People v. Lewis
| Decision Date | 22 March 1999 |
| Docket Number | No. 98SA336,98SA336 |
| Parties | 1999 CJ C.A.R. 1466 The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Robert Lamar LEWIS, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | Colorado Supreme Court |
James J. Peters, District Attorney, Eighteenth Judicial District, John Topolnicki, Deputy District Attorney, Richard H. Bloch Deputy District Attorney, Englewood, Colorado, Attorneys for Plaintiff-Appellant.
David F. Vela, Colorado State Public Defender, Christopher R. Decker, Deputy State Public Defender, Englewood, Colorado, Attorneys for Defendant-Appellee.
In this interlocutory appeal brought pursuant to C.A.R. 4.1(a), the People urge us to overturn a trial court order suppressing the following: (1) evidence from a motel room as the fruits of several unconstitutional searches, (2) an out-of-court show-up identification by a witness as the fruits of an unconstitutional seizure, and (3) subsequent statements made by the defendant as the fruits of an unconstitutional arrest. Upon review of the trial court's findings and the evidentiary record, we affirm the suppression order.
On March 22, 1998, at approximately 3:45 a.m., Barbara Fleming and Julie Nelson were working as clerks at a 7-Eleven store in Englewood, Colorado. Fleming was sitting behind the counter inventorying cigarettes and Nelson was standing on the customer side of the counter near the front entrance, when a man entered the otherwise empty store with a gun in his hand. He ordered Fleming to remain where she was and directed Nelson to give him the bills from the cash register. Nelson complied, giving the man bills totaling about $68.00. Before leaving the store, the man also asked Nelson to give him several packs of Newport cigarettes. At the conclusion of this incident, which had lasted only a few minutes, the employees called the police to report the robbery.
Approximately five minutes later, Officer Jones arrived at the scene. Utilizing the employees' descriptions of the robber as a black male wearing a Colorado Rockies hat and a black coat, and armed with a handgun, the Englewood police dispatcher directed officers to report to the scene.
Sergeant Watson responded to the dispatch. After finding no one on the streets in the direction the robber had reportedly fled, Watson decided to stop in at the 4-U Motel, which was located about half a block north of the 7-Eleven on the same side of the street. While en route to the Motel, Watson heard an updated description of the robber, which described him as a man with an athletic build, between six foot one and six foot three inches in height, wearing a Colorado Rockies hat, dark pants and dark coat, and carrying a silver handgun. Upon arriving at the Motel, Watson first awakened the night manager to inquire as to whether anyone meeting this description had rented a room. The manager responded in the negative. However, as Watson returned to his patrol car, he heard voices coming from the motel courtyard and went to investigate. There, from a distance of approximately fifty feet, he noticed a woman standing outside one of the motel rooms, talking to a tall black male inside the room who was wearing dark clothing. 1 At this point, Watson slowly approached the room. After Watson had covered one-third to one-half of the distance to the room, the woman outside the door noticed him approaching and reached in and closed the door of the motel room, while remaining outside the room.
Watson identified himself as a police officer and directed the woman to open the door. 2 As the woman complied with this request, Watson pulled his handgun and held it in a low ready position. From his vantage point outside the door, Watson saw four black males, one of whom was walking out of the bathroom. One white male and two females were also in the room. Watson testified that all four of the black males appeared to him to fit the description of the suspect. All four appeared to be in their mid- to late-twenties, had athletic builds, and were fairly tall. All wore dark clothing except one, later determined to be the defendant, who was shirtless. At that point, about ten minutes had passed from the time Watson received the first dispatch regarding the 7-Eleven robbery. Testimony later established that the defendant and another of the occupants had rented the room.
Watson then directed the woman who had been outside the door to enter the motel room. From his position outside the room with his gun unholstered and pointed downward, Watson directed all the occupants to kneel and interlock their fingers behind their heads. The occupants complied.
Shortly thereafter, additional officers arrived at the Motel. Watson then directed the occupants of the room to exit one at a time, walking backwards with their fingers interlocked behind their heads. As each person left the room, Officer Herriot patted them down for weapons. This pat-down search yielded no weapons. Herriot then turned the occupants over to other officers who directed the occupants to sit down in the motel parking area. The officers gave the shirtless defendant a blue and white jacket to wear outside.
