State v. Kaneaiakala

• Decision Date: 01 October 2019
• Docket Number: SCWC-16-0000647
• Citation: 450 P.3d 761
• Parties: STATE of Hawai‘i, Respondent/Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Bronson KANEAIAKALA, Petitioner/Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Hawaii Supreme Court

450 P.3d 761

STATE of Hawai‘i, Respondent/Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.Bronson KANEAIAKALA, Petitioner/Defendant-Appellant.

SCWC-16-0000647

Supreme Court of Hawai‘i.

OCTOBER 1, 2019

Michael J. Park, Honolulu, for petitioner

Loren J. Thomas, Honolulu, for respondent

RECKTENWALD, C.J., NAKAYAMA, McKENNA, POLLACK, AND WILSON, JJ.

OPINION OF THE COURT BY McKENNA, J.

I. Introduction

This appeal arises from an impermissibly suggestive field show-up identification. Midday on Saturday, January 24, 2015, Mari Laraway ("Laraway") was walking with her minor son from their apartment building on Date Street to her car. As she walked alongside the apartment building, she saw a man crouching beneath the window of a ground-floor apartment. Once at her car, she looked up and saw the man entering the apartment through a window. Laraway called 911 to report the man’s activity.

Honolulu Police Department ("HPD") officers later found Petitioner/Defendant-Apellant Bronson Kaneaiakala ("Kaneaiakala") naked in the laundry room of the apartment building with items missing from the apartment, and they arrested him. Two-and-a-half hours after she had seen a man enter the ground-floor apartment through a window, Laraway met the officers on the street outside the apartment building. Kaneaiakala was shirtless, handcuffed, and standing beside a police car, surrounded by police. Laraway looked at Kaneaiakala and told the officers she was "almost positive" Kaneaiakala was the man she saw at the window earlier. After she had identified Kaneaiakala as the suspect, Laraway was asked to complete a suspect description form and she gave the officers a written statement.

The State of Hawai‘i ("State") charged Kaneaiakala with one count of Burglary in the First Degree in violation of Hawai‘i Revised Statutes ("HRS") § 708-810(1)(c) (2014).¹ Before trial, Kaneaiakala filed a motion to suppress Laraway’s show-up identification.

The Circuit Court of the First Circuit ("circuit court")² conducted a hearing on the motion to suppress. The State stipulated that the procedure employed by HPD was impermissibly suggestive. The circuit court found Laraway’s identification nonetheless sufficiently reliable and denied the motion. At jury trial, the State presented testimony from Laraway, one of the residents of the burglarized apartment, and two police officers. The jury found Kaneaiakala guilty as charged.

On appeal, the Intermediate Court of Appeals ("ICA") affirmed the conviction and, in a summary disposition order, held that the circuit court did not err in concluding that Laraway’s identification was sufficiently reliable for admission in evidence and consideration by the jury. State v. Kaneaiakala, CAAP-16-0000647 at 2-5, 2017 WL 5151443 (App. Nov. 7, 2017) (SDO). On certiorari, Kaneaiakala argues Laraway’s identification should have been suppressed because it was unreliable and tainted by HPD’s show-up procedure.

As Justice Brennan stated in 1967, "[t]he vagaries of eyewitness identification are well-known; the annals of criminal law are rife with instances of mistaken identification." United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 228, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967). In the half-century since Wade, science on human memory has advanced even further, and it has become widely accepted that unreliable eyewitness identifications are the leading cause of wrongful convictions.

Recognizing this, in State v. Cabagbag, 127 Hawai‘i 302, 313-14, 277 P.3d 1027, 1038-39 (2012), we held that when the trustworthiness or reliability of eyewitness identification is central to a case, trial courts must give a specific jury instruction when requested by the defense to focus the jury’s attention on the reliability of the identification. 127 Hawai‘i at 313-14, 277 P.3d at 1038-39. We also proposed a model jury instruction to address reliability concerns with eyewitness identifications, including thirteen reliability factors that a judge should consider including in a jury instruction. 127 Hawai‘i at 314, 277 P.3d at 1039.

By ruling that trial courts no longer had discretion to reject defense requests for a jury instruction regarding the trustworthiness of eyewitness identifications, we abrogated the holding in State v. Padilla, 57 Haw. 150, 552 P.2d 357 (1976), that a trial court had discretion to decide whether to give such an instruction.

