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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS
Nos. 25-CM-0265 & 25-CM-0266
GLENDA MOREHEAD, APPELLANT,
V.
UNITED STATES, APPELLEE.
Appeal from the Superior Court
of the District of Columbia
(2023-CMD-007083 & 2024-CMD-008632)
(Rhonda Reid Winston, Judge)
(Submitted March 17, 2026 Decided August 13, 2026)
Russell A. Bikoff was on the brief for appellant.
David B. Goodhand, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Jeanine Ferris Pirro, United States Attorney, and Chrisellen R. Kolb and Nicholas P. Coleman, Assistant United States Attorneys, were on the brief for appellee.
Before EASTERLY, DEAHL, and SHANKER, Associate Judges.
DEAHL, Associate Judge: Glenda Morehead was convicted of two counts of
simple assault, among other charges, after pepper spraying Richelle Adams and
Adams’s eight-year-old daughter, A.A., in the lobby of their shared apartment
building. Morehead argued before the trial court that she should be acquitted of the
2
assault charge against A.A. because the evidence did not establish that A.A. was an
intended target of the attack. Instead, the evidence suggested that A.A. was struck
only incidentally as Morehead sprayed Adams, which Morehead contends means
that she did not have the requisite mens rea for an assault on A.A. The trial court
disagreed, reasoning that regardless of whether Morehead intended to strike A.A.,
Morehead’s intent to strike Adams could be “transferred” to supply the requisite
mens rea for an assault on A.A. even if she were an unintended target.
Morehead now appeals her conviction for assaulting A.A. She argues that the
evidence was insufficient to prove that she had the requisite mens rea to sustain that
assault charge. Because we agree with the trial court’s application of the transferred
intent doctrine, we affirm.
I. Background
Morehead and Adams were neighbors who lived in a shared apartment
building and had an acrimonious relationship, to put it lightly. In one incident that
preceded the incident central to this appeal, Adams and A.A. were at their apartment
unit’s door when Morehead approached to within five feet of Adams, raised a
hammer above her head as if to strike, and said, “Bitch, I’ll kill you in front of your
daughter.” Morehead was convicted of several counts related to that incident.
3
Morehead does not challenge those convictions on appeal, so that is merely some
background for the incident at hand.
The second and more pertinent incident occurred about ten months later, when
Adams and her daughter were in the lobby waiting to take the elevator up to their
unit. When the elevator arrived, A.A. stepped into it just as Morehead entered the
lobby and sought to likewise board the elevator. Mindful of their prior encounter,
Adams told Morehead, “you can’t be on the elevator with us,” and Morehead
responded that she did not “have time for this” and entered the elevator with A.A.
Adams’s principal goal then became to get her daughter off of the elevator, but
Morehead was obstructing her. After repeatedly asking Morehead to move, Adams
pushed her out of the way so she could physically extract her daughter. Morehead
then took the elevator by herself, while Adams and A.A. waited for it to return to the
lobby.
When the elevator returned about a minute later, Morehead was lying in wait
inside, and right as the elevator doors opened Morehead began spraying Adams with
pepper spray directly in her face. Adams turned to run outside and Morehead
followed, still spraying. A.A. was sitting on a bench inside the lobby, and Morehead
struck her in the face with pepper spray as well while chasing Adams. Adams
described how, in the aftermath of that attack, her “skin was burning,” her “face was
4
burning, and “it burned . . . all over [her] body.” Adams also testified that A.A. was
“screaming in excruciating pain from the spray being in her face,” and Adams had
to rush A.A. to the shower to flush the pepper spray from her eyes.
In its findings convicting Morehead of assaults on both Adams and A.A., the
trial court credited Adams’s testimony in full. The court further ruled that the
government proved all of the elements of an “attempted battery” simple assault
against Adams, reasoning that Morehead “intended to use . . . force or violence”
against Adams, that she had the apparent ability to injure Adams when she did so,
and that she did in fact injure Adams. The court likewise ruled that the government
proved an assault against A.A., “basically, in the same manner.” The court did not
find that Morehead intended to pepper spray A.A., which defense counsel had
argued was a prerequisite for finding Morehead guilty of that assault. It instead
reasoned that the government did not need to prove that Morehead intended to spray
A.A. specifically, because Morehead intended to spray Adams, and that intent could
be “transferred” to supply the requisite mens rea for the assault on A.A.
