Opinion ID: 2332535
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Case Facts-Travel

Text: Dawn Brown (Ms. Brown) was driving her 1985 Dodge mini van on Wickenden Street in Providence during the early morning hours on June 27, 1993. She came to the intersection at Brook Street, where traffic is controlled by a traffic light, and came to a stop. As she did, and waited for the light to change, a person riding a bicycle came alongside the van's driver's side door, reached into its partially opened window, unlocked the door, barged in, and clambered over Ms. Brown into the front passenger seat. Ms. Brown, who is deaf, was startled by the sudden occurrence, but was able to look00425B at the intruder's face and was able to lip read what appeared to be his angry commands to turn her mini van around and to keep driving. Frightened, and screaming for help, she put her mini van in drive and began driving slowly back up Wickenden Street. The intruder, obviously disturbed by her screams for help, began punching her some five to eight times with a closed fist on the right side of her face, nose and right eye. She stopped the vehicle and opened her door in hopes of escaping from the intruder. As she did, he pushed her out of the mini van onto the street and then drove off. Ms. Brown, dazed, injured and bleeding, ran down the street screaming for help. Fortunately, a passing motorist stopped to assist her, and she was driven to the Brown University police station on Charlesfield Street, where she received first aid for her facial injuries. While being treated, she was informed that an unoccupied mini van had been found nearby, and she was taken to that location by the police to determine whether it was hers. She identified the mini van as hers, and noted that her purse, which had been in the van, was missing. She told the police that it had contained money and personal papers, including her driver's license. The purse was never located or recovered. Ms. Brown, at that time, gave the police a detailed statement of the incident as well as a fair description of the intruder. The following day, Monday, June 28, 1993, at Providence police headquarters in Providence, Detective Jeremiah McQueeney (Detective McQueeney) asked Ms. Brown, who then was accompanied by her father, to view some seventy-five photos from an array of possible suspects, compiled and based upon her earlier description of the intruder. She identified no one in the array. Richard Addison's picture had not been part of the array. The next day, Tuesday, June 29, 1993, a Providence policeman, George San Antonio, who previously had responded to the robbery and assault incident and who was present when Ms. Brown gave her description of the bicycle-rider-intruder, was on patrol duty in the general area where the00425B incident occurred. He observed a person riding a bicycle who appeared to fit the description given by Ms. Brown. The officer stopped the cyclist and asked for his identity. It was Richard Addison. Patrolman San Antonio forwarded the information he had obtained to the city detectives investigating the incident. Detective McQueeney, acting on the information furnished by Patrolman San Antonio, then obtained a police department photograph of Richard Addison, included it along with four other photographs of similar-looking subjects, and went to Ms. Brown's home to see whether she could identify anyone from the photos. When shown the array, Ms. Brown immediately identified Richard Addison as the robber who had beaten her. Detective McQueeney then, in effect, said to her, you picked out the right man. Richard Addison (the defendant) later was indicted for the robbery. When the state's case against the defendant was first reached for trial in Superior Court in October 1995, the defendant moved to suppress Ms. Brown's identification of him. He alleged that Detective McQueeney had reassured Ms. Brown that she had picked out the right man after she had identified the defendant's photograph during the second-photo-array-show-up. The defendant asserted that the reassurance served to bolster and to assure her identification-belief that the defendant was in fact the person who had robbed and beaten her. That reassurance, the defendant further contended, tainted not only the identification made of him by Ms. Brown at the time of the photo-array-show-up, but also extended to any later identification of him that she would be called upon to make during the trial. The trial justice, who presided at that original suppression hearing, did suppress the photo-pack-array identification made by Ms. Brown, but primarily because the original photo-pack had since been lost by the prosecutor. The trial justice, however, did find that Ms. Brown had more than ample opportunity and ability to have earlier observed the defendant during the robbery and that the00425B identification arrived at by her at that time was totally independent from her subsequent photo-array identification, and would be admissible at trial. Following the suppression hearing, the trial jury was impaneled. In making an opening statement to the jury, defense counsel, notwithstanding the trial justice's earlier ruling excluding any evidence of the defendant's identification made from the missing original five photo-pack-array, nonetheless elected to inform the trial jury that such an identification had in fact been made. At that point, the trial justice at a side bar conference, informed counsel that the state would then be able to bring out the previously suppressed photo-pack identification made by Ms. Brown. Defense counsel offered no objection, and, in fact, later extensively cross-examined Ms. Brown regarding her identification of the defendant made from the missing photo-pack. That trial ended in a mistrial because the jury was unable to unanimously agree on a verdict. At the defendant's second trial, which commenced in May 1996, defense counsel once again, during his voir dire questioning of the prospective trial jurors, suggested to them that Ms. Brown had made an out-of-court identification of the defendant from a photo lineup [ sic ] presented to her by Detective McQueeney. Following that voir dire, the state's prosecutor informed the trial justice that because defense counsel had once again brought out the same evidence that originally had been suppressed at the defendant's first trial, he requested that the state be again permitted to bring out the identification made by Ms. Brown from the missing photo-pack. At that point, the trial justice inquired of the prosecutor as to what the first trial justice had done regarding defense counsel's use of that suppressed evidence. He was told that the first trial justice had permitted the state to bring out the photo-pack identification made by Ms. Brown. The trial justice then responded, I will follow his ruling. He's the PJ. Defense counsel offered no objection to the trial justice's comment and ruling.