Alahad v. State

• Docket Number: SC2021-1450
• Decision Date: 01 June 2023
• Citation: Alahad v. State, 362 So.3d 190 (Fla. 2023)
• Parties: Zavion ALAHAD, Petitioner, v. STATE of Florida, Respondent.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

362 So.3d 190

Zavion ALAHAD, Petitioner, v. STATE of Florida, Respondent.

No. SC2021-1450

Supreme Court of Florida.

June 1, 2023

Carey Haughwout, Public Defender, and Christine C. Geraghty, Assistant Public Defender, Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, West Palm Beach, Florida, for Petitioner

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, Henry C. Whitaker, Solicitor General, Jeffrey Paul DeSousa, Chief Deputy Solicitor General, and David M. Costello, Assistant Solicitor General, Tallahassee, Florida, for Respondent

LABARGA, J.

We have for review the decision of the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Alahad v. State , 326 So. 3d 1142(Fla. 4th DCA2021).In Alahad , the district court affirmed the trial court's denial of Zavion Alahad's motion to suppress eyewitness identifications resulting from an out-of-court police procedure, and in doing so, applied the abuse of discretion standard of review to the trial court's ruling on the eyewitness's out-of-court identification.Id. at 1143.Alahad expressly and directly conflicts with a decision of this Court in Walton v. State , 208 So. 3d 60(Fla.2016), and with a decision of another district court in McWilliams v. State , 306 So. 3d 131(Fla. 3d DCA2020); in each of the conflict casesthe court applied a de novo standard of review to trial court rulings on the same issue.Moreover, as we will explain, this Court's Walton decision was itself inconsistent with previous decisions of our Court on the conflict question.We have jurisdiction.Seeart. V, § 3(b)(3), Fla. Const.

For the reasons discussed below, we hold that the proper standard of review is abuse of discretion review.We also agree with the Fourth District's analysis of the merits under that standard.Consequently, we approve Alahad ; clarify our Court's inconsistent case law in this area; and disapprove McWilliams to the extent that it applied de novo review to trial court rulings on motions to suppress out-of-court identifications.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Alahad was convicted of second-degree murder and attempted robbery with a firearm.Alahad , 326 So. 3d at 1143.Alahad had been outside a convenience store around noon when Loretta Matthews, the eyewitness, arrived with her boyfriend, the victim.While Matthews waited in her car, the victim exited the store and was confronted by Alahad.Matthews first saw the victim and Alahad when they were ten to fifteen feet away from the car.Alahad grabbed the victim and demanded his money, and during the struggle the two reached the hood of the car.The victim fell on his back, and Alahad shot and killed him.Alahad ran from the scene.

Matthews told police that the shooter was "a black male, approximately 5 [feet] 10 [inches], 125 pounds, skinny, in his twenties or younger, and [ ] wearing a gray sweatshirt"; that she"got a good look at" the shooter's face; and that if she saw the shooter again, she would be able to fully identify him.Id. at 1144.She also showed police the area where she saw the shooter run.Later that afternoon, a woman reported to police that Alahad, whom she identified by name, had run through her yard with a firearm and was currently in a nearby apartment.

At the apartment, police found Alahad and several other men.Alahad and Adrian Nixon, one of the other men, both matched Matthews's description.Alahad was "a black male, 5 [feet] 9 [inches], seventeen years old, and weighed 150 pounds."Id.Nixon was "twenty-five years old, 5 [feet] 8 [inches] or 5 [feet] 9 [inches], and very thin but muscular."Id.Both also had facial markings.Nixon had two teardrop tattoos on the right side of his face, and Alahad had a "teardrop-shaped birthmark or scar" in the same place.Id.

About three hours after the shooting, the police contacted Matthews and arranged to conduct a show-up, explaining that they would show her "a guy from [her] description."Id.(alteration in original).¹Because of the identifying information from the woman who reported Alahad running through her yard, Alahad was the only person shown to Matthews at the show-up.Matthews identified Alahad as the shooter from approximately thirty feet away.She stated that she was "pretty positive" Alahad was the shooter, and when asked if she was one hundred percent sure, she replied "yes."Id.

