State v. Harris, SC 19649

• Decision Date: 04 September 2018
• Docket Number: SC 19649
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Connecticut v. Ernest HARRIS

330 Conn. 91

191 A.3d 119

STATE of Connecticut

v.Ernest HARRIS

SC 19649

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued March 28, 2017

Officially released September 4, 2018

Jennifer B. Smith, for the appellant (defendant).

Nancy L. Chupak, senior assistant state's attorney, and Laurie N. Feldman, special deputy assistant state's attorney, with whom, on the brief, were Patrick J. Griffin, state's attorney, and Brian K. Sibley, Sr., senior assistant state's attorney, for the appellee (state).

Darcy McGraw and Karen A. Newirth, filed a brief for the Connecticut Innocence Project et al. as amici curiae.

Palmer, McDonald, Robinson, D'Auria, Vertefeuille, Mullins and Kahn, Js.^*

PALMER, J.

The sole issue presented by this appeal is whether the trial court deprived the defendant, Ernest Harris, of his right to due process under the federal and state constitutions when it denied his motion to suppress an out-of-court and subsequent in-court identification of him by an eyewitness to the crimes of which the defendant was convicted. The defendant was charged with felony murder and first degree robbery, among other crimes, after he and an accomplice, Emmitt Scott, allegedly robbed Ruben Gonzalez (victim) and Jose Rivera at gunpoint and Scott shot and killed the victim. The trial court denied the defendant's pretrial motion to suppress an identification that Rivera had made of the defendant while the defendant was being arraigned in an unrelated robbery case, as well as any in-court identification that Rivera might later be asked to make of the defendant. Following a trial, the jury found the defendant guilty of one count each of felony murder and conspiracy to commit robbery in the first degree, and two counts of robbery in the first degree.¹

On appeal,² the defendant claims that the trial court violated his due process rights under the federal constitution³ by denying his motion to suppress Rivera's out-of-court and in-court identifications of him because, contrary to the conclusion of the trial court, the former was the product of an unnecessarily suggestive procedure and neither was reliable. The defendant further claims that, even if the state's use of Rivera's out-of-court and in-court identifications did not violate his due process rights under the federal constitution, the admission of those identifications violated his due process rights under the state constitution, which, the defendant contends, are more protective than his federal due process rights. Although we agree with the defendant that the out-of-court identification procedure was unnecessarily suggestive, we also conclude that Rivera's identification of the defendant was nevertheless sufficiently reliable to satisfy federal due process requirements. Accordingly, for purposes of the federal constitution, the defendant was not entitled to suppression of those identifications. We further conclude that the due process guarantee of the state constitution in article first, § 8,⁴ provides somewhat broader protection than the federal constitution with respect to the admissibility of eyewitness identification testimony but that, in the present case, the trial court's failure to apply the state constitutional standard that we adopt today was harmless because the court reasonably could not have reached a different conclusion under that more demanding standard. We therefore affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The following facts and procedural history are relevant to our resolution of the defendant's claims.⁵ After working together during the night shift at a warehouse in the town of Newington, the victim drove Rivera back to Rivera's home in the Fair Haven section of the city of New Haven, arriving at about 3 a.m. on July 31, 2012. The victim and Rivera were rolling a blunt in the victim's car when the defendant and Scott approached on either side of the vehicle. Scott, who was standing on the passenger side, demanded that Rivera roll down the window, and both the victim and Rivera were then ordered out of the car. The victim and Rivera initially refused to exit the car but did so after Scott struck Rivera on the head with his gun. After the defendant and Scott searched the victim and Rivera for cash and valuables, the defendant rummaged through the car's interior for two to three minutes, during which Scott kept his gun pointed at Rivera. When the defendant found $600 and a cell phone in the center console, he said "[b]ingo," and he and Scott began to walk away. As they were leaving, the victim shouted from behind them, "I'll remember your face," whereupon Scott turned and shot the victim twice, killing him. The entire incident lasted approximately ten minutes.

