Opinion ID: 1461838
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Rivas' Conduct

Text: Officer Mitchell testified at trial that the officers observed a four-door Honda [30] stopped in the middle of the street and blocking traffic approximately three yards from the corner of Park Road and Hyatt Place. Appellant Rivas was in the passenger seat, co-defendant Melgar was in the driver's seat, and two other men occupied the rear seats. The officers pulled their marked cruiser up to within four feet of the rear of the Honda, but did not honk the horn or otherwise make any effort to call attention to their presence or to get the stopped car to move. A couple [of] seconds later, Rivas exited the Honda from the right front passenger door and walked to the sidewalk on the right side of the street, leaving the door open. Rivas then began to converse with a man on the sidewalk, while Melgar and the two passengers in the rear remained in the stopped car. Within a couple of minutes of the cruiser's arrival, the Honda moved from the middle of the street to the curb, its right front door still open. At that point Rivas was still on the sidewalk, conversing. [31] The police followed the Honda to the curb, stopped two feet behind it, and then turned on their emergency lights, intending to effect a traffic stop. Rivas began to walk north on Hyatt Place until he reached the corner of Park Road, where he turned right (east). It was after the officers stopped the car and saw two zip lock bags on the brake console in the center of the front passenger compartment of the car that Officer Mitchell then set off on foot to apprehend Rivas. Officer Mitchell found Rivas talking with another person at the 1400 block of Park Road, approximately twenty to thirty feet from the corner of Hyatt Place and Park Road. About five minutes had elapsed from the time Rivas left the scene until Officer Mitchell found him on Park Road. The dissent argues that the manner in which Rivas distanced himself from the car shows a guilty conscience, particularly because Rivas exited the car right after the police pulled up behind, while the car was still in the middle of the street. See post at p. 154. The evidence taken as a whole significantly weakens the inference the dissent would permit the jury to draw, that Rivas left the car because he was aware of the police presence. Co-defendant Melgar testified that he was out driving that night with three friends when his car died out in the middle of the street. After attending to the carburetor for one minute, Melgar was able to restart the car. With the car running again, Melgar was just about to drive on to Park Road when he noticed the police cruiser behind him with its emergency lights on. Upon seeing the police, he pulled his car over to the curb. The evidence was therefore undisputed from Officer Mitchell's and Melgar's testimony that the police did not turn on their lights and make their presence known until after Rivas had exited the car where it was stopped in the middle of the road. Although the jury could discount Melgar's testimony that the car had stalled and not draw the inference that the car's stalling prompted Rivas to exit the car where he did, there was scant evidence from which the jury could infer that Rivas left the car in the middle of the road in order to distance himself from the drugs once the presence of the police became known. To infer that Rivas exhibited a guilty conscience because he left the vehicle within a couple of seconds of the unannounced arrival of a police cruiser behind the car in which he was a passenger is too slim a reed to support an inference of intent beyond a reasonable doubt. I would add to the majority's analysis that I consider particularly weak the argument that the jury could infer that Rivas was not just a passenger in the car, but that he indicated his connection to the car and its contents by his intent to return to the car after he stepped out, as evidenced by his leaving the passenger door open. According to this theory, when the police activated their emergency lights, Rivas realized the police meant business and altered his plan, deciding to exit the scene to avoid trouble, rather than return to the car, [32] and further, that Rivas did not run from the scene for fear of drawing attention to himself. From these inferences, the dissent contends, a reasonable jury could find that Rivas was guilty of possessing the drugs. We have observed that if words are not infrequently ambiguous, gestures are even more so. Many are wholly nonspecific, and can be assigned a meaning only in their context. Yet the observer may view that context quite otherwise from the actor: not only is his vantage point different, he may even have approached the scene with a preconceived notionconsciously or subconsciouslyof what gestures he expected to see and what he expected them to mean. The potential for misunderstanding in such a situation is obvious. In re T.M., 577 A.2d at 1154 n. 10 (citing People v. Superior Court, 3 Cal.3d 807, 91 Cal.Rptr. 729, 478 P.2d 449, 455 (1970) ( en banc )). In this case, the reason for Rivas' action of leaving the passenger door open when he exited the car is particularly opaque. Although the government argues that it evidences Rivas' intent to return, not only to the car, but to the drugs, it is equally possible that, although Rivas might well have intended to return to the car, he left momentarily not to avoid trouble with the police, but to seek help moving the car, which had stalled in the middle of the road. Further, to the extent that the government's argument is premised on the assumption that Rivas acted once he was aware of the police's presence, it would be anomalous for a person who knows he has drugs in the car to leave the door open, making it easier for police to spot the contraband, as happened here, where Officer Mitchell testified that he was able to see the drugs because of the light from street lamps, no doubt aided by the car's open door. An inference that Rivas intended to maintain dominion and control over the drugs from the fact that he left the passenger door open also requires speculation because it assumes a fact as to which there was no direct evidence, that the drugs were on the console before Rivas left the vehicle a full five minutes prior to their discoverytime during which any of the three other passengers in the car who by then had a better basis than Rivas to be aware of the police's presence might have tried to dispossess themselves of the drugs. See Ulster County, 442 U.S. at 163-64, 99 S.Ct. 2213. [33] As the majority notes, Rivas did not break into a run, nor is there any testimony that Rivas acted erratically, or suspiciously, see Smith, 558 A.2d at 319, or even turned around to see what the police were doing. Indeed, there is no indication from the record that Rivas' actions were prompted by police presence he preferred to avoid; he was not nervous or evasive, nor can it be said that he refus[ed] to cooperate, Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 124, 120 S.Ct. 673, 145 L.Ed.2d 570 (2000), because when Rivas walked away the police had not spoken to him or ordered him to return to the vehicle. Rivas simply walked to the sidewalk to talk to an individual standing there, virtually concurrent with the arrival of the police. As the police turned on their emergency lights, Rivas walked a few yards to the corner of Hyatt Place, where he turned the corner onto Park Road. Again, there is no indication in the record that Rivas took those further actions because he noticed the police or their emergency lights. Indeed, the testimony of the police suggests that Rivas' conduct had not aroused any suspicion until after the drugs were found in the car, when the officer went looking for him and found him, apparently without any difficulty. Cf. Wardlow, 528 U.S. at 122, 120 S.Ct. 673 (officers turned their car ..., watched [appellant] as he ran through the gangway and an alley, and eventually cornered him on the street). That Rivas only managed to put twenty to thirty feet between himself and the corner of Hyatt Place and Park Road in the approximately five minutes after he stepped out of the car further seriously undermines the inference that he intended to put himself beyond reach of the police because he had a guilty conscience. Under the circumstances, the government's argument to the jury that Rivas first waited in hopes that the coast would clear, and only fled after he realized the police meant business, required the jury to engage in impermissible speculation. See Roy, 652 A.2d at 1103 (evidence is insufficient if `in order to convict, the jury is required to cross the bounds of permissible inference and enter the forbidden territory of conjecture and speculation') (quoting Curry, 520 A.2d at 263).