Court Opinion

ID: 9807882
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:18:29.111391+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:03:58.109755
License: Public Domain

Tom, J.
(dissenting). Defendants appeal from convictions arising out of a robbery of a female victim. Their primary contention is that a showup identification, made approximately one hour after the commission of the crime, was unduly suggestive and should not have been admitted into evidence. They further argue that the verdict is against the weight of the evidence and that the trial court erred in constructively amending the indictment. The issues raised by defendants are without merit.
In the early morning hours of February 5, 2010, the victim was returning home from work as a nurse’s aide. She exited the subway on West 86th Street and was walking along 90th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues in Manhattan, when she noticed defendant Dimitri Marshall just a few feet away from her, running towards her with two figures silhouetted behind him. She was carrying a large blue bag containing a book, cell phone, charger, keys, cigarettes and an expired, prepaid MasterCard. Marshall grabbed her left arm and began punching her in the face, knocking her to the *130ground. She attempted to get up, but Marshall and defendant Thomas Cruz knocked her down and kicked her. She saw defendant Kareem Santiago standing with them, but he took no part in beating her. The location of the area of the attack was well lit by streetlights and lights from a nearby parking lot, and the victim was able to observe her assailants. She described Marshall as a dark-skinned African-American man with a wide face and Santiago as tall and skinny with a “narrow face.” She stated that Cruz wore a gray or partially gray jacket, and she was able to see his face. As a result of the attack, the victim’s jawbone was displaced and swollen, and she had pain in her left shoulder, knee and leg.
While Marshall took the bag and ran toward Columbus Avenue, the victim stood up and saw that Cruz and Santiago were still standing nearby. She ran toward Amsterdam Avenue and did not see where the two men went. She arrived at her apartment in about four minutes, where a neighbor called the police. Two officers responding to a radio call arrived within minutes. They placed the victim in their car and drove her around the neighborhood in search of her attackers. Lieutenant Seamus Lavin and another officer were also in the vicinity in a patrol car and responded to the radio call. Upon getting out of their car, they saw three men descending the stairway to the public entrance of a garage approximately a quarter of a block from the crime scene. They were only able to see the back of the men’s heads but observed that one wore a baseball cap. They heard one of the men say, “Oh shit. The cops,” as another marked police car approached, and then observed the men immediately going down the staircase to the garage, which had two entrances. Lieutenant Lavin immediately secured both entrances. He directed Officers Christopher Mitchell and Laquidara to drive their patrol car to the 90th Street entrance to prevent anyone from entering or leaving while Lavin and other officers entered the 91st Street entrance to search the garage. Officer Mitchell later left his patrol car to assist other officers in the search.
Officers Mitchell and Myskowsky testified at the suppression hearing. Officer Mitchell testified that the victim’s blue bag was found outside a locked door of a room in the garage. An emergency services unit (ESU) was called and pried open the door, which led to a 6-foot by 10-foot maintenance room. The three suspects were found hiding in the small room. Two were found in a hole in the floor, and were covered in soot. Officer *131Mitchell testified that among items found in the maintenance room with defendants were the victim’s wallet, cell phone, cell phone charger and ATM card. Defendant Santiago resisted arrest when he was pulled out of the hole in the room. Once the suspects were secured, the victim was brought to the garage by Officer Myskowsky within “a couple of minutes” to make an identification. Officer Mitchell stated that the lighting at the scene was provided by both the garage ceiling lights as well as the headlights and “take down lights” of a police car. Once the victim was brought to the scene, she identified all three suspects as the individuals who had robbed her.
Officer Myskowsky, who responded to the victim’s 911 call, was told by the victim of the vicious attack and robbery by three young men. He testified that he later drove the victim to the garage to make an identification of the defendants. She was driven back to the garage where, she was told, she was to view some people who had been stopped and to let the police know if she had ever seen them. Defendants were standing outside the maintenance room, with their hands behind them and with two uniformed officers standing to their right, two to their left, and two or three other officers standing behind them. Though the victim remarked to Officer Myskowsky that defendants looked different because they were dirty, she identified all three as her assailants. Officer Myskowsky further testified that approximately one hour elapsed from the time the police had received the 911 call to the victim’s identification of the defendants as her assailants.
Defendants’ motions to suppress identification testimony were properly denied. The showup procedure utilized by police was justified in the interest of prompt identification (see People v Duuvon, 77 NY2d 541 [1991]; People v Love, 57 NY2d 1023, 1024 [1982]) and conducted within approximately one hour of the crime despite delay occasioned by defendants, who locked themselves inside the maintenance room of the garage and resisted arrest (see People v Brisco, 99 NY2d 596 [2003]). The alternative lineup procedure would have been time-consuming, allowing the victim’s memory to fade while the police processed the defendants and tried to locate three sets of suitable fillers to participate (see People v Parker, 50 AD3d 603 [1st Dept 2008], lv denied 11 NY3d 740 [2008]). Contrary to the majority’s contention, no facts presented at trial are being relied on to substantiate the showup identification. Rather, much of the testimony given at the suppression hearing and trial overlapped.
