Thomas v. State

BARBERA, J. Petitioner, Robert Lee Thomas, was convicted by a jury in the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County, Maryland, of carrying a handgun. 1 Petitioner appealed his conviction and ⁷⁰ asked the Court of Special Appeals to determine whether the trial court erred in not allowing him to impeach a State’s witness’s testimony with evidence of either the witness’s prior conviction or the conduct underlying that conviction. ' The Court of Special Appeals affirmed the judgment of conviction, concluding that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in disallowing either form of impeachment evidence. We granted Petitioner’s request for further review of the trial court’s evidentiary ruling and now reverse the judgment of the intermediate appellate court. For reasons we shall explain, we hold that the trial court (1) did not err or abuse its discretion in refusing to allow Petitioner to make impeachment use of the witness’s prior conviction, but (2) committed reversible error in denying Petitioner’s request to use make impeachment use of the conduct underlying the prior conviction. Therefore, Petitioner is entitled to a new trial.

I. The State’s lead witness at Petitioner’s trial was Timika Williams. Before trial, the State moved in limine to prohibit Petitioner from impeaching Ms. Williams’s testimony by asking her about a March 2007 conviction of theft of a motor vehicle. The conviction resulted from Ms. William’s pleading guilty in the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County. According to the State, Ms. Williams’s guilty plea was unconstitutional, because she was not represented by counsel when she entered her plea and had not waived her Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

Counsel for Petitioner objected to the State’s motion but did not challenge the State’s characterization of Ms. Williams’s plea as being unconstitutional. The trial court granted the State’s motion over Petitioner’s objection, prohibiting Petitioner from impeaching Ms. Williams by asking about the prior conviction or the conduct underlying it. The trial court explained its reasoning: I’m going to put on record exactly why I ruled the way I did in the State’s motion in limine. I just want to make sure it’s clear for the appellate record. ⁷¹ I find and I’ll take judicial notice that the proceedings that take place in front of [the judge who accepted Ms. Williams’s guilty plea] are absolutely unconstitutional.

He does such things as ask people certain things, tell them to nod their head, and then he just takes pleas and just does it. There is no state’s attorney present. There is no defense attorney present. There is no semblance of any type of due process or any rights given to the defendants.

It is so widespread that even the federal judges in Greenbelt won’t recognize that as convictions. Now, I understand [Petitioner’s] argument, and I am not taking anything away from it. I just wanted to make sure that the record indicated why I was ruling, not that I was saying that [Petitioner] couldn’t use a conviction against the witness. It’s this conviction.

It’s unique only to what happened in that courtroom. I have long lamented what happens there. I just wanted that on the record. Petitioner later asked the court to reconsider its evidentiary ruling.

The Court denied the request. Ms. Williams testified that she and Petitioner at one time had an “intimate relationship.” She recounted that, during the early morning hours of May 17, 2007, she was in her home in Oxon Hill, Maryland. Also in the home were Ms. Williams’s niece and nephew, and her friend, Kenneth Foster. At approximately 4:30 a.m., someone began ringing the doorbell and banging on the door.

Ms. Williams opened the door and saw Petitioner standing on the porch. Petitioner began asking Ms. Williams why she had not called him the night before and whether anyone else was inside the house. Ms. Williams responded that Mr. Foster was in her house, but “he wasn’t there for [her].” She replied “no,” to Petitioner’s demands that Foster come outside. Petitioner then walked back to the street and got in the passenger seat of a pickup truck.

The truck began to drive away, but then backed up and stopped in front of Ms. Williams’s house. Ms. Williams testified that Petitioner stepped out of the truck, and, while carrying a black bag in his hand, walked ⁷² toward her. As Petitioner approached Ms. Williams, he reached into the bag. Ms. Williams “grabbed his hands” and, as she did so, she felt “something in his hand in the bag”; that “something” was “just big and it was hard----” Petitioner “pulled away” from Ms. Williams, who then ran into the house and locked the door.

She then heard banging on the door and went upstairs, where she found Mr. Foster on the telephone, speaking with the police. Ms. Williams went back downstairs to be with her niece and nephew. She looked out the peep hole in the door and saw Petitioner sitting on the porch. Police Officers Jermaine Allen and Kevin Brooks responded to the call for assistance at the Williams residence.

Officer Allen arrived at the residence, and, after speaking with Ms. Williams, searched the bushes two or three feet from the porch steps. There he found a black bag. Inside the bag, Officer Allen found a revolver and several rounds of ammunition. Meanwhile, Officer Brooks stopped a pickup truck approximately two blocks from Ms. Williams’s residence.