Once the occupants had been removed from the motel room, Watson and several other officers entered the motel room to make sure that no one else remained inside. The officers immediately spotted some Newport cigarettes lying on a dresser and some dark-colored clothing lying on the floor. After one officer checked the bathroom, Watson heard the toilet running as if it had recently been flushed. Watson then proceeded to investigate the noise. After seeing nothing in the toilet bowl, Watson removed the lid of the toilet tank. Inside, Watson found a silver handgun wrapped inside a rag. In addition to this handgun, the officers' initial search of the room also yielded a Colorado Rockies baseball hat and an unspecified number of dollar bills.
Soon after the occupants were removed from the motel room, 3 Jones brought the 7-Eleven employees, one-at-a-time, to the 4-U Motel for a show-up identification in the motel parking lot. The first clerk, Nelson, did not identify the defendant as the robber. However, the second clerk, Fleming, positively identified the defendant, Robert Lewis, as the robber. Following Fleming's positive identification of the defendant, he was placed under arrest at approximately 4:25 a.m.
After being arrested, Lewis was transported to the police station and placed in a holding cell. Despite the fact that the cell was cold, an officer asked Lewis to remove his shoes and jacket, leaving him shirtless once again. Lewis then fell asleep on the bench of the cell, without a blanket.
Shortly before noon that same day, Lewis was awakened and taken to an interrogation room. Lewis was the last occupant of the room to be interviewed by the police. Notably, none of the interviewees had inculpated Lewis in the robbery.
The trial court found that, when Lewis first appeared in the interview room, he was groggy from sleep and hugging himself in an apparent effort to warm up. However, by the time of his Miranda advisement, Lewis was sufficiently alert to understand the advisements, waiver and subsequent questioning. Detective Forington advised Lewis of his Miranda rights and obtained Lewis' written acknowledgment that he understood them. The Detective then asked Lewis if he wished to waive those rights and speak to him about the robbery at the 7-Eleven. Lewis agreed and acknowledged the waiver in writing.
When asked to explain what had occurred the preceding night, Lewis denied having had any knowledge of the robbery. After the officers provided Lewis with a blanket because he appeared cold, he again denied any involvement. During the interview, Forington told Lewis that the 7-Eleven surveillance tape showed Lewis committing the robbery. 4 Forington repeated this misrepresentation nineteen times during the course of the interview. Forington also told Lewis that one of the clerks had identified him as the robber. Eventually, Lewis gave a statement admitting that he was the robber and detailing the manner in which he and another had committed the robbery and divided the proceeds.
Hours after Lewis' arrest, at about noon, another detective returned to the motel room in order to "make sure ... it was searched thoroughly." However, the detective had no warrant for this second search. According to this detective's testimony "everything was pulled apart" during the course of this search. When she moved the dresser in the room, she found $376.00 hidden underneath it.
Lewis was subsequently charged with two counts of aggravated robbery, 5 conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery, 6 possession of a weapon by a previous offender, 7 criminal impersonation, 8 mandatory sentencing for a crime of violence-deadly weapon, 9 and two counts as a habitual criminal. 10
On May 6, 1998, Lewis filed motions to suppress the tangible evidence seized from his motel room, the out-of-court identification by Fleming, and the statements he made during the course of the interrogation. On July 15 and 16, 1998, the trial court held a hearing to review the defendant's motions and heard testimony from the officers and detectives involved, as well as from the two clerks and the defendant.
On July 31, 1998, the court entered an order finding that Watson lacked the probable cause necessary to justify his warrantless entry into the motel room. Accordingly, the trial court suppressed the evidence seized during the various searches of the motel room. The court also suppressed Fleming's out-of-court identification of the defendant after finding that it was derived from the defendant's illegal seizure and, thus, was inadmissible as a fruit of the poisonous tree. Finally, the trial court suppressed Lewis' stationhouse statements. Although it found that Lewis made these statements voluntarily, the trial court held that they were inadmissible...
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