In re Jerome G.
Filed 6/19/13 In re Jerome G. CA2/4
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE
OFFICIAL REPORTS
California
Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or
relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except
as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This
opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for
purposes of rule 8.1115.
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION FOUR
In re JEROME G., a Person
Coming Under the Juvenile Court Law.
B240407
THE PEOPLE,
Plaintiff and Respondent,
v.
JEROME G.,
Defendant and Appellant.
(Los Angeles County
Super. Ct. No. JJ18773)
APPEAL
from an order of the Superior Court
of
County, Donna Quigley Groman, Judge. Affirmed.
Susan
L. Ferguson, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and
Appellant.
Kamala D. Harris, Attorney
General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Lance E. Winters,
Assistant Attorney General, Kenneth C. Byrne and Colleen M. Tiedemann, Deputy
Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
Appellant
Jerome G. appeals from an order sustaining a petition under Welfare and
Institutions Code section 602
name="_ftnref1" title="">[1] and placing him home on probation. He contends the victim’s identification of
him was the result of an unconstitutionally suggestive procedure, and should
not have been admitted at trial. In the
absence of other evidence connecting him to the crime, he claims the error was
prejudicial and the order should be reversed.
We find no error and affirm the court’s order.
In
November 2011, Guadalupe Reyes was in front of her apartment building, feeding
some birds. As she was going back into
her apartment, an African American male came toward her. She moved over a little so he could
pass. As he passed, he grabbed a gold
chain from around her neck. Ms. Reyes held onto the chain, but it broke,
leaving her with a small piece in her hand.
The man also took an earring from Ms. Reyes’s ear.
Los
Angeles Police Officer Manuel Castaneda was one of the officers assigned to
this case. During his investigation, he
reviewed video evidence which showed Ms. Reyes being attacked. About a week after the incident, he went to
Ms. Reyes’s apartment and drove her to the Southeast Police Station for a field
identification. Appellant, then 17 years
old, was standing outside the east door of the station. He was handcuffed. According to Officer Castaneda, Ms. Reyes
looked out of the car window and said, in Spanish, “It’s him. It’s him.
It’s him.†Then she ducked down
and hid behind the driver’s seat of the car.
A
petition was filed alleging that appellant came within the provisions of
section 602 based on his commission of a second
degree robbery in violation of Penal Code section 211. At the adjudication hearing, Ms. Reyes
testified that when the officers came to her apartment, they told her they had
arrested a person who might have attacked her, and they wanted her to make an
identification. The officers told her
they had recovered a video depicting the attack, but she did not watch the
video. She said she identified appellant
because she actually recognized him, not based on anything the officers said to
her. Ms. Reyes identified appellant in
court as the male who had taken her gold chain and earring and as the person
she identified at the police station.
Appellant
challenged the admissibility of the identification, claiming the field
identification was impermissibly suggestive.
The court heard testimony on the issue, rejected that claim, and found
the allegation true based on Ms. Reyes’s testimony. The petition was sustained, and appellant
filed this timely appeal.
Appellant
claims the identification procedure was unconstitutionally suggestive,
requiring reversal. “In order to
determine whether the admission of identification evidence violates a
defendant’s right to due process of law,
we consider (1) whether the identification procedure was unduly suggestive and
unnecessary, and, if so, (2) whether the identification itself was nevertheless
reliable under the totality of the circumstances, taking into account such
factors as the opportunity of the witness to view the suspect at the time of
the offense, the witness’s degree of attention at the time of the offense, the
accuracy of his or her prior description of the suspect, the level of certainty
demonstrated at the time of the identification, and the lapse of time between
the offense and the identification.†(
926, 989.) “We review deferentially the
trial court’s findings of historical fact, especially those that turn on
credibility determinations, but we independently review the trial court’s
ruling regarding whether, under those facts, a pretrial identification
procedure was unduly suggestive.†(
932, 943.)
Appellant
argues the identification procedure was impermissibly suggestive in part
because he was the sole suspect standing in
station. “The practice of showing
suspects singly to persons for the purpose of identification, and not as part
of a lineup, has been widely condemned.â€
(Stovall v. Denno (1967)
388 U.S. 293, 302, overruled on another ground in Griffith v. Kentucky (1987) 479 U.S. 314, 321-322; see also
218, 234.) However, a one-person showup
is not necessarily inherently unfair. (
413.) For example, in
(overruled on other grounds in People v.
Wheeler (1978) 22 Cal.3d 258, 287, fn. 36), the victim was brought to the
jail soon after the suspect was arrested, and within several hours of the
crime. The court rejected the claim that
this was improperly suggestive: “[t]he
police are not to be criticized because they attempted to establish an
affirmative identification as promptly as possible.†In this case, appellant was taken into
custody at 4:20 p.m. on December 7, 2011, just a week after
the crime. The field showup was later
that same day, and appellant was arrested after being identified by Ms.
Reyes. Appellant and the police stood to
benefit from this prompt confrontation, which could have exonerated appellant
and informed the police that their investigation was not at an end. (See
Appellant
further claims the police officers tainted the identification because they told
the victim they had viewed the incident on video and then asked her to identify
appellant. Ms. Reyes’s testimony was
conflicting. She testified that the
police told her they had seen video footage of the attack and had arrested
someone they thought might be her attacker; she also testified that the police
“just said to me there was a person there and if I could go and identify
him.†Asked if they told her they were
going to show her the person who robbed her, she replied, “No, they said that I
had to see that person.â€
Officer
Castaneda denied telling Ms. Reyes the police believed the person they had in
custody was responsible for the attack.
He was not asked whether he talked with her about the video. The trial court apparently credited the
officer’s testimony and concluded the identification was not tainted by any
suggestion that the officers believed this was the person they saw in the
video. We defer to that factual determination.
Other
factors strongly support the reliability of the identification. Ms. Reyes testified that she did not identify
appellant based on anything the officers told her; she actually recognized
appellant. She believed the attack
lasted two or three minutes. She did not
recall trying to strike appellant, but instead just stood there and stared at
his face for about a minute. She thought
she might have seen appellant walking in the same area on a couple of occasions
prior to the offense.
During
the field showup, Ms. Reyes was unequivocal in her identification. When she saw appellant, she told the officer
it was him. She then ducked down and hid
behind the driver’s seat of the car. She
also was certain when she identified appellant in court.
The
record supports the conclusion that the identification was reliable, based on
the witness’s opportunity to view appellant and her attention to his appearance
during the robbery, the level of certainty she showed at the time of the field
identification, and the fact that the identification occurred just a week after
the crime.
Evidence
of the field identification was not impermissibly suggestive, and it was
properly considered by the court. That
identification, in combination with the in-court identification, amply supports
the court’s order.
The
order is affirmed.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL
REPORTS
EPSTEIN,
P. J.
We concur:
MANELLA, J.
SUZUKAWA, J.
name="_ftn1" title="">[1]
further statutory references are to the Welfare and Institutions Code unless
otherwise noted.
