United States v. Matthew Evans Dowd

417 F.3d 1080, 2005 U.S. App. LEXIS 16467, 2005 WL 1863283
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedAugust 8, 2005
Docket04-30062
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 417 F.3d 1080 (United States v. Matthew Evans Dowd) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Matthew Evans Dowd, 417 F.3d 1080, 2005 U.S. App. LEXIS 16467, 2005 WL 1863283 (9th Cir. 2005).

Opinion

FISHER, Circuit Judge:

A jury convicted Matthew Evans Dowd of violating the federal interstate domestic violence law. He argues that the jury did not have sufficient evidence that he forced or coerced his companion, Danna Johnson, to cross state lines, as the statute requires, because she had reasonable opportunities to escape.

Dowd also challenges the district court’s decision to impose a sentence for the domestic violence crime that is consecutive to his sentence for previous drug-related crimes. He further argues that the district court improperly enhanced his sentence as a sexual crime in violation of Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000).

We affirm Dowd’s conviction. The evidence demonstrated that Dowd subjected Johnson to numerous instances of physical and psychological abuse as they traveled through Montana, Colorado and Utah. Viewed from the perspective of a reasonable woman in Johnson’s circumstances, the jury could readily have found that Dowd, through a combination of actual force and dire threats, compelled Johnson to stay with him and made her fearful of attempting to flee.

We further affirm Dowd’s sentence because the district court properly exercised its discretionary authority in imposing a consecutive sentence, and the jury found that Dowd had committed a sexual assault, making him eligible for the statutory enhancement.

I.

The events giving rise to Dowd’s conviction occurred over an 8-month period between May and December 2002. Dowd and Johnson had met before in 1999, in Missoula, Montana, where Johnson had worked as a respiratory therapist. In August 2001, after becoming romantically involved, Dowd and Johnson moved in together, and Johnson, under Dowd’s influence, began using methamphetamines. Dowd left her a few months later and shortly thereafter was indicted for distribution and possession of methamphetamine, possession of a firearm in relation to a drug-trafficking crime and being a drug user in possession of a firearm. Dowd was arrested and later pled guilty to two of the counts. He petitioned the court to attend a drug rehabilitation facility in Butte, Montana, before his sentencing. In May 2002, he was discharged and was supposed to surrender to the Missou-la Detention Center within three hours of his release. Instead, he fled.

In the meantime, Johnson had lost her job, quit using drugs and moved to Colorado. After her move to Colorado, Johnson contacted Dowd’s mother because Johnson knew Dowd had been in trouble. Dowd’s mother told Johnson that he was on probation for six years, working in California and was clean and sober. Dowd’s mother urged Johnson to speak with Dowd by *1084 phone. They did so, and when Dowd fled the rehabilitation facility in Missoula in May 2002, he headed to Colorado, where he knew Johnson was then living.

The two moved in together, but within a week Johnson realized Dowd was buying drugs. She confronted him one night about the drug purchases, prompting an altercation at a local bar. She walked out of the bar to go home, but Dowd followed her, swung at her and unsuccessfully tried to force her into the car. Johnson did not return home until many hours after the incident, thinking it was safe to go back into their apartment because Dowd did not have a key. Dowd, however, had broken in and was waiting inside when she entered the apartment. He punched, raped and tried to suffocate her. Dowd then told Johnson that they needed to leave the apartment because the neighbors could hear everything, and he no longer felt safe there. After Dowd said that he planned to leave and take her with him, Johnson tried to run out of the apartment to a local convenience store but Dowd overpowered her. Johnson testified that “he said he couldn’t let me go because he was an escaped felon and I would just rat on him.” Until that point, she had not known Dowd was an escaped felon.

Dowd pulled Johnson by the hair and pushed her down the street, shoving the back of her head until she got into the car’s driver’s seat. They stopped at a phone booth where Dowd called his mother. However, Dowd had tied a shoelace to the car key so that when they stopped, he could pull the key out of the ignition and take it with him. Without the car key, Johnson could not drive away and did not believe she could run fast enough to escape on foot.

That night, the pair stayed in a motel because Dowd did not feel it was safe to return to their apartment, and he was awaiting money from his mother. Dowd kept close tabs on Johnson at the motel, for example hovering over her as she checked into their room. Johnson said she did not try to seek help or escape at that time because she worried that there would be repercussions for her family.

The next day, they returned to the apartment to pack up their clothes, dishes and other personal items. The apartment manager testified that he saw Johnson unloading boxes from the trunk of her car and that she appeared upset. The manager also said that while Johnson was at the apartment, Dowd was at the manager’s house, some two-and-a-half miles away, doing landscaping work. 1

After collecting their belongings, Dowd made Johnson drive straight from Colorado to Dowd’s mother’s home in Montana. Johnson did not scream out for help along the way because she was too afraid for the lives of her grandchildren and sister, whom Dowd had threatened to kill. On their drive, Dowd taunted Johnson by asking her: “How did it almost feel to die today?” Dowd removed the car key at every gas station or phone break. Johnson said she unsuccessfully tried to ruin the transmission of the car — hoping that would stop the progress of their trip — by throwing the car into reverse while driving at 75 miles an hour. When her plan failed, and seeing no other options for getting away from Dowd, Johnson decided during the road trip, “I’ll do what he says and when we get to his mother’s house, his mother will help me.” But when they arrived in Montana, Dowd’s mother told *1085 Johnson not to antagonize her son because that would only result in more beatings. Dowd continued to physically and sexually abuse Johnson at his mother’s house, where they stayed intermittently over the following weeks. Johnson said Dowd would wrench her neck and beat her so that she was covered with bruises. “[H]e would laugh and make fun of me, that I was walking like an old woman. And it was because I hurt so bad.”

About a week and a half after arriving in Montana, Johnson drove Dowd to Utah for three to four days, so that he could purchase drugs. On a second trip to Utah, Dowd sold items at pawn shops so he could purchase drugs. On one occasion, Johnson went into a pawn shop when Dowd was not around. But Johnson said she was too afraid for her family’s well-being to run away. When in Utah, Johnson and Dowd stayed with Dowd’s brother at a motel. The motel manager testified that at times Johnson would walk around the motel alone, for example going to the candy machine by herself. The manager noted that Johnson appeared to have bruises around her eyes. Johnson testified that during the trips between Montana and Utah, Dowd was beating her almost every day, and she was weak from not having eaten.

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Bluebook (online)
417 F.3d 1080, 2005 U.S. App. LEXIS 16467, 2005 WL 1863283, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-matthew-evans-dowd-ca9-2005.