State v. Quintana
| Decision Date | 15 August 2019 |
| Docket Number | No. 20180107-CA,20180107-CA |
| Citation | 448 P.3d 742 |
| Parties | STATE of Utah, Appellee, v. Mario Brian QUINTANA, Appellant. |
| Court | Utah Court of Appeals |
Teresa L. Welch, Salt Lake City, and Owen N. Stewart, Attorneys for Appellant
Sean D. Reyes and Jeffrey S. Gray, Salt Lake City, Attorneys for Appellee
Opinion
¶1 Mario Brian Quintana appeals his convictions for one count of aggravated robbery and one count of robbery. Specifically, he argues that the State presented insufficient evidence to prove (1) his identity as the person who robbed a hotel at gunpoint (aggravated robbery count), or (2) his use of force or fear to take a woman’s car keys to aid his escape (robbery count). Because a jury could reasonably find that the evidence supported his convictions for both aggravated robbery and robbery, we affirm.
¶2 An individual brandishing a handgun-style BB gun entered the lobby of a hotel in Taylorsville, Utah, pointed the gun at the front desk receptionist, and yelled at her, "Give me your fucking money." The robber was wearing a black mask up to his nose, black and white gloves, white and red shoes, and a zippered hoodie with a Batman costume design and fabric ears on the hood. The receptionist immediately ran out of the building through an employee lunchroom behind the lobby.
¶3 The robber jumped over the front desk, entered a back room, and took the receptionist’s handbag. Returning to the front desk with the handbag, the robber set the BB gun on the counter and emptied the contents of the cash register drawer onto the floor and into the handbag. He then exited through the front door of the lobby, leaving the gun behind.
¶4 From the side of the building, the receptionist observed the robber run out of the hotel in the direction of a nearby coffee shop. Moments later, the receptionist returned to the front desk called 911.
¶5 After receiving a dispatch call that someone in a black jacket and black pants had robbed the hotel, law enforcement officers arrived on scene and began to search the area for the robber. As one officer searched the area surrounding the hotel, he was directed to a blond woman walking nearby whom bystanders had observed running across the street with the robber. When asked about the robber’s whereabouts, the woman directed law enforcement toward a nearby coffee shop.
¶6 When the uniformed officer arrived at the coffee shop, an employee directed him to an alleyway next to the coffee shop. According to the coffee shop employee, near the time of the robbery, customers in the drive-thru line were honking their horns and motioning toward someone running past them toward the alleyway.
¶7 In the alleyway, the officer found a man—later identified as Quintana—lying on the ground behind a barricade near a dumpster. The man jumped up as the officer approached. The officer ordered him to stop and get back on the ground, but Quintana refused and ran. The officer pursued him over a retaining wall, past a bank, and into a grocery store parking lot.
¶8 In the grocery store parking lot, multiple law enforcement officers observed Quintana run toward two women and a child. As Quintana approached the women and child, multiple uniformed and plainclothes officers continued to pursue Quintana with weapons drawn, ordering him to stop. One of the officers then observed Quintana shouting at the women, grabbing at something in one woman’s hands or catching something the woman had tossed to him, and then apparently hiding behind the woman from whom he had taken the item. Concerned that the woman who tossed the item looked "very scared" and that Quintana was trying to take control of the woman’s vehicle and escape, the officer attempted to block Quintana with his patrol vehicle. Quintana then ran into the grocery store where he was apprehended with the assistance of a taser.
¶9 Quintana was placed under arrest and provided a name to law enforcement that did not match his date of birth. At the time of his arrest, Quintana was wearing a dark hooded pullover, some jeans that "were kind of a little bit lighter in the front but dark in the back," and shoes that were white and black with a distinct red tread. He was not wearing gloves.
¶10 After he was advised of his rights, Quintana admitted that he was a guest of the hotel before the robbery, that he went downstairs from his room and told the receptionist, "Give me your fucking money," and that the blond woman with whom the police had spoken outside of the hotel after the robbery was supposed to be his getaway driver. Quintana also confessed that when he saw a patrol vehicle, he ran toward the grocery store and demanded that a woman in the parking lot give him her keys, which she threw to him, and that he wanted to use her vehicle to outrun the police.
