Opinion ID: 1801948
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Prearrest Delay

Text: Defendant contends the nearly 10-year delay between the Merck killings in September 1984 and his arrest in August 1994 prejudiced his ability to defend against the murder charges, violating his rights to a fair trial and to due process of law under the state and federal Constitutions. [9] As we shall explain, we find no constitutional violation.
Defendant first moved to dismiss the complaint in August 1994, arguing the 10-year delay between the murders and his arrest prejudiced him because of his own faded memory and that of critical defense witnesses. In support, defendant's attorney, Michael Sprague, declared in pertinent part, Due to the passage of time, the defendant does not [know], and is unable to recall, where he was, who he was with, or where he was living, or located at the time of the ... homicides. An evidentiary hearing on defendant's motion was held concurrently with the preliminary examination in September 1994. At the hearing, criminalist Nerida, Detective Diederich, Detective Fraley, investigator Christopher Hillis, and Detective Christopherson each testified about his respective role in the investigation and the evidence uncovered along the way. The testimony of these witnesses at the hearing largely anticipated that presented at trial regarding the course of the Merck homicide investigation. (See, ante, at pp. 416-421.) Thus, their testimony revealed that by early 1985, law enforcement had gathered evidence linking several items of the Mercks' property with defendant, including Clifford's lighter, wallet, identification, and Colt.25-caliber pistol, as well as Alma's turquoise ring and the couple's Social Security checks. However, fingerprint comparisons, including a comparison of the latent prints lifted at the crime scene with defendant's rolled prints by sheriff's department criminalist Jerry Roper in November 1984, and a 1987 comparison of several of the latent prints with prints in a computerized fingerprint database, were negative. Detective Fraley was assigned to investigate the Merck case from December 1984 through September 1987. He testified that in February 1985 defendant called him and offered to discuss the case. Fraley declined defendant's offer, however, because he was still looking at the circumstances surrounding the homicide and right at that point in time I was not prepared to take him on, so to speak, from an investigator's point of view. In late 1985 or early 1986 Detective Fraley presented the Merck case to the district attorney's office. After reviewing the file, two deputy district attorneys told Fraley that all of the evidence was circumstantial and that they could not issue a complaint without evidence linking defendant directly to the murders. Similarly, Deputy District Attorney Barton Hegeler told Christopher Hillis, the district attorney's investigator who worked on the Merck case in 1986, that there was not enough evidence against defendant to go to a jury. Upon his transfer to a different department in September 1987, Detective Fraley gave the Merck case file to his supervisor for reassignment. At that time, he did not believe he had probable cause to arrest defendant. He had done little work on the case in the preceding few months because his leads had dried up. When Detective Christopherson reopened the Merck investigation in 1994, no detective was assigned to the case and the Kern County Sheriff's Department had done no active investigation since 1987. In May 1994, Christopherson asked the technical investigations unit to recompare the latent prints from the Merck crime scene with the rolled prints of defendant, his brother and one other suspect. Criminalist Sharon Pierce found that latent print No. 10 matched defendant's left thumbprint and latent print No. 44 matched his left middle fingerprint. Christopherson then presented the case to the district attorney, who decided there was sufficient evidence to arrest and charge defendant. The defense called Jerry Roper, who testified that he had no independent recollection of the fingerprint comparisons he performed in the Merck case in 1984 and could not presently recreate them because his eyesight had deteriorated over the years. At the conclusion of the hearing, the court denied the motion to dismiss, explaining, I don't find any deliberate acts by law enforcement or the agencies not to bring this case to trial or to push forward with it as soon as they could. It would appear there was an inadvertent failure to detect a critical fingerprint analysis. It appears that even as late as '86, '87 there were other people seriously considered as suspects in the case that were being investigated at the time before then. And also ... the fingerprint connect[ing defendant] with the case certainly added [a] substantial amount to the body of evidence against the defendant[]. Shortly after his arraignment in superior court in September 1994, defendant moved to dismiss the information based on prejudicial prearrest delay. As sources of prejudice, he identified his own faded memory and that of crucial witnesses, as well as Roper's present inability to explain the basis for his 1984 conclusion that defendant's rolled prints did not match the latent prints from the Merck crime scene. In support, defendant submitted, among other evidence, his own sworn declaration that he had no present memory due to the lapse of time as to his whereabouts or activities between 9-1-84 to 9-10-84. Defendant further asserted that during the 10 years between the crimes and his arrest, the Kern County Sheriff's Department had lost several items of evidence taken from the Mercks' service porch area and living room. He argued the loss prejudiced him because he could not now test the items for fingerprints. At an evidentiary hearing the following January, William Thompson, the property control officer for the Kern County Sheriff's Department, testified that according to his records, as of July 1985 property from another case had been placed on the shelf where the missing items from the Merck case had been located, and that property was of sufficient amount that the other [(Merck)] property would have had to have been missing at that time. The trial court denied defendant's motion without explanation. Defendant renewed his motion to dismiss for prearrest delay several additional times, including in January 1996 when he joined codefendant Gerald Cowan's motion; in February 1996 during the conditional examination of Ronnie Woodin; in March 1996 when he filed supplemental motions; and during the trial testimony of prosecution witness Mitzi Cowan. Among the issues raised was the destruction of evidence seized in the October 1984 raid at the Caravan Inn during which Danny Phinney and Robert Lutts were arrested. Each of these motions was unsuccessful.
