45 Conn. App. 32 | Conn. App. Ct. | 1997
Opinion
The defendant, Ebony Casey, appeals
The following facts are necessary for the resolution of this appeal. On June 14, 1994, at approximately 5 p.m., the defendant was driving through Rockville in a turquoise Chevrolet Beretta with Edwin Ross and two other males. While driving, they spotted Benny Cruz and targeted him as a possible robbery victim. Before approaching Cruz, they dropped off one of the passengers at a video store in Rockville and returned to the area where they had spotted Cruz. When they saw him, they called to him to come over to the car. When Cruz got near the car, the defendant exited the vehicle, stuck a pistol in his chest, demanded that he give her his money and removed a gold chain from his neck. Cruz then threw $7 on the ground and ran away.
After robbing Cruz, the defendant and the two passengers drove to the residence of Joey Michaud. Upon arriving, they went to the rear of Michaud’s residence. When Michaud came to the window to see who was there, he was confronted by the defendant and the two other individuals who demanded that he give them drugs or other valuables. When Michaud refused, the defendant took out her pistol and shot him through the window. Michaud died from the gunshot wound. The defendant and the two other individuals immediately fled from Michaud’s home in the Beretta. On their way out of Rockville, they stopped at the video store and picked up the passenger.
After the Vitale interview, Zamichiei interviewed Brian Grosjean, who lived in the second floor apartment of Michaud’s residence. Grosjean told Zamichiei that he had heard the gunshot. He also indicated that he had noticed a dark colored vehicle parked in front of the house and saw a black female teenager emerge from it and walk toward the house.
While Simon and Zamichiei were investigating the murder scene, Officer Christopher Meyers, who was at the Vernon police station, overheard the initial radio dispatch of the Michaud shooting and responded to the crime scene. En route, he saw one of Michaud’s friends, Duane Bailey, on Talcott Avenue. Meyers stopped Bai
When Meyers arrived at the crime scene, he spoke with Matt Brown, Jeremy Kennan and Jeff Hansen. These individuals told Meyers that, approximately fifteen minutes before the shooting, a turquoise Beretta that was occupied by two black males and the defendant pulled up to them. They stated that the defendant was wearing braids and that she looked like a boy. They also indicated that she was in the front passenger seat of the Beretta. They told Meyers that when the Beretta pulled up next to them, the defendant asked if they knew where Cruz was and when they said that they did not, the Beretta drove off. Meyers radioed this new information to the police station at approximately 5:40 p.m. During the course of his investigation, Meyers also spoke to Donald Banning who told him that he was with Cruz earlier that evening when the defendant robbed Cruz at gunpoint.
Meanwhile, at approximately 5:38 p.m., Officer Richard Riggs of the South Windsor police department was dispatched to a service station on Sullivan Avenue on a report that a motor vehicle involved in a shooting in Vernon was in the area. The dispatch indicated that the vehicle in question was a turquoise Grand Am type vehicle occupied by three black males or two black males and one black female. The information regarding the vehicle’s location had been obtained from a motorist who had been listening to his police scanner and had overheard the dispatcher relate the information originally obtained by Meyers. While Riggs was en route to the area where the vehicle was spotted, he received additional information from his dispatcher that the vehi
After securing the defendant and the other suspects, the officers obtained their names, addresses and bio
While the felony stop was being conducted, a dispatch came over the radio further describing the suspects in Michaud’s shooting. The defendant and the other suspects generally matched the descriptions.
At approximately 5:50 p.m., Ritter directed his dispatcher to notify the Vernon police that witnesses were needed to identify the suspects.
When the officers and the six witnesses arrived in South Windsor, they stopped approximately 150 yards from the detention area. Before they began, Simon con
After the identifications were made, the officers arrested the defendant and the other three suspects and transported them to the Vernon police station. While in custody, the defendant gave a statement in which she indicated that she was present when the robbery and shooting took place. Two of the men taken into custody gave statements implicating the defendant in the robbery and the shooting.
The defendant filed a motion to suppress her inculpatory statement and to suppress the identifications. The trial court denied the defendant’s motion to suppress and ruled that the Terry stop was valid. See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889 (1968). The trial court further concluded that the identification procedure was not unnecessarily or impermissibly suggestive and, on the basis of the totality of the circum
I
The defendant first claims that the trial court improperly refused to suppress her inculpatory statement following her arrest.
At the suppression hearing and in oral argument before this court, the defendant conceded that the initial Terry stop was proper. See United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 229, 105 S. Ct. 675, 83 L. Ed. 2d 604 (1985) (if police have reasonable suspicion grounded in specific and articulable facts that person encountered involved in or wanted in connection with completed felony, then Terry stop permitted to investigate suspicion); State v. Mitchell, 204 Conn. 187, 195-96, 527 A.2d 1168, cert denied, 484 U.S. 927, 108 S. Ct. 293, 98 L. Ed. 2d 252 (1987). We therefore need not address the propriety of the initial stop. See State v. Bowden, 15 Conn. App. 539, 543-44, 545 A.2d 591, cert. denied, 209 Conn. 810, 548 A. 2d 438 (1988). The constitutional issue raised by this stop, therefore, is whether the actions of the police officers exceeded the permissible limits of an investigative detention under Terry v. Ohio, supra, 392 U.S. 1.