¶11 After the interview, a detective observed that Quintana left a glove behind in the interrogation room that appeared to match the gloves observed on the security footage of the robbery. An officer also discovered what was identified by the receptionist as her handbag hidden behind the dumpster in the alleyway where Quintana was hiding. The handbag contained a similar amount of cash as had been taken from the hotel.
¶12 The State charged Quintana with aggravated robbery, robbery, failure to stop at the command of a law enforcement officer, and providing false information to a peace officer. The case proceeded to trial at which the two women from the grocery store parking lot testified. They both identified Quintana as the man they observed running "straight toward" them in the parking lot as the police followed and shouted at him to stop. One of the women testified that when they saw Quintana running toward them, they started to walk away from their vehicle because "he was coming toward [them] and [they] were getting really scared that he would come right to [them], so [they] needed to get to safety." Quintana continued to run straight to them. He yelled at one of the women to give him her keys, which she then threw to him from five to ten feet away. She testified that she felt like she had to give him her keys because she was scared for her life.
¶13 The other woman similarly testified that Quintana ran up to them and shouted. He yelled at her first to give him her keys, and when she told him she did not have any, he turned to her sister who tossed him the keys. She also testified that once he had the keys, Quintana stood right behind her sister. At that point, because she had seen Quintana running from the direction of a bank with police in pursuit with firearms drawn, she believed that Quintana had "a weapon on him" and was going to use her sister as a human shield or take her sister as a hostage.
¶14 None of the State’s witnesses, apart from the receptionist, testified at trial to observing Quintana wearing a black Batman hoodie with black fabric ears on the hood during the course of his pursuit by law enforcement. The BB gun recovered at the scene was admitted at trial, but was not tested for DNA or fingerprints because the robber had worn gloves.
¶15 After the State rested, Quintana moved for a directed verdict on the aggravated robbery and robbery charges. The district court denied Quintana’s motion, and he was convicted as charged. Quintana appeals his convictions for aggravated robbery and robbery.
¶16 Quintana appeals, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence to support his convictions for aggravated robbery of the hotel and robbery of the woman in the parking lot. "When reviewing a jury verdict on an insufficiency of the evidence argument, we view the evidence and all inferences drawn therefrom in a light most favorable to the verdict."
State v. Heaps , 2000 UT 5, ¶ 19, 999 P.2d 565. And we will reverse the "verdict only when, after viewing the evidence and all inferences drawn therefrom in a light most favorable to the verdict, we find that the evidence to support the verdict was completely lacking or was so slight and unconvincing as to make the verdict plainly unreasonable and unjust." Id. (quotation simplified). "So long as some evidence and reasonable inferences support the jury’s findings, we will not disturb them." Id.
¶17 Quintana argues that the district court erred in denying his motion for a directed verdict on both robbery charges. First, Quintana argues that the State presented insufficient evidence to prove that he was adequately identified as the individual who robbed the hotel to support his aggravated robbery conviction. Second, Quintana argues that the State presented insufficient evidence to prove that he took the keys from the woman in the grocery store parking lot by means of force or fear to support his robbery conviction. We address each conviction in turn.
¶18 In contesting his conviction for aggravated robbery, Quintana challenges only whether there was sufficient evidence of identity. Quintana argues that the State failed to prove that he was the individual who robbed the hotel because he was not identified by the receptionist after the robbery and he was not wearing the hoodie with ears at the time of his arrest and claims he did not have time to change his clothing. But the State presented other evidence identifying Quintana as the robber sufficient to allow a jury to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
¶19 Most significantly, the State presented direct evidence identifying Quintana as the robber when it played the recording of Quintana’s confession. In the recording, Quintana admits that he told the receptionist, "Give...
To continue reading
Request your trial