*132As an initial consideration, at the suppression hearing both Marshall and Cruz complained generally that the identification procedure was unduly suggestive. However, the particular grounds now advanced by Cruz as improper — the use of a police car’s takedown lights to illuminate the suspects and the insufficiency of the victim’s opportunity to view her attackers— were not raised before the suppression court and are unpreserved for appellate review (see e.g. People v Williams, 99 AD3d 495 [1st Dept 2012], lv denied 20 NY3d 1066 [2013]). The enhanced illumination would have only assisted the victim in clearly viewing the suspects and making an accurate identification, foreclosing objection that the lighting was inadequate for that purpose (see People v Maynard, 40 AD2d 779, 780-781 [1st Dept 1972, Murphy, J., dissenting]).
While Marshall further complained that resort to the identification procedure was unwarranted due to the lack of exigent circumstances, it is settled that a showup is nevertheless permissible as long as it is conducted within reasonable geographic and temporal proximity to the crime (see e.g. Brisco, 99 NY2d at 597). Defendants were identified at the location of their arrest and approximately one quarter of a block from the crime scene. The majority’s argument that this was not a “fast-paced situation” to justify a showup identification is without substance. The police were already canvassing the area approximately four minutes after the robbery. A very short time thereafter, defendants were cornered inside a locked room of the garage. The police acted as promptly as they could and, in fact, any delay in the identification by the victim was caused by defendants. Notably, locking themselves in a maintenance room and refusing to open the door required responding officers to arrange for an emergency services unit to arrive at the scene and wait until a forcible entry could be effected. Defendants then resisted efforts to take them into custody. Once they were secured, the victim was promptly brought to the scene to make an identification. Any alleged lack of promptness in conducting the identification is entirely attributable to defendants. The showup identification, which took place approximately one hour after the commission of the robbery and in the context of an immediate and continuous investigation, cannot be said to have been unreasonable under the circumstances (id. at 597 [upholding identification made within an hour in the course of a continuous, ongoing investigation]; People v Howard, 22 NY3d 388 [2013] [identification made two hours *133after crime]; see also People v Cannon, 306 AD2d 130 [1st Dept 2003]). Thus, the People fulfilled their obligation to produce evidence validating the admission of the victim’s identification of her assailants (People v Ortiz, 90 NY2d 533, 537 [1997]).
The conditions asserted by defendants and by the majority to have been unduly suggestive are merely those that are generally unavoidable in view of reasonable security concerns inherent in any showup, to wit, “the likelihood that an identifying witness will realize that the police are displaying a person they suspect of committing the crime, rather than a person selected at random” (People v Gatling, 38 AD3d 239, 240 [1st Dept 2007], lv denied 9 NY3d 865 [2007]). Given the violence of the crime and the struggle with police to avoid being handcuffed and arrested, the presence of multiple police officers in the vicinity of the three suspects was an appropriate and necessary security measure (see People v Brujan, 104 AD3d 481 [1st Dept 2013], lv denied 21 NY3d 1014 [2013]; People v Sanchez, 66 AD3d 420 [1st Dept 2009], lv denied 13 NY3d 862 [2009]). In addition, it is conceded that at least two ESU officers were still on the scene. On remarkably similar facts, this Court held that viewing a defendant with his hands cuffed behind him, surrounded by police officers with an officer holding his arm in the vicinity of a number of marked patrol cars and illuminated with an “alley light,” does not render the circumstances unduly suggestive (People v McNeil, 39 AD3d 206, 209 [1st Dept 2007]), and we are obliged to abide by established precedent (Kalisch-Jarcho, Inc. v City of New York, 58 NY2d 377, 388 [1983, Wachtler, J., dissenting]; Matter of Eckart, 39 NY2d 493, 498-499 [1976]; Matter of Terrace Ct., LLC v New York State Div. of Hous. & Community Renewal, 79 AD3d 630, 642 [1st Dept 2010, Nardelli, J., dissenting], affd 18 NY3d 446 [2012] [“it is the role of this Court to follow its precedents”]). Further, defendants had their hands behind their backs and thus, their handcuffs were not visible to the victim.
