Saavedra v. State
| Decision Date | 30 January 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 165, 2019,165, 2019 |
| Citation | 225 A.3d 364 |
| Parties | Elder SAAVEDRA, Defendant Below, Appellant, v. STATE of Delaware, Plaintiff Below, Appellee. |
| Court | Supreme Court of Delaware |
Michael W. Modica, Esquire, Wilmington, Delaware, for Appellant Saavedra.
Brian L. Arban, Esquire Department of Justice, Wilmington, Delaware, Appellee State of Delaware.
Before SEITZ, Chief Justice; VALIHURA and TRAYNOR, Justices.
A Superior Court jury convicted Elder Saavedra of the first-degree murder of Lester Mateo and possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony. The court sentenced Saavedra to life in prison for the murder conviction and ten years in prison for the weapons charge.
In this direct appeal, Saavedra argues that his convictions should be overturned because of the prosecutor's misconduct and the trial court's erroneous admission of evidence during his trial. His principal complaint relates to the chief investigating officer's narrative testimony during the prosecution's display of numerous video clips that, it claimed, showed Saavedra exiting a nightclub, getting behind the wheel of a large sport utility vehicle, and driving that SUV into Mateo, killing him. He claims that the prosecution used the officer's narration as a vehicle for the admission of improper identification testimony and otherwise inadmissible hearsay.
Saavedra also contends that the trial court abused its discretion by allowing another officer to offer lay opinion testimony under D.R.E. 701 regarding the meaning of a phrase uttered in Spanish by Saavedra at the scene, when, according to Saavedra, the opinion was not "rationally based on the witness's perception." And finally, Saavedra asserts that the prosecutor engaged in misconduct when he asked a question that implied that the witness—despite his denial—had identified Saavedra in a video clip during a pretrial interview.
Although Saavedra has raised some legitimate concerns regarding the officer's narrative testimony that accompanied the important video evidence, we disagree with his conclusion that the admission of that testimony, much of which came in without objection and was the subject of two curative instructions, is grounds for reversal. Nor are we persuaded that the challenged opinion testimony and the prosecutor's question that purportedly implied a fact that was not supported by the evidence affected the fairness of Saavedra's trial. Therefore, we affirm.
On the evening of March 25, 2017, Lester Mateo, accompanied by several friends, drove a Cadillac Escalade belonging to a friend's sister to a nightclub in Bear, Delaware called El Nuevo Rodeo. As the evening passed into the early morning hours of March 26, Elder Saavedra, who was at the club with his brother, Carlos, and his cousin, Brian, started a scuffle on the club's dance floor by shoving one of Mateo's friends, Yosimar DeLeon-Lopez. The nightclub's security staff quickly moved to separate Saavedra and his friends from DeLeon-Lopez, Mateo, and their friends, escorting the latter group out the club's front door while Saavedra's group was escorted out a side door. As DeLeon-Lopez was leaving the club through its main door, he saw the person who had pushed him on the dance floor and heard him say: "Guatemala"—an apparent reference to Mateo's group—"is going to die."1 DeLeon-Lopez later identified Saavedra in a photographic lineup conducted at the police station as the man who pushed him and confirmed that identification at trial. Two other witnesses—Irwin Ramirez-Recinos and Fernando Castillo de Leon—also identified Saavedra as the person who started the scuffle on the dance floor. Witnesses described Saavedra's demeanor variously as "insult[ing],"2 "mad and drunk,"3 and itching for a fight.
After the altercation, Mateo, who was his group's designated driver, walked hurriedly and then ran to the Escalade, got in, and drove it to the edge of the parking lot near the east end of the building. For reasons that are unclear, Mateo then got out of the vehicle, with the engine running and the front driver's side door open, and began to walk toward the nightclub's entrance. But he didn't get far. Almost immediately, two individuals from Saavedra's group, Brian Saavedra and Carlos Saavedra, began to chase him, belts and buckles in hand. A doorman came to Mateo's aide by spraying the two pursuers with pepper spray. But Mateo was not out of harm's way. Another individual, ultimately identified by Madelyn Aramiz as Elder Saavedra, had hopped into the running Escalade and now pointed it in Mateo's direction. Try as he might to evade the speeding Escalade, Mateo was unable to get away. Saavedra caused the Escalade to leap a curb and then accelerated, ramming the vehicle violently into the fleeing Mateo resulting in his death from blunt force injuries.
