State v. Ranieri
| Decision Date | 01 March 1991 |
| Docket Number | No. 89-281-C,89-281-C |
| Citation | 586 A.2d 1094 |
| Parties | STATE v. Eric RANIERI. A. |
| Court | Rhode Island Supreme Court |
Eric Ranieri (defendant or Ranieri) is appealing his convictions 1 for burglary and assault with a dangerous weapon. His several grounds on appeal are these: that the trial court should have suppressed in-court and out-of-court identifications by two witnesses; that the state improperly secreted exculpatory evidence; that the trial court improperly allowed into evidence a statement suggesting that the defendant had threatened a state's witness; and that the defendant's convictions are inconsistent. For the reasoning that follows, we accept some of the defendant's arguments and remand for a new trial.
At 4 a.m. on March 19, 1987, one Elsie M. 2 (Elsie) was awakened in her apartment by the sounds of someone breaking in. At the time, Elsie was seventy-three years old and lived alone. Her apartment was located on the first floor of a triple-decker tenement in North Providence. The door to her apartment entered into a front parlor. The parlor leads to the kitchen, which leads to Elsie's bedroom.
At that hour of the night, Elsie's apartment was dark. All the shades were drawn in the apartment, except for one in the parlor. Streetlighting and/or auto lights may have shown through the drawn shades or the unshaded window. Elsie testified that she generally kept a nightlight on (a small one that plugs directly into a socket) above her kitchen sink. Elsie stated with hesitant certainty that the night light was on on the night in question. However, the police and one William Picard testified that no light of any kind was on in the apartment.
Upon being awakened by the noise of her apartment being broken into, Elsie got up from her bed and made her way to the kitchen telephone. At the threshold leading from the bedroom to the kitchen, she was grabbed from behind by an assailant. Elsie screamed and struggled, and the assailant attempted to stuff a gag into her mouth. The assailant threw Elsie to the floor and struck her several times with a metal bar of some sort. Elsie testified that she passed out during the encounter, but she added that she remembered seeing defendant's face before she passed out and that she remembered seeing it again after she was revived.
William Picard (Picard), Elsie's second-floor tenant of some twenty years, was awakened by these force-entry noises. He came downstairs to the first floor where he found Elsie's apartment door broken down. He testified that there were no lights on in the apartment but that he could make out the assailant in the kitchen striking Elsie. As he pulled the assailant away from Elsie, he saw the assailant's "upper lip" for a few seconds before the assailant struck him and escaped. When Picard testified at defendant's trial and at a pretrial suppression hearing, he said several times that he saw the assailant's upper lip for merely one to two seconds. At one point in the pretrial suppression hearing, he testified that he saw the upper lip from ten to sixty seconds. Picard testified further that after the assailant escaped, Elsie was disorientedly crying, "[W]ho was doing this to me?"
The phone lines to the building were cut so Picard ran outside and flagged down a passing patrol car. Both Picard and Elsie were taken to the hospital. Picard suffered a head injury requiring thirteen stiches. Elsie suffered life-threatening injuries which required immediate surgery. Thankfully, both victims survived the affair.
As Picard was taken from the building on a stretcher, a neighbor, Lisa, retrieved a photograph of her boyfriend (we shall identify this person as "Henry") from her home and provided it to the police as the possible assailant. Picard identified Henry as the assailant before being taken to the hospital. The police retained custody of this picture of Henry but lost it before defendant's trial. It is the loss of this picture that defendant says incurably prejudices defendant's identification defense. After Picard was released from the hospital later in the day, he went to the North Providence police department (police). He was unable to pick out Henry from a police lineup. Thereafter, Henry was not considered a suspect by the police.
Relying on sources other than Picard or Elsie, the police arrested Ranieri about a week after the crime. Ranieri is an eighteen-year old white male, five-foot-six, weighing 150 pounds. Ranieri on occasion visited the house adjacent to Elsie. Elsie believed Ranieri had been living next to her starting about a year before her assault. However, testimony at trial revealed that Ranieri lived elsewhere and that he visited Elsie's neighbor only occasionally.
The Providence Journal (Journal) reported Ranieri's arrest and published a picture of Ranieri on or about March 24, 1987. The Journal reportedly ran at least one subsequent article with Ranieri's photo. On April 11, 1987, about three weeks after the crime and a couple of weeks after the Journal report, Picard was asked to view a photo array containing defendant's picture. Picard successfully identified defendant as picture number 5 in this array. Elsie did not, at this time, make any kind of identification of defendant or of any other police suspects. Rather, Elsie steadfastly maintained for over eighteen months after the crime that she never saw her assailant. At no time did she provide a description of any kind to the police.