The judicial policy of accepting showup identifications is founded upon the “objective that the police have reasonable assurances that they have arrested or detained the right person” (Duuvon, 77 NY2d at 545), and it is clear that this policy was promoted on the facts at bar. Here, within a very short time after the robbery, the police cornered the perpetrators locked inside a maintenance room of a garage, less than a block from the crime scene. The victim’s bag was located outside the locked door, and the incriminating evidence consisting of the victim’s *134stolen personal property was found inside the small room with defendants. Simply, defendants were apprehended within close geographic and temporal proximity to the crime in possession of the stolen goods. Under the facts of this case, the police clearly had reasonable assurance that they had detained the right suspects (id.).
Cruz argues that the victim did not have a long time to view him and that he was dirty when she viewed him. The maintenance room was extremely dusty, and when defendants were pulled from the room they were covered with dust and soot. At the showup, the victim remarked that defendants looked somewhat different because they appeared dirty. However, the victim had an adequate opportunity to view Cruz at the time of the attack, and she recognized him as one of her robbers at the showup, even though she was aware that defendants appeared dirtier than when they had robbed her. The victim also identified defendants at trial. She testified that Marshall was the one who had run up to her initially and punched her, and that Cruz was the one who had kicked her while she was on the ground. She then identified Santiago as the third man and the one who had remained with Cruz while Marshall ran off with her purse.
Moreover, the showup was warranted by exigent circumstances — particularly, to establish that defendants and not some other individuals were the correct suspects and that they were not, as defendant Santiago testified, merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. If, as Santiago claimed, defendants’ presence in the garage, locked in a maintenance room, was attributable to smoking marijuana and avoiding apprehension for a drug offense by hiding from the police, a prompt identification was necessary to rule out defendants as suspects in the robbery (cf. People v Seegars, 172 AD2d 183 [1991], appeal dismissed 78 NY2d 1069 [1991] [victim’s identification of suspect precluded further suggestive procedures to obtain identification by other witnesses]).
At trial, testimony elicited from the officers at the scene and Lieutenant Lavin showed that Marshall was found in the maintenance room lying on the ground, his hands beneath his body and his feet on top of a metal plate. A gun was next to him. It was dusty and without either ammunition or a magazine. Marshall struggled, but one of the officers was able to handcuff him and take him out of the room. Removing the metal plate disclosed a hole or sump, some three or four feet deep and two *135feet wide, in which Cruz and Santiago were hiding. The two men would not voluntarily climb out of the hole and had to be forcibly removed. During the struggle, Santiago sustained a laceration to his nose and had blood on his face. From the maintenance room in close proximity to defendants, the officers recovered, among other things, a package containing over one eighth of an ounce of crack cocaine, located in the area where Cruz had been hiding.
The convictions are supported by sufficient evidence (see People v Danielson, 9 NY3d 342, 348-349 [2007]). The sequence of events, both during and after the robbery, demonstrates Santiago’s accomplice liability for the robbery, supporting a reasonable inference that he participated by “placing himself where he could intimidate the victim and be ready to render immediate assistance” to his companions (Matter of Fabian J., 103 AD3d 564, 565 [1st Dept 2013]). We have considered and rejected Santiago’s and Marshall’s challenges to the evidence supporting the possessory charges.
The court properly exercised its discretion under CPL 200.70 in amending a count of the indictment to change the description of the stolen property from “credit card” to “debit card” (see People v Grist, 98 AD3d 1061, 1062 [2d Dept 2012], lv denied 20 NY3d 1061 [2013]). While there are differences between the two, the change in nomenclature is within the category of amendments relating to “matters of form . . . and the like” contemplated by CPL 200.70 (1), and the amendment did not improperly change the prosecution’s theory of the case.
Accordingly, the judgments should be affirmed.
Renwick and Kapnick, JJ., concur with Gische, J.; Tom, J., dissents in a separate opinion in which Gonzalez, P.J., concurs.
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County, rendered December 3, 2010, as amended January 7, 2011, modified, on the law and the facts, to vacate the judgments of conviction on the two counts of robbery in the second degree and the count of criminal possession of stolen property in the fourth degree, and remand for an independent source hearing and retrial, and otherwise affirmed. Judgment, same court, rendered February 1, 2011, as amended February 15, 2011, modified, on the law and the facts, to vacate the judgments of conviction on the two counts of robbery in the second degree and on the criminal possession of stolen property in the fourth degree count, and remand for an independent source hearing and retrial, and otherwise affirmed. Judgment, same court, rendered December *1363, 2010, as amended December 15, 2010, modified, on the law and the facts, to vacate the judgments of conviction on the two counts of robbery in the second degree and on the criminal possession of stolen property in the fourth degree count, and remand for an independent source hearing and retrial, and otherwise affirmed.