Young v. State
| Decision Date | 17 June 2016 |
| Docket Number | Supreme Court No. S–15665 |
| Citation | 374 P.3d 395 |
| Parties | Arron N. Young, Petitioner, v. State of Alaska, Respondent. |
| Court | Alaska Supreme Court |
Renee McFarland, Assistant Public Defender, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for Petitioner.
Eric A. Ringsmuth, Assistant Attorney General, Anchorage, and Craig W. Richards, Attorney General, Juneau, for Respondent.
Before: Fabe, Chief Justice, Stowers, Maassen, and Bolger, Justices. [Winfree, Justice, not participating.]
MAASSEN
, Justice.
A defendant accused of involvement in a shooting was convicted at trial, in part on the strength of three eyewitness identifications. He challenged the admissibility of two of the identifications on due process grounds, but the superior court ruled them admissible.
The defendant also requested an eyewitness-specific jury instruction, which the superior court refused. Finally, the defendant argued that he was entitled to a mistrial because of an alleged discovery violation by the State that he learned of mid-trial. The superior court denied his motion, finding that the State had not violated the disclosure rules and alternatively that the defendant had not suffered any prejudice. The defendant was convicted, and the court of appeals affirmed his conviction.
On petition to this court, the defendant argues not only that we should reverse his conviction based on the current law on the admissibility of eyewitness identifications but also that Alaska's due process clause requires the adoption of a new test. He also argues that the superior court erred in failing to give his requested jury instruction and in failing to grant him a mistrial.
We hold that the superior court erred under the law as it currently exists when it held one of the eyewitness identifications sufficiently reliable to be admitted at trial, but that it did not err in admitting the other. We also hold that the superior court erred in refusing to give an eyewitness-specific jury instruction but did not err in denying a mistrial. Because the errors are harmless, we affirm the defendant's conviction.
We also conclude, however, that the current test for the admissibility of eyewitness identification evidence does not adequately protect the right to due process under the Alaska Constitution. We therefore identify factors that courts should consider in future cases when deciding whether to admit eyewitness identification evidence.
During the summer of 2008 a series of violent incidents took place in the Fairbanks area between members of two gangs, the Bloods and the Crips. In late July there was a fight inside the Fairbanks Walmart; in early August there was another at the Tanana Valley Fair. Persons known or alleged to be current or former members of the Bloods were later shot at outside the Eagles Hall by persons shouting Crips slogans.
The incident at issue here occurred on August 15 at approximately 4:00 p.m. A green Buick sedan carrying alleged members of the Bloods was traveling down College Road in Fairbanks, followed by friends in another car. Another vehicle variously described as a gray, silver, or white SUV passed them going the other way, made a U-turn, and pulled up alongside the Buick. Someone in the SUV started shooting at the Buick and continued to do so while the vehicles raced along for what was later estimated to be two miles.
No one was injured in the shooting, but the Buick was significantly damaged. Bullets also passed through two uninvolved vehicles, narrowly missing their passengers. A bystander walking her bike reported hearing a bullet pass by her head; she jumped into a ditch to take cover.
Later that evening the police arrested Arron Young. He had a gun in the waistband of his pants and the key to a silver SUV in his pocket.
The police interviewed witnesses from the scene and put out a request for those with information to come forward. Jason Gazewood, a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor, contacted the police department to report that he had witnessed part of the gunplay. A police detective visited Gazewood's office and showed him a six-person photographic array; Gazewood picked Young as looking most like the man he had seen behind the wheel of the SUV.
A grand jury convened in September 2008. There Gazewood testified about what he had seen. Another witness, Arles Arauz, also identified Young as the driver of the SUV. Although Arauz had told the police immediately after the incident that he was unable to identify the assailants, at the grand jury hearing he picked Young's picture out of a photographic array. But a third grand jury witness, John Anzalone, failed to identify Young and picked another man instead.
The grand jury indicted Young for attempted murder in the first degree and misconduct involving weapons in the first degree.
Trial was eventually set for January 4, 2010. In late December 2009 Young moved to suppress Gazewood's pretrial and in-court identifications, claiming that the pretrial identification procedure had been unnecessarily suggestive.
The superior court held an evidentiary hearing. Gazewood testified that the police detective had come to his office about three days after the incident and showed him a six-person photographic array. He testified that he remembered “saying something about ... having a recollection of it being someone of Samoan descent ... before the lineup was brought out,” though he could not recall whether he said this on the telephone or after the detective arrived at his office. The detective testified that he did not remember whether Gazewood had identified the driver's race in the phone call.
The photographic array contained photographs of six black men but no Samoans. The detective testified that, because Gazewood was an attorney experienced in criminal law, he did not give Gazewood any instructions before showing him the array; he assumed Gazewood would understand the process and its purpose. Gazewood testified that although he was given no instructions, he assumed that the array contained the suspect because he had been involved in many such procedures in the past. He also testified, however, that he did not feel he was required to select someone from among the photos he was shown.
Gazewood testified that he quickly narrowed his choice to two photos, one of which was Young's. Though conflicted, he was most focused on Young; he testified that the way Young's hair was pulled back in the photograph made him “more like the person I'd seen in the vehicle certainly.” He testified that he put his finger tentatively on Young's photograph, at which point the detective told him to “trust your instincts.” Gazewood testified that the detective's remark terminated his deliberations, and he selected Young as the man who looked most like the one he had seen in the SUV. When asked at the hearing whether he believed the detective was suggesting the desired result, he answered:
Yeah, I ... think he saw me laboring over it and spending a little more time pointing to Mr. Young than the other two, or the other one by the time I had eliminated one of them. And I took it as, you know, you're pointing to this guy more than the others, you know, that's the guy you should identify. ... I took it as that's the guy we want you to pick.
Gazewood testified that he was leaning toward Young anyway but that the detective's remark The detective testified that he did not remember telling Gazewood to “trust your instincts” but that he knew Young was the suspect and knew Young's photograph was included in the array.
At the evidentiary hearing Gazewood also testified about what he saw of the crime. He testified that while he was waiting at a stoplight on College Road, “the thing that drew [his] attention” was that a “green car” coming from behind him drove “into the oncoming lanes of traffic” to get around the cars waiting at the light. He testified that he then saw a white SUV coming up quickly behind him, and that he observed the driver of the SUV in his rearview mirror for “between three and eight seconds” before the vehicle passed him on the left in pursuit of the green car. He also testified that he had seen Young's photo in the newspaper a week before the evidentiary hearing, and the newspaper photo looked more like the person he recalled seeing at the time of the shooting than did the photo he picked in the array.
The superior court denied Young's motion to suppress. Employing the test we have adopted from Manson v. Brathwaite
, a decision of the United States Supreme Court,1 the superior court first found that the photographic array itself was not unnecessarily suggestive because there was “nothing in the photo array to distinguish the defendant's photo from the others.” The court found that the detective made the “trust your instincts” comment but that it was not suggestive and did not influence Gazewood's choice. Finally, the court determined that even if the procedure was unnecessarily suggestive, Gazewood's identification of Young was still reliable under the totality of the circumstances and therefore admissible.
On the first day of trial Young informed the court that the State had just disclosed a police report stating that John Anzalone, who had failed to select Young from the photographic array when testifying before the grand jury, would now identify Young as one of the shooters. Anzalone had informed the prosecutor that he had seen Young's picture on television in connection with the case about a week before trial and was prepared to identify him in court.
Young objected to Anzalone's testimony. He claimed that the pretrial publicity...
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