(1) The due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and article I, section 15 of the California Constitution protect a defendant from the prejudicial effects of lengthy, unjustified delay between the commission of a crime and the defendant's arrest and charging. ( People v. Nelson (2008) 43 Cal.4th 1242, 1250, [78 Cal.Rptr.3d 69, 185 P.3d 49] ( Nelson) ; People v. Morris (1988) 46 Cal.3d 1, 37 [249 Cal.Rptr. 119, 756 P.2d 843], disapproved on other grounds in In re Sassounian (1995) 9 Cal.4th 535, 543, fn. 5 [37 Cal.Rptr.2d 446, 887 P.2d 527]; see also United States v. Lovasco (1977) 431 U.S. 783, 789-792 [52 L.Ed.2d 752, 97 S.Ct. 2044]; United States v. Marion (1971) 404 U.S. 307, 324-325 [30 L.Ed.2d 468, 92 S.Ct. 455].) Such prearrest or precharging delay does not implicate the defendant's state and federal speedy trial rights (U.S. Const., 6th Amend.; Cal. Const., art. I, § 15), as those rights do not attach until a defendant has been arrested or a charging document has been filed. ( Nelson, supra, 43 Cal.4th at p. 1250.) (2) When, as here, a defendant does not complain of delay after his arrest and charging, but only of delay between the crimes and his arrest, he is not without recourse if the delay is unjustified and prejudicial. `[T]he right of due process protects a criminal defendant's interest in fair adjudication by preventing unjustified delays that weaken the defense through the dimming of memories, the death or disappearance of witnesses, and the loss or destruction of material physical evidence.' [Citation.] Accordingly, `[d]elay in prosecution that occurs before the accused is arrested or the complaint is filed may constitute a denial of the right to a fair trial and to due process of law under the state and federal Constitutions. A defendant seeking to dismiss a charge on this ground must demonstrate prejudice arising from the delay. The prosecution may offer justification for the delay, and the court considering a motion to dismiss balances the harm to the defendant against the justification for the delay.' [Citation.] ( Nelson, supra, 43 Cal.4th at p. 1250.) Prejudice may be shown by `loss of material witnesses due to lapse of time [citation] or loss of evidence because of fading memory attributable to the delay.' ( People v. Catlin (2001) 26 Cal.4th 81, 107 [109 Cal.Rptr.2d 31, 26 P.3d 357], quoting People v. Morris, supra, 46 Cal.3d at p. 37.) And although the federal constitutional standard for what constitutes sufficient justification for delay is unclear ( Nelson, supra, 43 Cal.4th at pp. 1251-1254), we have noted that the law under the California Constitution is at least as favorable for defendant in this regard ... as federal law ( id. at p. 1251). Accordingly, as in Nelson, we apply California law here. Under the California standard, negligent, as well as purposeful, delay in bringing charges may, when accompanied by a showing of prejudice, violate due process. This does not mean, however, that whether the delay was purposeful or negligent is irrelevant. ( Nelson, supra, 43 Cal.4th at p. 1255.) Rather, whether the delay was negligent or purposeful is relevant to the balancing process. Purposeful delay to gain an advantage is totally unjustified, and a relatively weak showing of prejudice would suffice to tip the scales towards finding a due process violation. If the delay was merely negligent, a greater showing of prejudice would be required to establish a due process violation. ( Id. at p. 1256.) The justification for the delay is strong when there is investigative delay, nothing else. ( Ibid. ) We review for abuse of discretion a trial court's ruling on a motion to dismiss for prejudicial prearrest delay ( People v. Morris, supra, 46 Cal.3d at p. 38), and defer to any underlying factual findings if substantial evidence supports them (cf. People v. Hill (1984) 37 Cal.3d 491, 499 [209 Cal.Rptr. 323, 691 P.2d 989] [concerning right to speedy trial]). Because defendant last renewed his motion to dismiss during Mitzi Cowan's trial testimony, we will consider all of the evidence that was before the court up to that time, including the evidence presented at the preliminary examination, the various hearings on defendant's motions and supplemental motions, and at trial. Defendant's showing of prejudice is relatively weak. (See Nelson, supra, 43 Cal.4th at p. 1256.) Defendant first claims prejudice due to Jerry Roper's inability, after 10 years, to recall the differences he had found in 1984 between defendant's rolled fingerprints and the latent prints recovered from the Merck crime scene, or to recompare the prints due to his failing eyesight. Because of the delay, defendant argues, Roper was unable to rebut the implications, raised by other witnesses and exploited by the prosecutor, that he was incompetent. But from 1994 through