On the basis of Picard's photo-array identification and on other evidence, defendant's trial was set to proceed on September 13, 1988. At 2:30 p.m. on that date, the state asked for a continuance, stating that Elsie had suddenly come forward and offered to identify defendant as her assailant. The court granted the continuance over defendant's objection. The defendant's counsel pointedly requested that because of the late nature of Elsie's identification and because Elsie had previously insisted that she could not identify her assailant, he be present at any out-of-court identification by Elsie. The next day, without defense counsel's presence, a photo array was shown to Elsie, and she chose defendant, who appeared as picture number 5 in this array also.
The defendant challenges Elsie's out-of-court photo-array identification on the basis that he was denied due process because his counsel was not allowed to be present. 3 He further challenges the admission of Elsie's in and out-of-court identifications on the basis that Elsie was not a competent witness under Rule 602 of the Rhode Island Rules of Evidence (Rule 602) in that she had no personal knowledge of her assailant's identity because she had an insufficient opportunity to view the assailant. We are persuaded by his second argument.
The defendant fails to cite any federal or state authority for his due process argument because, quite frankly, it is a novel approach. The defendant contends that the state unconstitutionally deprived him (a postindictment defendant on the eve of trial) of his due process rights by failing to allow his attorney the opportunity to be present while last-minute evidence injurious to his liberty interest was being collected. We do not decide this interesting extension of due process rights. For purposes of this appeal, we are convinced that Elsie was not competent to identify her assailant because she had no personal knowledge of her assailant's identity as required by Rule 602. We think it evident that Elsie had a preformed opinion about defendant and is now unjustifiably accusing him.
In consideration of Ranieri's challenge, we note that he has not styled his legal argument as a Rule 602 competency question. He argues that Elsie's testimony is "unreliable" and that it should be suppressed because it should be likened to an expression of an opinion by a lay witness under Rule 701 of the Rhode Island Rules of Evidence. Reading defendant's argument in its totality, we think his argument really is an objection under Rule 602. 4 When a witness testifies to an identification of someone, that identification is not the expression of an opinion by a lay witness. Rather it is a statement of fact that the witness recognizes someone else.
Under Rule 602, If a witness lacks such personal knowledge, then the witness is deemed to be incompetent to testify with respect to that matter. See Rule 601.
In deciding whether a witness is competent for purposes of Rule 602, the trial justice must determine whether a witness had a sufficient opportunity to perceive the subject matter about which he is testifying. See Hallquist v. Local 2765, Plumbers & Pipefitters Union, 843 F.2d 18, 24 (1st Cir.1988); 3 J. Weinstein & M. Bergen, Weinstein's Evidence p 602 at 602-12 (M.B.1988). The justice is not making a credibility determination and is not judging whether the witness is accurately and truthfully relating that which he perceived. See 3 J. Weinstein & M. Bergen, p 602 at 602-10, 602-11 (). Further, ...
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State v. Jacob
...have held that a rule 104 determination is necessary for a witness' testimony under the rule embodied in § 27-602. E.g., State v. Ranieri, 586 A.2d 1094, 1098 (R.I.1991) ("[i]n deciding whether a witness is competent for purposes of Rule 602, the trial justice must determine whether a witne......
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State v. Lynch
...410 A.2d 438, 442 (1980)). This Court will overturn a competency decision only for abuse of discretion. Id. (citing State v. Ranieri, 586 A.2d 1094, 1098-99 (R.I.1991)). "The trial justice is afforded considerable deference in making a competency ruling since he is in the best position to a......
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State v. Hall
...or herself." In an effort to convince us that. Nunez was an insufficiently percipient witness, defendant refers us to State v. Ranieri, 586 A.2d 1094, 1096 (R.I.1991). In that case, an elderly woman was attacked her home at night and from behind. Id. She never made an identification of the ......
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State v. Lynch, No. 1999-327-C.A. (K1/96-591A) (RI 8/11/2004)
...410 A.2d 438, 442 (1980)). This Court will overturn a competency decision only for abuse of discretion. Id. (citing State v. Ranieri, 586 A.2d 1094, 1098-99 (R.I. 1991)). "The trial justice is afforded considerable deference in making a competency ruling since he is in the best position to ......