State v. Johnson
| Decision Date | 26 May 2021 |
| Docket Number | P1/17-3082AG,No. 2019-35-C.A.,2019-35-C.A. |
| Citation | 251 A.3d 872 |
| Parties | STATE v. Ezekial JOHNSON. |
| Court | Rhode Island Supreme Court |
Mariana E. Ormonde, Department of Attorney General, for State.
George J. West, Esq., for Defendant.
Present: Suttell, C.J., Goldberg, Robinson, Lynch Prata, and Long, JJ.
The defendant, Ezekial Johnson, was convicted by a jury of one count of first-degree murder (count one); one count of discharging a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence, to wit, murder (count two); and one count of carrying a firearm without a license (count three). He was sentenced to consecutive life sentences on count one and count two and ten years to serve on count three.
On appeal, defendant contends that the trial justice erred by (1) admitting in-court identification evidence; (2) limiting cross-examination; and (3) denying defendant's motion for a new trial. The defendant maintains that each of these errors entitles him to have his conviction vacated and be granted a new trial. After careful consideration of defendant's arguments and a thorough review of the record, we affirm the judgment of conviction.
On July 16, 2007, Jose Rodriguez was shot and killed while driving his taxicab. Over ten years later, on October 27, 2017, a Providence County grand jury returned an indictment charging defendant with one count of murder; one count of discharging a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence, to wit, murder; and one count of carrying a firearm without a license. A jury trial was held over two weeks in July 2018. At trial, the testimony revealed the following.
Rodriguez was employed as a taxicab driver for Gonzalez Cab; and, on July 16, 2007, he was dispatched around noon to transport a fare from Providence to Central Falls. While making the trip, Rodriguez spoke on the telephone to his wife, Anna,1 and told her that the three men in his taxicab were behaving suspiciously.2 Soon after Rodriguez shared his concern about the passengers, the call suddenly disconnected. Anna repeatedly attempted to call him back. Although she was unable to reach her husband, one of her calls did connect to his phone, and she heard someone laughing.
At around the same time, Lymari Gonzalez (Gonzalez) was standing outside her home on Garfield Street in Central Falls when she noticed a taxicab that "was going way too slow." Gonzalez turned to look at the taxicab and observed three men seated in the back seat. She watched the taxicab as it continued to drive slowly on Garfield Street and then turn right onto Fuller Avenue. After the taxicab turned the corner, Gonzalez heard a gunshot followed by the sound of a crash. Seconds later, she observed the three male passengers from the taxicab running towards her, while they were looking back in the direction of the taxicab; and she watched as two of the men flung the hats they were wearing into the bushes in front of the home at 99 Garfield Street.
Once the three men were out of sight, Gonzalez and her husband ran to the corner of Garfield Street and Fuller Avenue, where they observed that the taxicab had crashed. When Gonzalez approached the taxicab, she saw that the driver was still inside holding a cell phone and had blood coming down his neck. As other people arrived on the scene, Gonzalez returned to her home.
Later that day, Anna, who was still attempting to locate her husband, went to the hospital, where she learned that he had been shot and was on life support. Rodriguez was disconnected from life support and died the following day.
On the evening of the shooting, Gonzalez went to the Central Falls Police Department to report what she had witnessed, including the fact that she had watched two of the men toss the hats that they were wearing into the bushes. Police officers showed Gonzalez a photographic array, but she did not recognize any of the individuals in the photographs as being the men whom she had seen in the taxicab. Two days later, upon her return to the Central Falls police station, Gonzalez was shown a different photographic array and identified two men she believed she had seen in the taxicab. Those men, however, were subsequently eliminated as suspects. After her second meeting with police, Gonzalez had no further contact with law enforcement until ten years later, in October 2017.
As part of the investigation, the Central Falls police obtained video taken from a surveillance camera at 114 Garfield Street, which showed Rodriguez's taxicab driving down Garfield Street towards Fuller Avenue around noon on the day of the murder.3 Approximately a minute and a half later, the video showed "three black males" "running down Garfield towards Dexter." Police attempted to enhance the video for purposes of identifying the three men but were unsuccessful in doing so.