the time of trial in 1996, both the latent prints and defendant's rolled prints were still in existence and available for examination by defense experts; if the prints did not match, the defense could have presented its own expert to so testify. Thus, this case is fundamentally unlike People v. Hartman (1985) 170 Cal.App.3d 572 [216 Cal.Rptr. 641], on which defendant relies. There, both the testimony of the coroners who had examined the victim's body immediately after his death and ascribed the death to natural causes (and who had since died), and the victim's body itself, which had decomposed beyond the point of useful testing, were unavailable at the time of trial. ( Id. at p. 580.) Here, by contrast, while Roper's testimony was no longer very useful to the defense, the prints themselves were readily available for retesting. Defendant argues that an expert hired and paid by the defense would have been less persuasive to a jury than the Kern County Sheriff's Department's own technician. But if there were differences between defendant's rolled prints and the latent prints, any expert should have been able to point them out to the jury. Accordingly, any prejudice defendant suffered from the unavailability of Roper's explanatory testimony was minimal. Defendant next argues the delay prejudiced him because of his own lost memory; by 1994, he was unable to recall where he was or what he was doing during the first weeks of September 1984 and could not identify alibi witnesses or explain how he came into possession of the Mercks' property. But defendant was aware by at least February 1985, when he offered to talk to Detective Fraley, that he was a suspect in the Merck murders. He therefore had an incentive to record any exculpatory information he had regarding his whereabouts, the property, or the identity of alibi witnesses. [10] On the other hand, if by early 1985 defendant had already lost the ability to recall his whereabouts in September of the previous yearwhether due to drug use or some other cause (see People v. Butler (1995) 36 Cal.App.4th 455, 464 [42 Cal.Rptr.2d 279])any claim that he would have been able to construct an alibi defense had the prosecution commenced sooner is speculative. (See People v. Morris, supra, 46 Cal.3d at p. 38.) In any event, in light of the strong evidence of defendant's guilt and the public interest in bringing him to trial, his bare statement of inability to recall realistically cannot be considered more than minimal prejudice. ( People v. Vanderburg (1973) 32 Cal.App.3d 526, 533 [108 Cal.Rptr. 104], italics omitted.) Defendant next argues that by the time of his arrest in 1994, the memories of witnesses had faded regarding his alleged possession of the Mercks' property, depriving him of the ability to effectively cross-examine these witnesses. For example, at the preliminary examination and at trial, Alma's son Robert Johnson could not completely describe certain items allegedly stolen from the Mercks. But Johnson testified at the preliminary examination that his ability to describe the property had been no better in 1984 when he spoke to law enforcement officers. Defendant further points out that his sister Catherine Glass could not determine if the ring shown to her at the preliminary examination and at trial was the same ring she had given to Detective Fraley and identified as coming from defendant. But contemporaneous police reports documented Glass's conversations with Fraley, Glass confirmed at trial that she told Fraley the truth, and Fraley testified that the ring Glass gave him was the ring produced at trial. Thus, Glass's ability to identify the ring at trial was not critical to the prosecution's case. (Cf. Scherling v. Superior Court (1978) 22 Cal.3d 493, 506 [149 Cal.Rptr. 597, 585 P.2d 219] [prejudice from fading witness memories due to delay is diminished where contemporaneous police reports exist that may be introduced into evidence or used to refresh the witnesses' recollection].) Defendant also complains about Jerry Jones's inability to identify the lighter shown to him at trial as Clifford's, and Ronnie Woodin's failure to positively identify the lighter shown to him at trial as the one defendant had sold to him. Again, however, contemporaneous police reports documented Detective Fraley's 1985 conversations with these witnesses, Fraley testified the lighter produced at trial was the one Woodin had given him, and both Woodin and Jones testified that they had told Fraley the truth. Again, the witnesses' ability to identify the items at trial was not critical. Defendant further complains about the faded memories of Phinney and Lutts at trial regarding the origins of the Colt .25-caliber pistol seized in the October 1984 raid on the Caravan Inn. Defendant claims he was deprived of the ability to cross-examine