The police arrived at the scene within a matter of minutes. Detective Scott Mauchin of the Delaware State Police, who was designated as the chief investigating officer, arrived approximately one hour later and began the process of identifying and interviewing witnesses and gathering surveillance video evidence, which, as will be discussed in detail later, was extensive.
One of the witnesses who came forward was Madelyn Aramiz. Ms. Aramiz had been at El Nuevo Rodeo that evening since it opened at 9:00, but in the ensuing four hours she had only "one drink and that was it."4 Around 1:00 a.m., Aramiz "noticed the security guards running to an area,"5 which she interpreted as some sort of trouble brewing so, being tired anyway, she decided to leave the club and wait in her cousin's van for her cousin who was dancing. Shortly after entering the van, she heard what she described as a "scuffle" behind it.6 She looked out and noticed a person walking "alongside ... [a] black car."7 She watched from two parking spaces away as that person, who "looked spooked,"8 turned to run. But, as she put it, "the truck floored it and ran right in [to him]."9 Her conclusion that "the truck floored it" was based on how loud the engine sounded.10
Aramiz immediately looked at the person who was driving the truck.11 She watched as the driver opened the door of the truck.12 At trial, she described what she saw next:
I saw him jump out. I saw him jump out of the driver's side. And then he proceeded to run. But he stood directly in front of the van that I was sitting in pretty much. And he stood there. He had a belt wrapped around his hand with a big buckle. He stood there for a few seconds. And then he kind of smirked and did a little hippity-hop. And then he said "la migra." And then he ran off.13
Aramiz waited for a security guard to arrive before getting out of the van. She told the guard that "there was someone lying there [and] that he was probably dead."14 She then called 911. She spoke to the police initially at the scene, but it is unclear what she told them at the time.
We do know, however, that she met with the police later that week and picked a photograph of Elder Saavedra out of a photographic lineup, identifying him as the person she saw getting out of the vehicle after it struck Lester Mateo.
Although the police secured these identifications of Elder Saavedra during the week following Mateo's death—by Yosimar DeLeon-Lopez, Irwin Ramirez-Recinos, and Fernando Castillo de Leon as the instigator of the dance-floor altercation and by Madelyn Aramiz as the driver of the Cadillac Escalade that caused Mateo's death—Saavedra was not arrested for several weeks following the crime. That is because Saavedra left Delaware ostensibly to evade detection and arrest. According to cell-tower location information obtained through a search warrant, Saavedra's cell phone connected to a cell tower in North Carolina approximately seven hours after the collision in the dance club parking lot. A day and a half later, according to the cell phone call detail records, Saavedra was in New York City.
Other evidence tended to show that Saavedra was fleeing the consequences of his actions at El Nuevo Rodeo. For instance, having never missed a paycheck in the three and one-half years during which he worked for a local commercial office furniture company, Saavedra "stopped showing up for work" on March 27 according to the company's owner, leaving two paychecks unclaimed.15
A former girlfriend of Saavedra's, Mariela Conejo-Cintura, provided additional insight into his activities and state of mind in the wake of Mateo's death. Conejo-Cintura was in El Nuevo Rodeo and saw Saavedra "fighting with [the] friends, family of the boy- - the guy,"16 but she didn't see how the fight started. She had no direct contact with Saavedra until later that morning after El Nuevo Rodeo had closed. As she was driving home after dropping off friends, Saavedra called her on her cell phone. Saavedra told Conejo-Cintura that he needed her help and implored her to come to his apartment across the river in Swedesboro, New Jersey. She complied, and when she arrived at the apartment, she found Saavedra acting in a "strange" manner, "mad" and "nervous."17 Saavedra left the area of the Swedesboro apartment without telling Conejo-Cintura what exactly it was that he needed, and she did not ask because, according to her, "when you ask [questions of Saavedra], he gets really upset and comes at people."18
"[D]ays later"19 —the record does not say how many—Conejo-Cintura returned to Saavedra's Swedesboro apartment at Saavedra's request, but he was not there—nor was his bed, furniture, or living room table. The apartment was otherwise in disarray with "a lot of stuff ... and boxes open everywhere."20 This surprised Conejo-Cintura, because she always knew Saavedra to keep a clean, orderly, and well-furnished apartment.
The next time Conejo-Cintura saw Saavedra was at her home in Delaware. After asking Conejo-Cintura if she had heard any rumors about what happened that night at El Nuevo Rodeo, Saavedra...
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