The police also seized the two hats that were thrown into the bushes in front of the home at 99 Garfield Street—one red and one black baseball cap. In 2009, the Central Falls police submitted the hats to the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) for DNA testing. Although there was DNA found on each hat, the DNA was not compared to any reference sample at that time. Both hats were returned to the Central Falls Police Department along with their corresponding DNA analysis reports.
Nearly seven years after the murder, the police received information concerning Rodriguez's murder from Jon Thomas (Thomas), who subsequently entered into cooperation agreements to provide information in two other criminal cases. Thomas grew up on the south side of Providence and joined the YNIC "gang" around age thirteen.4 According to Thomas, a few days after Rodriguez's murder, he met up with fellow YNIC members Jayquan Garlington (Garlington) and defendant. While the three were together, Garlington told Thomas that Garlington, defendant, and another YNIC member, Dwayne Morris (Morris), had taken a taxicab to Central Falls with the plan of getting out of the taxicab without paying the fare. According to Thomas, Garlington was upset when he was relaying the story because things had not gone as planned; Garlington told him that, instead of simply exiting the cab without paying, defendant pulled out a gun and shot the taxicab driver in the back of the head while the driver was talking on his cell phone. Thomas also recalled that Garlington had stated that, after the driver was shot, the men were laughing because they tripped as they jumped out of the moving taxicab. As Garlington relayed the story to Thomas, defendant was laughing and "[n]odding his head up and down."
In 2017, the Central Falls Police Department sent the hats that were seized from the crime scene back to RIDOH for further DNA analysis. Senior Forensic Scientist, Tamara Wong (Wong), developed DNA reference profiles from buccal swabs taken from defendant, Garlington, and Morris. When Wong compared the DNA profile from the black hat to the DNA of defendant, she determined that the major component of that DNA was consistent with defendant's DNA, with the likelihood that it came from anyone other than defendant being "one in a hundred and twenty-eight quintillion."
At defendant's bail hearing on November 15, 2017, Gonzalez was called to testify and, for the first time, identified defendant as one of the men she saw in the taxicab.5 On June 26, 2018, defendant filed a motion to suppress Gonzalez's in-court identification, on the basis that the identification procedure was impermissibly suggestive and resulted in identification evidence that was unreliable. Further, defendant argued that Gonzalez did not have personal knowledge with respect to defendant, and therefore she was not competent to identify him pursuant to Rule 602 of the Rhode Island Rules of Evidence.
On July 6, 2018, a hearing was held on defendant's motion to suppress. During the hearing, Gonzalez testified that, at around noon on July 16, 2007, "a traumatic thing * * * happened * * * that [she] just can't forget." She recounted that she had been standing on the sidewalk in front of her home on Garfield Street when a slow-moving taxicab caught her attention. She testified that she had observed three "youngish" men with "dark skin" arguing in the back seat of the taxicab and that she had stared at them as the taxicab passed within approximately six feet of her. Gonzalez further testified that, after she heard a gunshot, she watched the three men from the taxicab run down the sidewalk towards her. When asked if any of the men had looked at her while they ran down the sidewalk, Gonzalez responded in the affirmative and identified defendant in the courtroom as one of the men who looked at her that day. Further, she testified that she had stared at defendant as he crossed the street because she "knew something was going to happen[,]" and, thus, she focused her attention on defendant and could not forget his face.
On cross-examination, Gonzalez admitted that she could not recall where defendant was sitting in the taxicab, nor could she recall what defendant was wearing as he ran down the street—including whether he was one of the individuals wearing a hat. She also confirmed that she had merely provided police with a general description of the suspects, reporting that all three were dark-skinned men who were approximately six feet tall and weighed about 150 pounds. Further, she acknowledged that, on July 18, 2007, she identified two individuals in a photographic array because she was certain that they were two of the men that she had seen in the taxicab and running down Garfield Street on July 16, 2007. She also testified, however, that she was never shown a photograph of defendant and had not seen defendant at any point between the murder in 2007 and bail hearing in 2017.
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