these witnesses to show that they did not obtain the gun from him. But Phinney's December 21, 1984, interview with Detective Diederich, in which he identified defendant as the source of the gun, was tape'recorded and transcribed. Thus, Phinney's ability at trial to independently recall what had happened in 1984 was not critical to the prosecution's case. Moreover, although Lutts refused to talk to police after his arrest in 1984, his testimony about the gun was cumulative. Again, any prejudice due to the faded memories of these witnesses was minimal. Defendant next claims the delay prejudiced him because, when Emma Foreman was interviewed by Lieutenant Porter in January 1990, she could not recall whether defendant had confessed to killing an elderly couple in Bakersfield a month after Russell was murdered, or a month before the murder. Defendant argues that if he confessed a month before Russell was killed, he could not have been referring to the Mercks. But even if defendant had confessed to killing some other elderly couple in Bakersfield, that would not mean he did not kill the Mercks as well. Moreover, Foreman's testimony was not of crucial significance to the prosecution's case. ( Scherling v. Superior Court, supra, 22 Cal.3d at p. 506.) The case rested primarily on the fingerprint and ballistics evidence coupled with defendant's possession of items of the Mercks' property. Foreman's testimony added little to the strong body of evidence implicating defendant in the murders. Defendant further claims the delay prejudiced him because during the time between the crimes and his arrest, law enforcement lost material evidence including jewelry boxes, a radio, purses, and cut pieces of lamp cordtaken from the Mercks' service porch and living room after the murders. Defendant argues he was deprived of the ability to test those items for fingerprints. But the trial court reasonably could have concluded, based on the testimony of Officer Thompson, the property control officer, that the property had been missing as of July 1985. Thus, a more prompt prosecution would not have benefited defendant unless it was initiated in early 1985. Moreover, even if some other suspect's fingerprints were on the items, defendant still would have been linked to the murders because his own fingerprints were found at the crime scene. Accordingly, any prejudice flowing from the loss of these items was minimal. Defendant finally points to the property seized in the October 1984 raid on the Caravan Inn in which Danny Phinney and Robert Lutts were arrested, which the Bakersfield Police Department destroyed around 1991. Defendant contends he lost the ability to determine whether any of the property had been stolen from the Mercks, which would have supported the defense theory that Lutts and Phinney committed the murders. But none of that property matched the Merck family's descriptions of property that was missing from the Mercks' home after the murders. [11] Accordingly, the possibility that defendant could have shown that any of the destroyed property had belonged to the Mercks seems remote. Moreover, defense counsel was able to exploit the destruction of this evidence by pointing out, in closing argument, that it had never been examined to determine if it came from the Mercks' home. Again, any prejudice from the loss of this evidence was minimal. Against defendant's weak showing of prejudice, the prosecution's justification for the delay was strong. The delay was investigative delay, nothing else. ( Nelson, supra, 43 Cal.4th at p. 1256.) Here, as in Nelson, although [t]he police may have had some basis to suspect defendant of the crime shortly after it was committed ... law enforcement agencies did not fully solve the case ... until 1994, when criminalist Sharon Pierce recompared the latent fingerprints from the Merck murder scene with defendant's rolled prints and found a match. ( Ibid. ) Once in possession of evidence tying defendant to the Merck crime scene, the prosecution promptly charged him with the murders. (3) Defendant argues the prosecution had enough evidence to arrest him in early 1985, including Phinney's statements linking him to Clifford's gun, as well as Clifford's lighter and Alma's ring, which witnesses said they had obtained from defendant. But as we said in Nelson, [a] court should not second-guess the prosecution's decision regarding whether sufficient evidence exists to warrant bringing charges. `The due process clause does not permit courts to abort criminal prosecutions simply because they disagree with the prosecutor's decision as to when to seek an indictment.... Prosecutors are under no duty to file charges as soon as probable cause exists but before they are satisfied they will be able to establish the suspect's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.' ( Nelson, supra, 