Officer Brooks found Petitioner in the passenger seat and took him into custody. Petitioner testified at trial and provided a different version of events on the night in question. He testified that he had gone to Ms. Williams’s house to have her re-twist his hair (Ms. Williams is a hairdresser). According to Petitioner, when he arrived at the house, Ms. Williams tried to give him a bag but he declined to take it.

The jury found Petitioner guilty of carrying a handgun. At a subsequent hearing, following a pre-sentence investigation, the court imposed a sentence of three years’ imprisonment. On appeal to the Court of Special Appeals, Petitioner challenged the trial court’s ruling regarding impeachment of Ms. Williams’s testimony. The court affirmed the judgment of conviction in an unreported opinion.

The court held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in prohibiting Petitioner from asking Ms. Williams about either her prior conviction or the conduct underlying that conviction. ⁷³ Petitioner then sought review in this Court, and we granted certiorari to answer the following question: Did the trial court err in refusing to allow defense counsel to impeach the State’s “star witness” with a prior theft conviction or the underlying conduct because the conviction was based on a guilty plea where the witness was not represented by counsel and had not waived her right to counsel?

II

The question Petitioner presents implicates two rules of evidence relating to witness impeachment: Md. Rule 5-609(a) 2 (impeachment by prior conviction), and Md. Rule 5-608(b) 3 (impeachment by prior conduct). We will overturn a trial court’s ruling on such matters only if the court “ ‘exercise^] discretion in an arbitrary or capricious manner or ... act[ed] beyond the letter or reason of the law.’ ” King v. State, 407 Md. 682, 696 , 967 A.2d 790, 798 (2009) (quoting Kelly v. State, 392 Md. 511, 531 , 898 A.2d 419, 430 (2006)) (addressing Md. Rule 5-609(a)). ⁷⁴ III. Petitioner asserts that the trial court erred by not allowing the defense to use Ms. Williams’s prior conviction for motor vehicle theft to impeach her testimony at trial. Petitioner points out that the language of Md. Rule 5-609(b), which allows the use of a prior conviction to impeach a witness, “does not contain an exception for convictions obtained in violation of the right to counsel____” Petitioner further argues that use of such a constitutionally defective conviction for impeachment purposes does not run afoul of due process.

Indeed, Petitioner contends that the “trial judge’s erroneous decision to prevent defense counsel from impeaching Ms. Williams, the State’s key witness, with her prior conviction violated Mr. Thomas’s federal and state constitutional rights to due process of law and to confront the witnesses against him, as well as Rule 5-609.” The State disagrees, arguing that the trial court correctly concluded that the prior conviction could not be used for impeachment purposes because it was obtained without the benefit of counsel, in a process the trial court described as “absolutely unconstitutional” and a “kangaroo court.” The State suggests that, “[wjhen the State demonstrated, and the defendant accepted, the constitutional invalidity of Williams’s conviction, it was as if the conviction did not exist, nunc pro tunc, and therefore the trial court did not abuse its discretion” in refusing to allow Petitioner to impeach Williams with that “functionally nonexistent conviction.” Maryland Rule 5-609(a) allows the use of a prior conviction to impeach a witness if “(1) the crime was an infamous crime or other crime relevant to the witness’s credibility and (2) the court determines that the probative value of admitting this evidence outweighs the danger of unfair prejudice to the witness or the objecting party.” Subsection (b) of the Rule instructs that “evidence of a conviction is not admissible under this Rule if a period of more than 15 years has elapsed since the date of the conviction.” Motor vehicle theft, the crime to which Ms. Williams pleaded guilty, is an “infa ⁷⁵ mous crime or other crime relevant to the witness’s credibility,” for purposes of the Rule. See Beales v. State, 329 Md. 263, 270 , 619 A.2d 105, 108 (1993) (explaining that, because theft “is the embodiment of deceitfulness,” it is an “infamous crime” for purposes of impeaching a witness). The conviction, moreover, occurred in March 2007, well within the 15-year limit. The only remaining inquiry under Md. Rule 5-609(a), then, would be whether the probative value of the conviction outweighs the risk of unfair prejudice to Ms. Williams or the State.

The conviction at issue in the present case, however, does not call for that analysis, because the conviction is the product of a constitutionally infirm guilty plea. Our caselaw, derived from Supreme Court precedent, makes clear that such convictions cannot be used for impeachment purposes. In von Lusch v. State, 279 Md. 255, 258-59 , 368 A.2d 468, 470 (1977), we cited Loper v.