People v. Huertas
| Decision Date | 03 April 1990 |
| Citation | 554 N.Y.S.2d 444,553 N.E.2d 992,75 N.Y.2d 487 |
| Parties | , 553 N.E.2d 992 The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Alfonso HUERTAS, Also Known as Alphonso Huertas, Appellant. |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
At issue on this appeal is the admission into evidence, on the People's direct case, of the complaining witness's account of a description of her assailant given to the police shortly after she was raped. Defendant contends that this testimony was inadmissible hearsay, as well as impermissible bolstering of the complainant's in-court testimony through introduction of a prior consistent statement. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the challenged testimony was properly admitted for a nonhearsay purpose.
According to her testimony, the complainant encountered defendant at about 11:15 P.M. on March 27, 1986, as she was walking home from her sister-in-law's house in Brooklyn. She first saw defendant standing on the sidewalk when she reached the corner of Willoughby and Tompkins Avenues and, after she turned the corner onto Willoughby, she noticed that defendant was walking parallel to her on the opposite side of the street. Defendant then crossed the street and walked directly toward her with his hand in his pocket. When they were face-to-face under a streetlight, defendant drew a gun from his pocket, and pushed it into her side. She described the illumination provided by the streetlights during this time as "bright" or "decent."
Pleading with defendant not to hurt her, the complainant asked, Defendant responded that he would kill her unless she "shut up" and pushed her forcibly to a dark tunnel-like overhang attached to a school building. There, he tore her T-shirt and touched her "all over." In answer to defendant's demand for money or jewelry, she offered him her silver bracelets, but defendant did not take them.
Instead defendant pushed her out from the overhang, where she had been unable to see him, to the back of the school playground. Although she characterized the light in the playground as dim, she testified that she was only a few inches from defendant and able to perceive his features. Forcing her to lie on her back on some playground equipment, defendant had her undress and raped her.
When someone approached through the playground, defendant ordered her not to scream, and he dressed and fled. The complainant herself dressed and ran from the playground in a different direction. Within a few blocks, at approximately midnight, she encountered three police officers to whom she reported that she had been raped. The officers drove her around the area of the school, but they did not find her assailant. She was then taken to Woodhull Hospital, where a physical examination was performed; testing of slides taken during this examination revealed the presence of spermatozoa. At the hospital, she provided a description of her assailant to the police officers. That account is the focus of the present appeal.
Defendant was not arrested until April 8, 1986--12 days after the rape. That evening, the complainant saw defendant leave a house near the corner of Willoughby and Tompkins Avenues, and enter a pool hall. She found a nearby police officer, who arrested defendant after she reported that she had just seen the man who had raped her 12 days earlier.
Before trial, defense counsel made a motion for a prospective ruling concerning the testimony to be given by the complainant and the police officer witnesses. Specifically, counsel requested that neither the complainant nor the officers be permitted to testify that she had identified defendant to the police, and that the police officers be prohibited from testifying that they had arrested defendant as the result of a conversation with the complainant. In addition--the basis of defendant's claim on this appeal--counsel argued that the complainant should not be allowed to testify that she had given any description of defendant to police. Counsel contended that such testimony would constitute "bolstering, plain and simple."
The prosecutor agreed that there would be no police testimony concerning what the complainant had said to the police witnesses. She argued, however, that it was proper for the complainant herself to testify that when she had spotted defendant on the street 12 days after the rape, she had gone to the police and told them. The court agreed with the People on this point, and defendant makes no appellate claim about the propriety of that testimony.
As to the complainant's testimony about the description she gave to the police immediately after the rape, the prosecutor urged that it would be admissible because it bore upon the accuracy and reliability of the identification of defendant, and was a factor mentioned in the standard charge on identification in a one-witness identification case. The court ruled that such testimony was admissible, and at trial--over defendant's objection--the complainant testified on direct examination that she had described her assailant to the police that night and gave the details of her description.
Defendant did not take the stand, but his girlfriend testified on his behalf that on the date of the rape, defendant--unlike the rapist, as the complainant described him--had a noticeable moustache and goatee and fairly full hair, which she trimmed just before he was arrested. Based on this testimony, and on his cross-examination of the complainant, counsel argued in summation (as he had in opening) that the identification of defendant as the rapist was mistaken. In particular, counsel contended that the complainant had only "a matter of seconds" to observe her attacker's features during the incident, under poor lighting conditions, and that the stress of the event had undermined her "ability to recall and to really get a picture in [her] mind of what the person who did this to [her] looked like." Counsel argued that although the complainant had later convinced herself that defendant was the rapist, her certainty that she had correctly identified defendant only cast doubt on her reliability as a witness, given that she could not have formed an accurate mental impression of defendant during the crime. Counsel urged that the in-court identification was merely "ceremonial."
In a precharge conference at the close of all the evidence, defense counsel requested that the court give "an identification charge as in the C.J.I." The court granted that request, and gave the jury the pattern charge on the evaluation of identification evidence in a one-witness case, including the section intended for use where the trial evidence includes testimony of a description given by the witness to the police, as follows: (1 CJI[NY] § 10.01, at 586.)
Although counsel had not earlier requested that this portion of the C.J.I. instruction be omitted, following the charge he objected to its inclusion, on the ground that it was error for the court to tell the jurors that they were to consider the description at all, because it had been error to admit it in the first instance. The court denied his request for a curative instruction to that effect.
We now affirm the Appellate Division ord...
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