Phillips v. United States

── Phillips v. United States ── Court: District of Columbia Court of Appeals Date: June 04, 2026 Category: General Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the Atlantic and Maryland Reporters. Users are requested to notify the Clerk of the Court of any formal errors so that corrections may be made before the bound volumes go to press. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS No. 24-CF-0758 BRYANT PHILLIPS, APPELLANT, V. UNITED STATES, APPELLEE. Appeal from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (2022-CF1-004306) (Anthony C. Epstein, Judge) (Argued January 7, 2026 Decided June 4, 2026) Sean R. Day for appellant. Timothy R. Cahill, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Jeanine Ferris Pirro, United States Attorney, and Chrisellen R. Kolb, Nicholas P. Coleman, Dana M. Joseph, and Niki E. Holmes, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief, for appellee. Before EASTERLY and DEAHL, Associate Judges, and WASHINGTON, Senior Judge. DEAHL, Associate Judge: Bryant Phillips is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole after a jury found that he held his romantic partner captive for three days while physically and sexually assaulting her multiple times and  2 intermittently forcing her to smoke crack cocaine. Of import to this appeal, the trial court applied a sentencing enhancement for Phillips’s commission of two prior “crimes of violence” when imposing its sentence. See D.C. Code § 22-1804a(a)(2). Phillips challenges both his convictions and the application of that sentence enhancement. As to his convictions, he raises three distinct challenges, all related to the testimony of his romantic partner, A.H. He argues that (1) the trial court should have excluded A.H.’s testimony that Phillips “told [her] he had murdered someone before” as inflammatory “other crimes” evidence; (2) the court erred when it failed, in its final jury instructions, to reiterate its prior limiting instruction that the above testimony was relevant only to evaluating A.H.’s state of mind, and not for the truth of the matter asserted; and (3) the court should have granted a mistrial after A.H. testified that Phillips “was on house arrest” when they first met. We disagree on each point and affirm Phillips’s convictions. As for the sentence enhancement, Phillips challenges that on two grounds. He argues that (1) the trial court erred when it failed to inquire whether he affirmed or denied the two prior crimes of violence animating that sentencing enhancement, and failed to inform him that any challenge to those convictions not raised before sentencing would be forfeited, as required by D.C. Code § 23-111(b); and (2) the trial court erred by construing his conviction for “murder-for-hire” under 18 U.S.C.  3 § 1958 as a “crime of violence” under D.C. law. We agree with Phillips on the first point—the trial court failed to conduct the statutorily required inquiry under D.C. Code § 23-111(b). And because that procedural error requires a new sentencing proceeding where the required inquiry can be made, we leave it to the trial court to address in the first instance Phillips’s late-breaking argument that his “murder-for- hire” conviction was not for a “crime of violence” as defined in D.C. law. Accordingly, we affirm Phillips’s convictions but remand for further sentencing proceedings consistent with this opinion. I. Factual Background Phillips and A.H. met by chance as seatmates on a plane in February 2021. A.H. was working as a human resources assistant with the Coast Guard and had served for twenty years in the Marines. Phi