Claiming a violation of his due process rights, Alahad moved before trial to suppress Matthews's out-of-court identification at the show-up and any in-court identification by her.Alahad argued that the identifications resulted from an unnecessarily suggestive show-up that gave rise to a substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.At the suppression hearing, Matthews testified about her view during the shooting and what police told her before the show-up:

When the shooter first approached the victim near [Matthews's] passenger door, [she]"couldn't really see the face too much then but [she] saw clothes until they[moved] around the car."When he ran up to the victim, the shooter had the hoodie covering his hair, and she initially only saw him from the side.She saw the shooter's face when the victim fell to the ground.She saw his whole face "straight"; he was facing the untinted front window of her car.She explained that, when the shooter fired the gun, "I sat back in the seat and observed what was -- what should be my next move.I was scared to -- it happened so fast that my first thought really was to pay attention to who was doing this to him and I paid attention to the face."She estimated that she saw his face for three or four minutes, "[p]robably more," but she was not sure.It was "[n]ot just a piece, not just the side," but "the whole face," and she"concentrated on it."

[She] testified that, prior to the show-up, the law enforcement officers told her that they found someone who matched the description that she gave, and she initially denied that the officers told her that they found him in the area where she said he went.However, after being confronted with her prior deposition testimony, she stated that the officers told her that they found him in the area to which she said the shooter ran.

Id. at 1145(several alterations in original).

Two of the detectives involved in the show-up, Detective Almanzar and Detective Novak, testified at the suppression hearing.Detective Novak testified that he may have told Matthews that the suspect matched her description, and Detective Almanzar testified that he did tell her this information.However, Detective Novak testified that he did not tell Matthews that Alahad was found in the area where she said the shooter ran, and Detective Almanzar testified that he did not recall doing so.

Matthews further testified that at the show-up, the suspect stood with an officer on each side of him.She also stated that she could not remember whether he was wearing handcuffs.Detective Almanzar testified that she did not hesitate when she identified the suspect as the shooter, and that she stated that she believed the shooter had a tear-shaped tattoo under his right eye.In her testimony, Matthews admitted making this statement at the show-up; she did not tell it to police in her initial description.The trial court denied the motion to suppress.²

On appeal to the Fourth District, Alahad raised multiple issues, including that the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress Matthews's out-of-court identification.In setting forth the standard of review applicable to a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress, the district court stated that "appellate courts must accord a presumption of correctness to the trial court's determination of the historical facts, but must independently review mixed questions of law and fact that ultimately determine the constitutional issues arising in the context of the Fourth Amendment."Id. at 1146(quotingWalton , 208 So. 3d at 65(citation omitted)).

However, despite setting forth this mixed standard of review, the district court further stated that "[t]he decision to admit a pre-trial identification is within the sound discretion of the trial court and the decision should be overturned only upon a showing of abuse of discretion."Id.(quotingWalker v. State , 776 So. 2d 943, 945(Fla. 4th DCA2000) ).

Although it noted that the trial court's determination was "likely a close call,"the district court affirmed "[d]ue to the abuse of discretion standard of review."Id. at 1147.Alahad argued that the show-up was unnecessarily suggestive because (1) Alahad "was in handcuffs and flanked by two officers,"(2) police told Matthews that Alahad matched her description and that he was found in the area she saw him run to, and (3) Alahad was the only person included in the show-up even though Nixon also matched Matthews's description.Id. at 1146-47.

The district court rejected Alahad's first argument, stating that standing alone, the presence of officers or handcuffs is not enough to make a show-up unnecessarily suggestive.Seeid. at 1147(citingState v. Jackson , 744 So. 2d 545, 548(Fla. 5th DCA1999) ).Declining to hold that "no reasonable judge would rule otherwise,"the district court held on Alahad's second argument that the show-up was not unnecessarily suggestive from the police's statement that the suspect matched Matthews's description.Id. at 1147-48.The district court reasoned that the statement that Alahad "matche[d] the description" was vaguer than the statements police made in cases where courts found procedures unnecessarily suggestive.Id. at 1147(citingAnderson v. State , 946 So. 2d 579, 582(Fla. 4th DCA2006);Smith v. State , 362 So. 2d 417, 418-19(Fla. 1st DCA1978) ).

Noting that Alahad's third argument presented "the most troubling fact,"the district court still held that "[r]easonable minds could differ" as to whether the police's failure to include Nixon in the show-up rendered the procedure unnecessarily suggestive.Id.However, the district court reasoned that the...