Jeffrey King, an officer with the New Haven Police Department (department), was the first officer on the scene, arriving at approximately 3:30 a.m. At that time, Rivera provided King with a description of the shooter, Scott. With respect to the lighting, the crime scene was so well lit by nearby streetlamps and house lights that King did not need to use a flashlight in connection with his investigation, despite the early morning hour.

Rivera was then taken from the crime scene to police headquarters, where he was interviewed by Detective Nicole Natale. At that time, Rivera described the shooter's accomplice—who had been standing on the driver's side of the vehicle and whom he would later identify as the defendant—as an African-American male with a thin build, approximately six feet, one inch, or six feet, two inches, in height, approximately twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, with short cropped hair, and as wearing a white t-shirt and blue jeans.

Eight days later, on August 8, 2012, after learning that Scott was a suspect in several Fair Haven robberies, Natale performed a sequential photographic lineup for Rivera that included Scott's photograph. Rivera failed to identify Scott as one of the assailants. Later that day, a fingerprint found on the front driver's side door of the victim's car was identified as belonging to the defendant. Although Natale used the fingerprint to obtain a photograph of the defendant through a police database, she never presented the defendant's photograph to Rivera in a lineup procedure or otherwise. On August 10, 2012, a fingerprint found on the front passenger's side door of the victim's car was identified as belonging to Scott.

Thereafter, the police learned that both the defendant and Scott were due to be arraigned on unrelated charges in court in New Haven on August 13, 2012. Robert Lawlor, an inspector with the state's attorney's office in the judicial district of New Haven, accompanied Rivera to the courthouse on that day so that Rivera could observe the arraignments and possibly identify the two men who had accosted him and the victim. Although Lawlor knew that the defendant and Scott were to be arraigned, he did not inform Rivera of that fact, and he never made Rivera aware of the defendant's name. The defendant and Scott were among fourteen arraignees who were being detained pending arraignment; the other twenty arraignees who appeared that day had not been in custody prior to their arraignment. Lawlor and Rivera both sat in the front row of the courtroom's public gallery, with Lawlor seated six seats away from Rivera. From his vantage point, Rivera watched the defendant, Scott, and the twelve other custodial arraignees—all of them handcuffed and surrounded by marshals—enter the courtroom single file through a door located only five feet away from him. Rivera recognized the defendant and Scott "as soon as they walked through the door."⁶ Once he was outside the courtroom, Rivera told Lawlor with "[n]o hesitation" that he was "100 percent positive those are the two suspects .... I will never forget it." Lawlor responded that, in fact, they "may be" the suspects, at which point the two men left the courthouse.

Prior to trial, the defendant moved to suppress Rivera's identification of him at the arraignment proceeding and any subsequent identification that he might be asked to make of the defendant at trial. The trial court held a hearing on the motion and denied it in an oral ruling the following day, concluding that the arraignment identification procedure was not unnecessarily suggestive. At trial, Rivera testified and identified the defendant as the driver's side assailant.

In a supplemental memorandum of decision issued after the trial, the court reiterated its finding that the identification procedure was not unnecessarily suggestive because, of the thirty-four total arraignees, fifteen were African-American males, which matched the description Rivera gave to Natale the morning of the murder. The trial court also supplemented its oral ruling with a finding that, even if the identification procedure was unnecessarily suggestive, the identification itself was reliable under the totality of the circumstances. In support of this conclusion, the trial court observed the following: Rivera had approximately ten minutes to observe the assailants during the commission of the crimes; the area was well illuminated despite the late hour, and the assailant's face was not covered; the car's interior dome light shone on the assailant's face while he searched inside the car; Rivera was only a few feet from the assailant and had a clear view of him; Rivera was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the incident and otherwise was alert and attentive during the commission of the crime; Rivera's description of the assailant was specific in regard to his approximate age, height, weight, hairstyle, skin tone and clothing; Rivera was 100 percent certain that the defendant was one of the perpetrators; and the length of time between the crime and Rivera's identification of the defendant was only about two weeks.

I

The defendant first claims that the trial court's denial of his motion to suppress Rivera's in-court and out-of-court identifications violated his due process rights under the ...