Morehead now appeals, challenging only her conviction for assaulting A.A.
5
II. Analysis
On appeal, Morehead argues that there was insufficient evidence to convict
her of assaulting A.A. because the evidence did not establish, and the trial court did
not find, that she intended to strike A.A. with pepper spray. The government
counters that Morehead was at least reckless as to the possibility that A.A. would be
hit, and the parties have a spirited debate in their briefs about whether recklessness
satisfies the mens rea element for an attempted battery assault after this court’s
opinion in Perez Hernandez v. United States, 286 A.3d 990, 996 (D.C. 2022) (en
banc). Putting that debate aside, the government defends the trial court’s ruling that
the transferred intent doctrine applies here in any event, even if Morehead lacked the
requisite mens rea to assault A.A. specifically. Because we agree with the trial court
and the government that the transferred intent doctrine applies here, we do not
resolve the admittedly unsettled debate about whether recklessness satisfies the mens
rea element of an attempted battery assault. See G.W. v. United States, 323 A.3d 425,
437 (D.C. 2024) (observing that Perez Hernandez “left undefined . . . what conduct
falls under the broader umbrella of attempted or completed battery assault—for
which we have yet to assign a specific mens rea using modern terminology”).
The transferred intent doctrine was part of the common law that this court
inherited from Maryland over a century ago. See Perez Hernandez, 286 A.3d at 996
6
(explaining that, in 1901, Congress decreed that “[t]he common law of the District
of Columbia encompasses all common law in force in Maryland in 1801”);
O’Connor v. United States, 399 A.2d 21, 24-25 (D.C. 1979) (recognizing the
transferred intent doctrine as part of our common law). In its classic form, the
doctrine provides that, when a defendant intends to strike one person but by mistake
strikes another, the intent to injure follows the act: it is transferred from the intended
victim to the actual one, and the defendant is punished for the same crime as if she
had struck her intended target. See O’Connor, 399 A.2d at 24-25; Gordon v. United
States, 285 A.3d 199, 211 (D.C. 2022). The doctrine’s philosophical underpinning
is that a defendant should not benefit from their own “bad aim”—if they sought to
strike one person, and accidentally hit somebody else, it should make no difference
that those two people are not one and the same. Gordon, 285 A.3d at 210 (citing
Gladden v. State, 330 A.2d 176, 188 (Md. 1974)).
While the doctrine stems from common law murder, where a defendant
intends to kill one person but kills another, id. at 207, we have extended it beyond
homicide cases to non-lethal assaults. There is admittedly not a wealth of case law
in our jurisdiction that expressly approves of applying the transferred intent doctrine
to non-homicide cases. We have tended to confront the challenges to doing so in a
“plain error” posture, and while we have consistently rejected those challenges, our
holdings have typically been limited to it not being “plain or obvious” that
7
transferred intent does not apply. See id. at 207-08 (describing how “many
transferred intent cases have arisen on a plain error posture” and discussing those
cases). But on several occasions, we have more expressly approved of extending the
transferred intent doctrine beyond homicide cases, and there is no authority to the
contrary in this jurisdiction. See, e.g., In re E.D.P., 573 A.2d 1307, 1308 (D.C. 1990)
(upholding three assault convictions as to three “juvenile supervisors” struck in
assault on intended victim); Hagans v. United States, 96 A.3d 1, 43 (D.C. 2014)
(“[T]he doctrine of transferred intent . . . allowed appellants to be held liable for
the . . . wounding of [an incidental victim] even though the appellants intended to
kill” nearby rivals instead); (Wesley) Williams v. United States, 881 A.2d 557, 567
(D.C. 2005) (upholding assault with a deadly weapon conviction on a transferred
intent theory).
In In re E.D.P., for instance, a detained juvenile began fighting with another
detainee and hit and kicked three supervisors who intervened. 573 A.2d at 1308. We
held that his intent to injure his intended target transferred to each supervisor he
actually hit, and we sustained the resulting assault-based adjudications as to all three.
