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Jeffries v. State1/29/1997
did not make any difference. The medium through which the appellant expressed that indirect and after-the-fact objection was, though not labelled as such, a Motion for New Trial. It was, however, a Motion for New Trial that was not timely filed.
Admission of the Appellant's Tee-shirt
The appellant next argues that the trial court erred when it admitted into evidence the tee-shirt that the appellant was wearing on the night of the incident. The tee-shirt was black with white lettering on the front, which stated: "Only real niggaz live by the trigger!" The shirt also depicted hands holding a submachine gun. The appellant contends that the shirt was improperly admitted because it "was clearly inflammatory and prejudicial, for self-evident reasons," and the writing on the shirt was "unquestionably irrelevant." Furthermore, he argues that admission of the shirt into evidence was not necessary to prove identity, because the appellant had admitted being at the scene of the crime.
Evidentiary rulings, particularly those hinging on relevance, are entrusted to the wide discretion of the trial judge. An appellate court will not second-guess such a decision absent a clear abuse of the trial judge's discretion. Ebb v. State, 341 Md. 578, 587, 671 A.2d 974 (1996); Hunt v. State, 321 Md. 387, 425, 583 A.2d 218 (1990). We see no such clear abuse in this case. The tee-shirt worn by the appellant at the time of his arrest was relevant to prove both his presence at the crime scene and the degree and nature of his participation. Although the appellant admitted in a statement to the police that he was at the crime scene generally, he also stated that he left that scene when he heard "two shots" and experienced "bullets pinging off of the wall beside him." Implicitly, he disclaimed being one of the shooters; expressly, he pinned all of the blame on his codefendant whom he identified as "James." Because the other participant in the holdup was described by various witnesses as wearing a black tee-shirt on which was emblazoned a white skull, it became important to pinpoint the appellant as the participant who was wearing the black tee-shirt with something other than a white skull.
A witness, Dan Fribush, described the person who stood over and shot Heather McDonald as one whose clothing resembled the appellant's and not as the fatter individual whose tee-shirt depicted the white skull. Corporal Diane McCarthy, who observed the total incident unfold from before the time the two victims even came on the scene until well after the shooting, made an in-court identification of the appellant as the smaller of the two participants and explicitly as the one who was not wearing the black tee-shirt with the white skull.
Aside from the visual observations that involved it, the tee-shirt worn by the appellant had additional probative force. Heather McDonald identified the appellant as the only one of the two assailants who, immediately after ordering both Ms. McDonald and Daniel Huston into the back of the car, entered the car and sat down in the driver's seat. She testified that that individual had a gun. Corroborating her identification of the appellant as that particular participant was the fact that multi-colored threads were found in the interior of the Ford Explorer that were consistent with those in the tee-shirt worn by the appellant.
Although the appellant now adamantly asserts that the words on his tee-shirt were not in themselves relevant, he mistakes the nature of their relevance. The particular black tee-shirt worn by the appellant was relevant not so much for what it said or depicted as for what it did not depict. It was relevant to show that the appellant was wea
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