43 Cal.4th at p. 1256, quoting People v. Dunn-Gonzalez (1996) 47 Cal.App.4th 899, 914-915 [55 Cal.Rptr.2d 404]; see United States v. Lovasco, supra, 431 U.S. at pp. 790-796.) Indeed, `[a] prosecutor abides by elementary standards of fair play and decency by refusing to seek indictments until he or she is completely satisfied the defendant should be prosecuted and the office of the prosecutor will be able to promptly establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.' ( People v. Nelson, supra, 43 Cal.4th at p. 1256.) Here, the evidence law enforcement possessed in 1985 was all circumstantial and connected defendant only to the Mercks' property, not to the Merck crime scene. The prosecution was justified in waiting until it had evidence connecting defendant to the crime scene before arresting him and charging him with murder. Defendant further argues that Detective Fraley could have gained direct evidence linking him to the murders (and also could have allowed defendant to preserve his version of events) by accepting defendant's offer in February 1985 to discuss the case. But as we explained in Nelson, [a] court may not find negligence by second-guessing how the state allocates its resources or how law enforcement agencies could have investigated a given case. ... It is not enough for a defendant to argue that if the prosecutorial agencies had made his or her case a higher priority or had done things a bit differently they would have solved the case sooner. ( Nelson, supra, 43 Cal.4th at pp. 1256-1257, italics added.) Here, Fraley testified that he declined to interview defendant in February 1985 because he did not yet have enough information about the crimes to be able to detect if defendant was lying. Fraley's tactical decision to put off interviewing defendant until he had more information was quintessentially the type of law enforcement decision that courts should not second-guess. Defendant next contends that in light of questions about Roper's competence that arose in 1984, the Merck case latent prints should have been reexamined sooner. He argues there is no explanation for why the Merck case was not included in Thomas Jones's reexamination of Roper's work that took place sometime before 1987. (See fn. 4, ante. ) But the record is unclear as to whether the Merck case comparisons were not included in the recheck, or were included but found not to be in error. Neither Jerry Grimes, who supervised the technical investigations unit at that time, nor Jones, who performed the reexamination, could pinpoint the precise span of time it included. Grimes could confirm only that Jones found no additional problems. In any event, defendant's argument ignores that the department did doublecheck Roper's work in a different wayseveral of the latent prints from the Merck case were compared with prints in a computerized fingerprint database, with negative results. Defendant also argues it was negligent not to doublecheck Roper's work in light of Nerida's testimony that in 1984 it was the technical investigations unit's policy to have two people sign off on every fingerprint comparison. But both Grimes and Roper testified that there was no such policy for fingerprint comparisons that the initial examiner concluded did not match. Thus, substantial evidence supports the conclusion that there was no blanket doublechecking policy in 1984. In any event, defendant's argument amounts to the very type of Monday morning quarterbacking that we condemned in Nelson. The same can be said for defendant's claim that the Merck case should have been reassigned after Detective Fraley left the robbery-homicide unit in September 1987, rather than being left dormant. The case was not dormant: Detective Christopherson testified that the supervisor of the unit was responsible for the case after Fraley left. Again, we will not second-guess the department's decision to allocate its resources in this manner. (See Nelson, supra, 43 Cal.4th at pp. 1256-1257.) (4) In sum, the investigation of the Merck murders was not perfect; no investigation is. Like the trial court, however, we find no evidence that law enforcement or the prosecution deliberately delayed the investigation in order to gain a tactical advantage over defendant. Nor do we find evidence of negligence. Rather, at worst the Kern County Sheriff's Department simply erred when it failed to determine before 1994 that defendant's fingerprints matched the Merck scene latent prints. That being the case, balancing defendant's weak showing of prejudice against the strong justification for the delay (see Nelson, supra, 43 Cal.4th at p. 1257), we find no due process violation. Accordingly, the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it denied defendant's many motions to dismiss due to prearrest delay.