supreme Court recognized that a defendant is deprived of his rights under the Confrontation Clause when his non-testifying codefendant's confession naming him as a participant in the crime is introduced at trial, even if the jury is instructed to consider that confession only against the codefendant. Bruton , 391 U.S. at 135-136.
Following Bruton , the U.S. Supreme Court has approved redaction and a limiting instruction as a means of eliminating the possible spillover prejudice arising from the admission of a non-testifying codefendant's confession against that codefendant at a joint trial. Bruton and its progeny establish Sixth Amendment norms governing state criminal trials, and this Court has had ample opportunity to consider and apply the precepts. In our own implementation of this federal law, we have explained that the challenged codefendant's statement must be incriminating on its face and that redactions involving the substitution of neutral pronouns . . . instead of names or other obvious methods of deletion, do not obviously identify the other codefendants.Commonwealth v. Daniels , 104 A.3d 267, 294 (Pa. 2014) (citations omitted).
Following our careful review of the record, including the briefs of the parties and the applicable law, we discern no error on the part of the trial court in reaching these conclusions. Accordingly, we adopt the pertinent portions of the well-reasoned opinion of the Honorable Thomas P. Rogers as our own for purposes of this appellate review, and affirm on the basis of the reasoning stated therein.
Judgment of sentence affirmed. Judgment Entered. /s/_________
Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary Date: 9/10/19
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