Id. at 1308-09; see also Dickens v. United States, 19 A.3d 321, 325-26 (D.C. 2011)
(describing E.D.P. as “essentially an assault case” resting on a transferred intent
theory). Whatever E.D.P.’s analytical shortcomings might be—it was admittedly
rather curt in its analysis—it seems to squarely hold that the transferred intent
8
doctrine applies beyond homicide offenses. And if there is any doubt about that, 1 in
our view, the doctrine’s logic of pairing an intent to injure one person with an injury
actually inflicted upon another applies to assaults and batteries no less than to
killings.
Just as importantly, and contrary to what Morehead appears to argue at times,
the transferred intent doctrine extends even to cases where the intended target is
injured or killed. We made that clear in Lloyd v. United States, where we upheld
both of a defendant’s first-degree murder convictions: one for the intended target
who was struck and killed, and the other—under a transferred intent theory—for an
unintended victim who was likewise struck and killed. 806 A.2d 1243, 1250-51
(D.C. 2002). In Lloyd, we rejected the notion that a defendant’s intent is effectively
“exhausted” if she has successfully assaulted or murdered the intended victim. We
explained, quoting approvingly from an out-of-jurisdiction case, that “[t]he intent
transferred . . . ‘is not [properly] regarded as a limited commodity that, once
satisfied, is totally expended.’” Id. at 1250 (quoting State v. Hinton, 630 A.2d 593,
598 (Conn. 1993)).
1
Morehead does not herself cast any doubt upon that, as her brief describes E.D.P. as “uphold[ing the] use of transferred intent in felony assault” cases.
9
There is one notable limitation on the transferred intent doctrine, alluded to
above, but it is of no help to Morehead here. The limitation is that the transferred
intent doctrine does not apply where the unintended victim is not in fact injured.
Gordon, 285 A.3d at 212; but cf. id. at 212 n.10 (noting the potential application of
the “concurrent intent” doctrine as to an “unintended, uninjured victim,” provided
the “unintended victim [was] foreseeably at risk”). That was a contentious point that
this court only recently resolved in a divided opinion in Gordon, and the lively
debate in Gordon stemmed partly from the fact that assaults do not require any injury
at all—one can commit an assault by merely putting someone in reasonable fear of
injury. And given that assault does not require an injury at all, there was a decent
argument that transferred intent applies even as to an unstruck target who was put in
mere reasonable fear of being injured. But we rejected that view in Gordon and
instead held “that extending transferred intent to situations where an unintended
victim is not physically injured departs too far from the origins of the doctrine.” Id.
at 211; but see id. at 224-29 (McLeese, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
That brings us back to the present case, and whether the trial court properly
applied the above principles in convicting Morehead of simple assault against A.A.
We conclude that it did properly apply those principles, given the following three
considerations: First, Morehead indisputably intended to assault Adams when she
sprayed her with pepper spray. Second, that intent could be transferred to an
10
unintended victim like A.A., even as to a mere assault and even though the intended
target was likewise injured, so long as that unintended victim was actually injured.
Third, that condition was satisfied here, where A.A. was actually struck and injured.
While Morehead does not seem to dispute the sufficiency of the evidence that A.A.
was injured, we independently conclude that the evidence was more than sufficient
on that score, given Adams’s testimony that A.A. was screaming in “excruciating
pain” from the chemical agent in her face and eyes.
Morehead counters that, in her view, some other courts disagree with us about
the applicability of transferred intent when the intended target is injured or killed.
She highlights Ford v. State, 625 A.2d 984, 998 (Md. 1993), and People v. Birreuta,
208 Cal. Rptr. 635, 639 (Ct. App. 1984), as cases that held the transferred intent
doctrine does not apply where the intended target is injured or killed. Notably, to the
extent those cases actually held that transferred intent does not apply where the
intended target is injured or killed—as opposed to merely saying that in dicta—they
have been overruled. See Henry v. State, 19 A.3d 944, 951-52 (Md. 2011)
(“[T]ransferred intent is applicable to the killing of an unintended victim even if the
intended victim was also killed, and we disapprove of the dictum to the contrary in
Ford.”); People v. Bland, 48 P.3d 1107, 1115 (Cal. 2002) (concluding that Birreuta
“was incorrect,” and holding that “[i]ntent to kill transfers to an unintended homicide
victim even if the intended target is killed”). And in any event, the holdings that
11
Morehead attributes to Ford and Birrueta run directly contrary to our own
controlling precedents. Lloyd, 806 A.2d at 1250-51; Hunt v. United States, 729 A.2d
322, 326 (D.C. 1999) (rejecting Ford’s “dicta” and reasoning that the transferred
intent doctrine “operates with full force whenever the unintended victim is hit”
(quoting Harvey v. State, 681 A.2d 628, 637 (Md. 1996))). We are of course obliged
to follow our own precedents notwithstanding any contrary authority from other
jurisdictions.