“A Terry stop that is justified at its inception can become constitutionally infirm if it lasts longer or becomes more intrusive than necessary to complete
The defendant claims that the investigatory stop became constitutionally infirm and more intrusive than was necessary to complete the investigation for which the stop was made because the police (1) removed her and the other suspects from the vehicle at gunpoint, (2) searched the vehicle, her and the other suspects twice, (3) handcuffed her and the other suspects and placed them in the back of police cruisers, and (4)
The proper way to identify the limits of an investigatory stop is to balance the nature and quality of the intrusion on personal security against the importance of the governmental interests alleged to justify the intrusion. State v. Mitchell, 7 Conn. App. 46, 60, 507 A.2d 1017 (1986), rev’d on other grounds, 204 Conn. 187, 527 A.2d 1168, cert. denied, 484 U.S. 927, 108 S. Ct. 293, 98 L. Ed. 2d 252 (1987), citing United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 105 S. Ct. 675, 83 L. Ed. 604 (1985); see also United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 109 S. Ct. 1581, 104 L. Ed. 2d 1 (1989) (rejecting “least intrusive means” test for Terry stop). Applying this balancing test, we conclude that the scope of the investigative stop of the defendant was reasonable under all of the circumstances. The police made the stop of the vehicle on a report that the defendant and the other occupants may have been involved in a shooting in Vernon. The nature, seriousness and recency of the crimes in this case dictated the need for a continued detention of the defendant and the other suspects. The officers’ actions took into account the safety of the public as well as of themselves. They limited their searches of the defendant and the passenger compartment of the vehicle to searches for weapons. Finally, they acted diligently to pursue a means of investigation, namely, the display of the defendant to six possible witnesses, which was likely to confirm or dispel their suspicion quickly. “[Detaining a suspect to effectuate a viewing by wit
We conclude that, under the circumstances of this case, the actions of the police officers did not exceed the permissible limits of an investigative detention under Terry and that the defendant’s motion to suppress was properly denied.
II
The defendant claims next that the trial court improperly denied her motion to suppress the witnesses’ out-of-court identifications of her because they were unnecessarily suggestive and unreliable. The trial court ruled that the procedure used by the police in this case, though suggestive, was not unnecessarily or impermissibly suggestive, and on the basis of the totality of the circumstances that the identifications were, nevertheless, reliable.
To determine whether an identification procedure violated a defendant’s due process rights, “the required inquiry is made on an ad hoc basis and is two-pronged: first, it must be determined whether the identification procedure was unnecessarily suggestive; and, second, if it is found to have been so, it must be determined whether the identification was nevertheless rehable based on an examination of the ‘totality of the circumstances.’ ” State v. Theriault, 182 Conn. 366, 371-72, 438 A.2d 432 (1980). “The standard by which we review a trial court’s decision to admit evidence of identifications is well settled. [W]e will reverse the trial court’s ruling only where there is abuse of discretion or where
We first address the defendant’s claim that the identification procedure was unnecessarily suggestive. The defendant contends that because she and the other suspects were standing in a line-up, handcuffed behind their backs, surrounded by police officers and police cruisers and next to the Beretta in which they were stopped, the show-up identification procedure was unnecessarily suggestive. She also contends that this suggestiveness was heightened when Vitale was told by the Vernon police officers on the way to the identification scene that the South Windsor police were detaining four black persons who had been stopped in a blue-green Chevrolet Beretta and who were suspected of shooting Michaud. The state does not dispute that the identification was suggestive. See State v. Collette, 199 Conn. 308, 310, 507 A.2d 99 (1986); Williams v. Bronson, 21 Conn. App. 260, 264, 573 A.2d 330 (1990). The state contends, however, that the trial court correctly decided that the identification process, although suggestive, was not unnecessarily so.
“An identification procedure is unnecessarily suggestive only if it gives rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.” State v. White, 229 Conn. 125, 161-62, 640 A.2d 572 (1994). Here, “ ‘the exigencies of the situation justified the [identification] procedure.’ ” State v. Wooten, supra, 227 Conn. 686. We conclude, therefore, that the trial court did not abuse its
Accordingly, we conclude that the trial court properly denied the defendant’s motion to suppress evidence.
The judgment is affirmed.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.
This appeal was taken originally to the Supreme Court. Pursuant to Practice Book § 4023, the Supreme Court transferred the appeal to this court.
The defendant entered this plea conditional on the right to appeal the trial court’s denial of her motion to suppress evidence.
The officers testified that the defendant was not as thoroughly frisked as the male suspects because the South Windsor police department regulations do not permit male officers to pat down female suspects.
Ritter testified at the suppression hearing that at the time he made the call for witnesses, he did not have probable cause to arrest the defendant and the other suspects and that if witnesses could not be provided he was going to have to let them go.
The evidence that the defendant seeks to be suppressed is her statement.
In any event, the trial court properly determined that the identification procedure was rehable. The following factors are to be considered in determining the reliability of an identification procedure: the opportunity of the witness to view the criminal at the time of the crime, the witness’ degree of attention, the accuracy of prior description of the criminal, the level of certainly demonstrated at the confrontation, and the time between the crime and the confrontation. State v. Howard, 221 Conn. 447, 453, 604 A.2d 1294 (1992), citing Mason v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 114, 97 S. Ct. 2243, 53 L. Ed. 2d 140 (1977). “Because the issue of the reliability of an identification involves the constitutional rights of an accused, [however] we are obliged to examine the record scrupulously to determine whether the facts found are adequately supported by the evidence and whether the court’s ultimate inference of reliability was reasonable.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Figueroa, supra, 235 Conn. 155; State v. Johnson, 22 Conn. App. 477, 482-83, 578 A.2d 1085, cert. denied, 216 Conn. 817, 580 A.2d 63 (1990). In this case, the trial court considered the witnesses’ degree of attention during the roadside show-up, the accuracy of their prior descriptions, their levels of certainty, and the length of time between the crimes and the identifications. We are satisfied after our thorough review of the record that the trial court correctly concluded that the identification procedure was rehable under the totality of the circumstances.