State v. Betancourth
| Decision Date | 08 December 2016 |
| Docket Number | No. 32683-7-III,32683-7-III |
| Court | Washington Court of Appeals |
| Parties | STATE OF WASHINGTON, Respondent, v. RAY LENY BETANCOURTH, Appellant. |
IT IS ORDERED, the motion for reconsideration of this court's decision of December 8, 2016, is hereby denied.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED the opinion filed December 8, 2016, is amended as follows:
On page forty seven after the first full paragraph add the following:
Betancourth argues that, by adopting the invalidity correction corollary, this court creates a good faith exception to the warrant requirement, an exception that the Supreme Court refuses to embrace. We disagree. We do not affirm the denial of the motion to suppress on the basis that the law enforcement officers obtained the district court warrant in good faith. We permit the use of the phone records because the officers later obtained a valid superior court warrant. Retrieving additional copies of the phone records served no purpose.
PANEL: Judges Fearing, Siddoway, Pennell
FOR THE COURT:
/s/_________
FEARING, C.J. — A jury found Ray Betancourth guilty of second degree felony murder and first degree assault. We reverse and remand for a new trial Betancourth's conviction for second degree murder. We affirm his conviction for first degree assault. We also affirm a trial court ruling denying Betancourth's motions to suppress statements he made during police station interviews and text messages subpoenaed from Verizon.
Our statement of facts comes from both trial testimony and two motions to suppress evidence. We begin with some trial testimony on the charges of second degree murder and first degree assault against Ray Betancourth. On September 17, 2012,Betancourth, a resident of Toppenish, noticed damage to windows of his Honda Civic. On September 19, on a basis unknown to us, Betancourth identified one of the window caperers as Terrence Frank.
During the afternoon of September 19, 2012, Ray Betancourth and his girlfriend, Nancy Arriaga, texted one another:
Report of Proceedings (RP) at 1435 (internal quotation marks omitted).
In the early evening of September 19, 2012, Ray Betancourth assembled companions to harass Terrence Frank. Betancourth first summoned Marco Cardenas. Betancourth advised Cardenas that he would shortly retrieve David Chavez and Mario Cervantes. He telephoned Cervantes, while Chavez visited Cervantes' house. Betancourth informed Chavez and Cervantes that he had located one of the men who broke his car windows and that he "wanted to beat his ass." RP at 905. Ten minutes later, Ray Betancourth, driving a four-door Ford pickup truck, arrived at Cervantes' home with Marco Cardenas riding shotgun. Cervantes and Chavez entered into the backseat of the truck. The quartet journeyed through Toppenish and found Terrence Frank, withJordan Lemus and Jose Rodriguez, walking on a sidewalk along the city's Madison Street.
Ray Betancourth stopped the pickup truck at a stop sign. David Chavez, from the backseat, then saw Marco Cardenas unfasten his seatbelt and move his hands. Chavez also heard Mario Cervantes tell Cardenas to "put that shit away." RP at 910. David Chavez did not see what object Cardenas placed in his hand because Chavez sat directly behind Cardenas. Nevertheless, Chavez noticed Marco Cardenas put away the object. Betancourth pulled a firearm from the truck door pocket, and placed it under his driver's seat. All four exited the truck.
The four companions planned for Ray Betancourth to fight Terrence Frank without anyone else scrapping. Betancourth hollered to the three walking on the sidewalk: "Who broke my windows?" RP at 917. Betancourth, Cervantes, Cardenas, and Chavez then chased the other three. Terrence Frank ran down the street, while Jordan Lemus and Jose Rodriguez ran into an alley south of Madison Street.
David Chavez testified that all four pursuers, with Marco Cardenas leading, followed Lemus and Rodriguez into the alley. Lemus jumped a fence, after which Marco Cardenas pulled a gun and shot twice. One or both bullets struck Rodriguez in the head. David Chavez testified that he did not know that Marco Cardenas carried a gun until the shots fired.
According to Ray Betancourth, before Marco Cardenas fired the gun, MarioCervantes yelled: "the truck." RP at 1220. Betancourth then ended his chase out of recognition that he left the pickup unattended and with the engine running. He returned to his truck to turn off the motor. As he opened the driver's door to the pickup, Betancourth heard "popping sounds." RP at 1221. According to Betancourth, he also did not know Marco Cardenas carried a gun. He did not expect Cardenas to shoot anyone.
