Court Opinion

ID: 9795773
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:38:33.241869+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:36:19.334618
License: Public Domain

ECKERSTROM, Presiding Judge,
dissenting in part and concurring in part.
¶ 29 In my view, the state presented insufficient evidence that the defendant/appellant Thomas McCurdy is the same Thomas McCurdy who was booked into the Pima County jail and who was convicted of a felony in California in 1997. Because, under the circumstances of this ease, the appellant could not be convicted of prohibited possession of a firearm absent sufficient evidence so demonstrating, I would reverse his conviction on that count.
¶30 Preliminarily, the state adequately demonstrated that the Thomas McCurdy who was booked into the Pima County jail on April 15, 2005, was convicted of a felony in California. The names and birth dates on the relevant documents are identical, and the jury reasonably could have concluded that the signatures matched. But, the state apparently overlooked that it needed to present some evidence that the McCurdy booked into the Pima County jail on April 15, 2005, was the defendant.
¶ 31 As the majority observes, Sergeant Stewart testified that he had seen a videotape of the referenced inmate’s admission to the Pima County jail. He also testified that he had obtained the inmate’s identification documents from the inmate’s housing — a location where Stewart could have secured a visual identification of the inmate. But the state utterly failed to elicit any testimony that the inmate Stewart saw in the videotape was the defendant. Nor did the state elicit from Stewart any testimony identifying the inmate in his cell. And, neither the videotape nor a booking photograph discussed by counsel at the bench was admitted into evidence.
¶ 32 Thus, although the record suggests the state may have had ample evidence at its disposal to prove that the defendant McCurdy was the same McCurdy booked into the Pima County jail — and therefore the same person convicted of a felony in California — it simply failed to present that evidence to the jury. Therefore, the only connection between the defendant McCurdy and the California conviction presented to the jury was a name. Arizona courts have long held that the mere commonality of a name is insufficient to prove a prior conviction beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Pennye, 102 Ariz. 207, 208, 427 P.2d 525, 526 (1967); State v. Terrell, 156 Ariz. 499, 503, 753 P.2d 189, 193 (App.1988) (matching unusual names, similar physical descriptions, and reference in Texas conviction document that person convicted of felony resided in same Arizona county where defendant was arrested insufficient to establish prior conviction).
¶ 33 To support the contrary conclusion, I believe the majority draws inferences that are not supported by the record. The majority correctly notes that Stewart testified during cross-examination that he had viewed the video of the booking process. It then posits that the jury could assume that the person Stewart had viewed was the defendant because the defendant was the presumed subject of Stewart’s testimony. However, Stewart testified as a foundational witness for the inmate records, not as an identification witness — a fact readily demonstrated by the state’s failure to ask Stewart to identify the defendant in the courtroom, or compare the defendant to any photographs in the inmate documents. When viewed in proper context, the specific subject of Stewart’s testimony was the inmate McCurdy, whose records Stewart had gathered and reviewed. At the *578very least we cannot assume Stewart intended to identify the defendant in the courtroom in the absence of any testimony to that effect.
¶34 The majority correctly emphasizes that defense counsel previously had elicited from Stewart that he did not know anything about the defendant McCurdy’s case, “the ease that’s been going on here today.” The majority then presumably infers that all Stewart’s comments thereafter must relate to the defendant McCurdy. But counsel immediately redirected Stewart’s testimony to the inmate documents in front of Stewart. Counsel then asked a series of questions designed to show that Stewart did not have any first-hand knowledge about the inmate McCurdy because Stewart had not booked that inmate himself.
¶ 35 The insufficiency of the evidence connecting the defendant to the inmate McCurdy appears to have arisen from an understandable prosecutorial oversight in the context of vigorous foundational objections by the defense. But I cannot view the state’s duty to properly present its evidence as a mere technical requirement when its failure to do so deprives the defendant of his opportunity to subject such evidence to adversarial testing — adversarial testing that is a cornerstone of our constitutional scheme of criminal justice. See U.S. Const, amend. VI. Ultimately, we do not know what Stewart would have said if asked to compare the appearance of defendant McCurdy to inmate McCurdy, or whether any such comparison would have withstood cross-examination.
¶36 For the above reasons, I reluctantly and respectfully dissent. I agree with, and join, the majority’s well-reasoned opinion in all other respects.