A convicted rapist won’t get a new trial even though his judge gave incorrect jury instructions because he didn’t raise the issue when it mattered, the D.C. Court of Appeals has ruled.
Raymond Mozee tried to argue at his trial that his 16-year-old ex-girlfriend had consensual sex with him in the summer of 2000 and that he only struck her after she flew into a jealous rage because another girl called. Trial judge Shellie Bowers told jurors, however, that they shouldn’t “get into this business of consent” until they decided that prosecutors had otherwise proven their case.
Mozee argued that this was plain wrong, that the law says a jury can weigh affirmative defenses like consent against prosecutors’ cases. A three-judge panel of the appellate court ruled Thursday that Mozee was right about the error but wrong that the error should give him a new trial.
The evidence against Mozee, Associate Judge Noel Kramer wrote for the panel, “was compelling.” He also didn’t raise his objection to the instruction at his trial and, Kramer wrote, Bowers had “clarified” the instruction when she asked jurors to “look at all the evidence.”
At his trial, his ex-girlfriend testified that she and the couple’s 2-year-old son took a cab to Mozee’s home.
She asked the cabbie to wait even if Mozee told him to go. After learning that she had asked the cabbie to stick around, Mozee flew into a rage. He punched her in the face and kicked her, as their son clung to her leg. He dragged her into his sister’s bedroom and raped her.
Afterward, she testified that she ran downstairs, half naked, battered, and disheveled. “He raped me,” she told the cabbie. “He raped me.”
As police were gathering evidence against him, Mozee called and left her several messages.
“Look, girl, I didn’t mean to lash out on you like I did,” one message said, according to court papers, “but it’s all bottled up inside me and I tried to turn to you.”
He said he was “deeply sorry” he was. In a letter message, he told her, “I’m learning how to deal with all this anger, okay?” according to court papers.
“In short, given the strong evidence of appellant’s guilt and the efforts made by the trial judge to clarify that the jury was to consider all of the evidence, we conclude that appellant is not entitled to a reversal. …” Kramer wrote.