According to David Chavez, Ray Betancourth, Marco Cardenas, Chavez, and Mario Cervantes quickly returned to Betancourth's Ford truck after the shooting and the truck sped away. According to Ray Betancourth, once he entered his pickup truck and turned off the ignition, he noticed Marco Cardenas and David Chavez frantically sprinting to the pickup. Both hopped into the backseat of the truck. Betancourth then heard a thud and saw, through the rear view mirror, Mario Cervantes jumping into the truck's bed. Betancourth, not knowing what transpired, drove away.
David Chavez testified that Betancourth, Chavez, and Cervantes asked Cardenas, after the quartet returned to the pickup: "What the fuck, what—what are you doing?" RP at 944. Ray Betancourth testified he heard David Chavez twice loudly comment to Marco Cardenas: "You shot him." RP at 1223. Cardenas responded: "You think so." RP at 1224. Chavez also said to Marco Cardenas: "You fucked up." RP at 1226.
The foursome traveled out of Toppenish. David Chavez testified that Ray Betancourth stopped the pickup truck on a Wapato bridge where Cardenas handed the gun to Betancourth, who threw it into the river. Betancourth denies stopping the truck ona bridge or handling a gun. Betancourth drove the truck to a friend's home in Buena. According to Betancourth, when the four arrived in Buena, the three others repeatedly questioned Marco Cardenas why he brought a gun to the fight.
At 6:20 p.m. on September 19, 2012, Toppenish Police Officer Casey Gillette traveled to the alley adjacent to Madison Street because of a report of gun shots and of a man stricken in the alley. Officer Gillette found a resident of a nearby house attending to an unconscious Jose Rodriguez. Officer Gillette summoned medical aid, which arrived and transported Rodriguez to the hospital. Fifteen-year-old Rodriguez died the following day.
Witnesses to the chase identified Ray Betancourth's Ford pickup truck as the vehicle used by Jose Rodriguez's assailants. Based on this identification, Toppenish police seized the truck on September 21.
The following portion of the statement of facts derives from a hearing to suppress statements uttered by Ray Betancourth. During the evening of September 21, 2012, Betancourth and his father entered the Toppenish police station. Toppenish Police Detective Jaban Brownell spoke to Betancourth's father about the seizure of the pickup truck, while Betancourth stood nearby. Eventually Detective Brownell asked Ray Betancourth to speak with him, Detective Damon Dunsmore, and Sergeant Paul Logan. The police then considered Betancourth a suspect in the shooting death of Jose Rodriguez. Brownell did not mention to Betancourth any reason for requesting theinterview. Betancourth offered no objection, and Detective Brownell led Betancourth to an investigations office at the back of the police station. Brownell told Betancourth that the interview was voluntary. Betancourth indicated he understood the voluntary nature of the interview, and Brownell further explained to Betancourth that he could leave at any time. Detective Brownell did not inform Betancourth that the latter was under arrest. Brownell did not place Betancourth in handcuffs.
Ray Betancourth's father asked to be present during the September 21 interview of his son, but Detective Jaban Brownell denied the request. Detective Brownell did not ask Betancourth if he wished his father present. Brownell and the other officers knew that Betancourth was eighteen years old at the time.
The Toppenish police investigations office was a converted, small single-wide trailer, approximately nine-feet wide by twenty-feet long, where three detectives worked at desks. Ray Betancourth sat in a chair near the trailer entry door. Detective Jaban Brownell, Detective Damon Dunsmore, and Sergeant Paul Logan questioned Betancourth for twenty to thirty minutes inside the trailer. Nobody recorded the questioning. The three officers asked Betancourth about his pickup truck's involvement in the shooting. One or more questions sought to elicit an admission from Betancourth as to his presence at the crime scene. Betancourth denied any involvement in a shooting. Betancourth left the trailer after the officers finished asking questions.
We return to trial testimony. Sergeant Paul Logan followed Ray Betancourth tothe Toppenish police station parking lot where he asked Betancourth to look at the latter's cell phone. Betancourth gave him permission, and Logan obtained Betancourth's cell phone number. On September 21, Detective Damon Dunsmore sent a preservation letter to Verizon Wireless to preserve records associated with Betancourth's phone number.
On September 25, 2012, the Yakima County District Court purportedly granted a...
To continue reading
Request your trial