While overruling Padilla on that point in Cabagbag, we did not address another holding of Padilla. In Padilla, we also adopted a test set out by the United States Supreme Court in Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188, 93 S.Ct. 375, 34 L.Ed.2d 401 (1972), for trial courts to apply to determine whether an eyewitness identification procured through an impermissibly suggestive procedure should be admissible in evidence. We held that when an eyewitness identification is procured through an impermissibly suggestive procedure, the trial court must evaluate five factors under the totality of the circumstances to determine whether the identification is nonetheless sufficiently reliable to be admitted in evidence. Padilla, 57 Haw. at 154, 552 P.2d at 360.

The five factors are: (1) the opportunity of the witness to view the defendant at the time of the crime, (2) the witness's degree of attention, (3) the accuracy of the witness's prior description of the defendant, (4) the level of certainty demonstrated by the witness at the identification, and (5) the length of time between the crime and the identification. Id.

The thirteen factors we held in Cabagbag that a judge should consider including in a jury instruction regarding reliability of eyewitness identifications include the five factors delineated in Padilla for a judge to consider in addressing admissibility.

After Cabagbag, in State v. Cabinatan, 132 Hawai‘i 63, 76, 319 P.3d 1071, 1084 (2014), we noted that although field show-up identifications can be admissible, they are inherently suggestive. We cited to various United States Supreme Court opinions criticizing identifications of only one person presented as a possible perpetrator of a crime, including Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 302, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967) abrogated on other grounds by Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314, 107 S.Ct. 708, 93 L.Ed.2d 649 (1987), which had stated that "[t]he practice of showing suspects singly to persons for the purpose of identification, and not as part of a lineup, has been widely condemned." Cabinatan, 132 Hawai‘i at 83, 319 P.3d at 1091. We held that under the circumstances of that case, where the eyewitness’s testimony suggested her identification of the defendant in a show-up might have been influenced by suggestive procedures, even under the pre- Cabagbag discretionary standard, the trial court abused its discretion in denying a defense request for a jury instruction regarding the inherent suggestiveness of show-up identifications. Cabinatan, 132 Hawai‘i at 77, 319 P.3d at 1085. But because the issue before us was the need for a jury instruction and not admissibility, we did not address whether trial courts must also consider additional factors when addressing the admissibility of show-up identifications.

A defendant is denied due process of law, however, when the procedure used to obtain an eyewitness identification admitted at trial is "unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable mistaken identification." State v. Masaniai, 63 Haw. 354, 362, 628 P.2d 1018, 1024 (1981) (citations omitted). In this case, we therefore address whether, in determining whether an eyewitness identification procured through an impermissibly suggestive procedure is nonetheless sufficiently reliable under the totality of the circumstances to be admitted in evidence, a trial judge must also consider factors we have held the judge must consider including in a jury instruction regarding the reliability of the eyewitness identification.

In doing so, we set forth new rules that expressly overrule precedent upon which parties have regulated their conduct; therefore, our holdings will only apply prospectively to events occurring after publication of this decision, i.e., to admissibility determinations or jury instructions given after the date of this opinion. See State v. Auld, 136 Hawai‘i 244, 256, 361 P.3d 471, 483 (2015) (citations omitted) ("The ‘paradigm case’ warranting a prospective-only application of a new rule arises ‘when a court expressly overrules a precedent upon which the contest would otherwise be decided differently and by which the parties may previously have regulated their conduct.’ ").

Factors to be applied in addressing eyewitness and show-up identifications should not differ based on whether it is a judge or jury considering them for purposes of admissibility or, if admitted into evidence, for purposes of determining reliability. As further discussed below, and to summarize, we therefore prospectively hold that trial courts must, at minimum, consider any relevant factors set out in the Hawai‘i Pattern Jury Instructions--Criminal ("Hawai‘i Standard Instructions" or "HAWJIC") governing eyewitness and show-up identification testimony,³ as may be amended, as well as any other relevant factors that may be set out in binding precedent in addressing whether, under a totality of circumstances, an impermissibly suggestive eyewitness or show-up identification is nonetheless sufficiently reliable to be admissible in evidence.

We also prospectively hold that in addressing the admissibility of a suggestive eyewitness or show-up identification, trial courts must also consider the effect of any suggestiveness on the reliability of the identification in determining whether it should be admitted into evidence.

Finally, we prospectively hold that when an eyewitness or show-up identification is central to a case or has been procured through a suggestive eyewitness or show-up identification, the jury must also be instructed to consider the impact of any suggestive procedure on the reliability of the eyewitness or show-up...