People v. Riley

• Citation: 517 N.E.2d 520,70 N.Y.2d 523,522 N.Y.S.2d 842
• Parties: , 517 N.E.2d 520 The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Thomas RILEY, Appellant. The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Oscar RODRIGUEZ, Appellant.
• Decision Date: 25 November 1987
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 842

522 N.Y.S.2d 842

70 N.Y.2d 523, 517 N.E.2d 520

The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Thomas RILEY, Appellant.

The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Oscar RODRIGUEZ, Appellant.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Nov. 25, 1987.

Betty L. Atlas and Philip L. Weinstein, New York City, for appellant in the first above-entitled action.

Robert M. Morgenthau, Dist. Atty. (Vija Kemanis and Amyjane Rettew, New York City, of counsel), for respondent in the first above-entitled action.

Donald I. Marlin, New York City, for appellant in the second above-entitled action.

Robert M. Morgenthau, Dist. Atty. (Barbara A. Sheehan and Mark Dwyer, New York City, of counsel), for respondent in the second above-entitled action.

OPINION OF THE COURT

BELLACOSA, Judge.

In two distinct cases, defendants appeal, challenging the admission of allegedly suggestive station house showup identifications and resultant in-court identifications made at trial. The showup identification evidence in each case was suggestive as a matter of law and was erroneously admitted at the respective trials. Independent source evidence was not presented at the suppression hearings in either case as a matter of prosecutorial preference, so the affected in-court identifications were necessarily tainted and erroneously admitted as well.

I. PEOPLE v. RILEY

On March 9, 1984, Ethel Glover was approached by two men with a gun in the hallway of her apartment building. The men took her jewelry, her black pocketbook and a black duffel bag. As the two men ran from the building, Darryl Marant, a friend of Glover, saw the two flee in a blue Lincoln Continental. He noted the license plate number. Glover and Marant immediately notified the police.

A description of the car was communicated over police radio and two officers in the vicinity of Glover's apartment spotted a car matching the broadcast description. The officers approached and ordered defendant Riley and his codefendant Jones out of the car. A frisk revealed an imitation revolver and some jewelry. The police also recovered two black bags from the car.

In the meantime, Glover and Marant, standing outside the apartment house waiting for the police to arrive, saw a police officer approaching. They stopped him and, while he was writing down the report, a call came over the radio indicating that the police had just caught "the two guys". The officer then drove Glover and Marant to the station house. As they pulled up, Glover saw two officers get out of a car holding two black bags. The officers held up the bags and asked Glover if they were hers. She said they were.

Inside the station house, Riley and Jones were being held in a room while their arrests were being processed. The recovered items were laid out on a table near the suspects. The police ushered Glover into the processing room, where she identified the stolen property and the gun. The police then asked her if there was anyone in the room she recognized. She pointed to Riley and Jones, the only nonuniformed persons in the room. Marant subsequently made the same identification under identical circumstances.

At the Wade hearing, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149, neither the victim nor the eyewitness testified. Based on the sole testimony of the arresting officer, the trial court ruled that the showup identifications were reliable because they were made soon after the crime took place. At trial, evidence of the showup identification was introduced and the victim and eyewitness were also permitted to make in-court identifications of the defendant. Defendant was convicted and the Appellate Division affirmed, stating, "in view of the overwhelming evidence of guilt, reversal is not warranted". (127 A.D.2d 458, 511 N.Y.S.2d 270.)

II. PEOPLE v. RODRIGUEZ

Shortly after midnight on May 18, 1983, defendant Rodriguez and two others, Garcia and Laffman, hailed a taxicab in New Jersey and directed it into New York City. When it came time for the trio to exit the cab, they overpowered the driver Malik, and forced him at knife point into the back seat. They subsequently drove the cab around Manhattan, alternately threatening, beating and stabbing Malik in the leg when he was unable to produce more than $35. They then locked Malik in the trunk of the cab and, over the next three hours, drove to various banks attempting to get money with Malik's credit card before finally returning to New Jersey. Malik pried the trunk open enough to stick his fingers out and get the attention of a motorist who alerted the police. A high speed chase ensued, during which one of the pursuing officers had an extended opportunity to observe Laffman in the back seat of the cab. At 4:05a.m., the participants abandoned the cab. Malik was freed from the trunk, taken to a hospital for treatment of the stab wounds and then to the Bloomfield, New Jersey, State Police Barracks.

Malik was present when the detective interviewing him was informed by another officer that two suspects were being brought to the barracks. One of the transport officers was the officer involved in the chase and he conclusively identified Laffman. When Laffman and Rodriguez arrived, the interviewing detective had Malik come to the door of his office where they could be seen in the nearby lobby. Malik simultaneously identified them as two of the participants in the crime. The two handcuffed suspects, in civilian clothes, were accompanied only by two uniformed officers. The showup identification occurred three to four hours after the criminal episode had ended.

A pretrial Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149, supra, hearing was held to determine the admissibility of the showup identification. Testimony was given by the officer who identified Laffman in the chase and by the detective who was present at the showup. The detective testified that he decided on his own not to arrange a lineup. Malik did not testify at the hearing. At the conclusion of the hearing, the court found that no impropriety tainted the showup; that there were no acts of suggestiveness by the police; that there was sufficient proximity in time and place between the crime and the showup to hold that the showup was justifiable; that the prompt showup ensured that individuals unrelated to the crime would not be improperly detained and minimized the possibility of irreparable misidentification.

Evidence of the showup and of an in-court identification by the victim taxi driver Malik were admitted at the jury trial. Rodriguez was convicted of robbery in the first degree, robbery in the second degree, kidnapping in the second degree, and assault in the second degree. The Appellate Division affirmed.

III. THE PRECINCT SHOWUPS

Showup identifications, by their nature suggestive, are strongly disfavored but are permissible if exigent circumstances require immediate identification (People v. Rivera, 22 N.Y.2d 453, 293 N.Y.S.2d 271, 239 N.E.2d 873), or if the suspects are captured at or near the crime scene and can be viewed by the witness immediately (People v. Love, 57 N.Y.2d 1023, 457 N.Y.S.2d 474, 443 N.E.2d 948). Generally, a showup identification will be inadmissible when "there was no effort to make the least provision for a reliable identification and the combined result of the procedures employed" establish that the showup was unduly suggestive (People v. Adams, 53 N.Y.2d 241, 249, 440 N.Y.S.2d 902, 423 N.E.2d 379).

Unreliability of the most extreme kind infects showup identifications of arrested persons held at police stations, and the evidence will be inadmissible as a matter of law unless exigency warrants otherwise.

In Adams, this court referred to the indicia of the precinct showup as the "ideal of suggestibility" (id., at 249, 440 N.Y.S.2d 902, 423 N.E.2d 379). The indicia were multiple witnesses, who had been informed that the robbers were in custody, simultaneously viewing at a station house multiple suspects who were physically restrained by uniformed police officers with no other persons dressed in plain clothes present, at a time and place which were not proximate to the crime, when there was no evidence that a lineup would have been unduly burdensome (id., at 248-249, 440 N.Y.S.2d 902, 423 N.E.2d 379). While Adams had two additional exploitive factors not present in the instant cases...