The D.C. Court of Appeals has overturned a man’s murder conviction because his trial lawyer did not consult with an expert who could testify about the victim’s PCP intoxication. Ajene Kigozi had been convicted of first-degree premeditated murder while armed and other charges and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. In overturning his convictions, the appeals court remanded the case for a new trial.
In November 2001, Parris Lynch was shot seven times at close range while he was sitting in a car at the intersection of Chesapeake Street and Southern Avenue S.E., prosecutors said.
At Kigozi’s trial, the centerpiece of prosecutors’ evidence was Lynch’s remark to officials shortly before he died that “Walter Johnson shot me.” Walter Johnson is Kigozi’s former name.
Kigozi’s trial lawyer tried to undermine the credibility of Lynch’s statements by saying that he made them while he was high on PCP, “a hallucin[ogenic] drug, [where] you say things you don’t really know what you are saying.”
Hospital records reported that Lynch had PCP in his urine. A witness testified that Lynch appeared to be high on PCP when they interacted shortly before the shooting and a paramedic with U.S. Park Police said Lynch was acting like a person high on PCP.
However, the prosecution countered this evidence with testimony from a medical examiner. The examiner signed off on the autopsy that didn’t note PCP use and said that PCP in urine does not mean that PCP was in Lynch’s blood stream.
After Kigozi was convicted, he asked for a new trial, arguing that his lawyer was ineffective because he didn’t consult with an expert about Lynch’s PCP use or present an expert witness at the trial.
In a hearing, Kigozi’s trial lawyer said that while Kigozi asked him to consult with an expert, he didn’t do so because he didn’t believe Kigozi could afford an expert’s fee.
The appeals court ruled that the trial lawyer was ineffective because “counsel’s decision not to take even the first step of consulting an expert was patently unreasonable and fell below what is expected.”
With an expert’s testimony, the trial jury would have been reasonably likely to have reached a different verdict, the majority opinion stated.
In a dissenting opinion, a judge said he was not convinced that the inclusion of expert testimony would have caused a reasonable probability of a different outcome.
