District of Columbia Court of Appeals
Lopez v. United States
July 30, 2026
Summary
The D.C. Court of Appeals affirmed Marvin Lopez's first-degree murder and firearm convictions, holding that the trial court did not plainly err in failing to declare a mistrial sua sponte after the government's intimate partner violence expert twice exceeded court-ordered limits on her testimony, where the defense objected and moved to strike but never requested a mistrial. The court remanded for the trial court to reconsider or explain its unexplained denial of sentencing credit for the time Lopez spent incarcerated in El Salvador while awaiting extradition under D.C. Code § 24-221.03(a). It declined to remand on Lopez's claim that his fifty-year sentence might violate the El Salvador extradition order, because he never identified any term of that order his sentence violates.