Morehead’s final counter is underdeveloped and harder to decipher: While at
times in her brief she suggests that transferred intent does not apply where the
intended victim is struck or killed, she later seems to recognize that our precedents
have rejected that limitation and any out-of-jurisdiction cases endorsing it (she is
correct about that, as we have just explained). So she pivots to an argument, for
which she cites no support and offers little reasoning, that “the doctrine should not
be used to supply a mens rea of general intent for simple assault where there is scant
evidence that satisfies that element.” This argument starts from the dubious premise
that attempted battery assaults are properly described as “general intent” crimes in
the District, despite our recent and repeated explications in en banc opinions that the
language of general intent is an outmoded, imprecise, and confusing way to discuss
mens rea: “Ideally, instead of describing a crime as a ‘general intent’ or ‘specific
intent’ crime, courts and legislatures would simply make clear what mental state (for
12
example, strict liability, negligence, recklessness, knowledge, or purpose) is required
for whatever material element is at issue.” Carrell v. United States, 165 A.3d 314,
324 n.26 (D.C. 2017) (en banc) (quoting Jones v. United States, 124 A.3d 127, 130
n.3 (D.C. 2015)); Perez Hernandez, 286 A.3d at 1000 (describing how “the historical
categories of general intent crimes and specific intent crimes have been subject to
much criticism” and making a “[l]inguistic [t]ransition” away from those
categories). In light of those explications, it is no longer correct to say that any
species of assault is a general intent crime in this jurisdiction. Cf. G.W., 323 A.3d at
437 (noting that we have not assigned a specific mens rea “using modern
terminology” to attempted battery assaults).
But even if we were to accept the premise that it remains accurate to describe
assault as a general intent crime in the District, it would make little sense to say that
the transferred intent doctrine therefore does not apply to it. The whole office of the
transferred intent doctrine is to supply the mens rea for an offense against the
unintended victim without independent proof that the defendant harbored any
culpable mental state toward that victim—the requisite intent is instead borrowed
from the intended victim. And there is no good reason why a specific intent to injure
or kill a particular victim could be transferred, as we have clearly held in cases like
Lloyd, 806 A.2d at 1246, 1251 (applying doctrine to transfer “specific intent” to
murder), but a more general intent to make a contact with no specific injury intended
13
could not. 2 Indeed, our cases have already crossed this bridge and applied the
transferred intent doctrine to so-called general intent crimes. See In re E.D.P., 573
A.2d at 1308 (applying transferred intent doctrine to assaults on “juvenile
supervisors”); see also Carter v. United States, 531 A.2d 956, 960 (D.C. 1987)
(agreeing with trial court that “assault on a police officer [is] a general intent crime”).
So even if attempted battery assaults were general intent crimes, contrary to our
view, the transferred intent doctrine remains applicable here.
III. Conclusion
Because the trial court properly applied the transferred intent doctrine when
concluding that Morehead assaulted A.A., we affirm Morehead’s convictions.
2
It would be unnecessary to apply the transferred intent doctrine to general intent crimes if one mistakenly understood general intent in its broadest possible sense to mean only “the intent to do the act that constituted the assault,” see Perez Hernandez, 286 A.3d at 1000, irrespective of whether there was any intent to contact or injure anybody. But even when we spoke of assault as a general intent crime, we rejected that overly broad understanding of what general intent means. (Antwan) Williams v. United States, 887 A.2d 1000, 1003 (D.C. 2005) (explaining that even under a “general intent” rubric, the defendant must have “intend[ed] . . . to strike” someone, even if he had no particular intent to injure them); see also Perez Hernandez, 286 A.3d at 1001 (making clear, without endorsing the general intent label, that to constitute an assault, the contact “cannot be inadvertent”). And if we adopted that mistaken and overly broad view of what general intent means, that would not help Morehead: she would be correct that the transferred intent doctrine does not apply, but only because her general intent to shoot her pepper spray would satisfy the mens rea element of an assault against both Adams and A.A. 14
So ordered.