Saturday, October 13, 2012

Colorado Court of Appeals People v. Williams 10CA2045

Decision here.

   Williams participated in a drug rip at a tattoo shop.  He and one of four co-conspirators went into the tattoo shop through the back door, threatened the three occupants (the owner/drug dealer, the owner's wife, and some other person) with guns, and told them to get on the ground.  The owner put up a fight, Williams shot him, and he died.  The suspects searched the shop and stole some drugs, along with some money from the owner's pockets, and left.

   Williams was eventually convicted of felony murder, along with three counts of aggravated robbery (robbery is charged one count per victim, rather than per stolen item).  He appealed on several grounds, two of which will be discussed here.  There was a weird little fruit of the poisonous tree issue, and a question of whether his conduct actually met the elements of aggravated robbery.

   Fruit of the poisonous tree: some of the evidence presented against Williams was the testimony of one of his associates, which came to the attention of the police through a traffic stop in Oregon.  Basically, Williams was the passenger in a car which was stopped for speeding in Oregon (this was sometime after the murder).  The driver didn't have a license, so the police asked Williams for his ID so they could decide whether to let Williams drive or tow the car.  Williams gave a fake name, but didn't match the physical description associated with the name he gave (oops).  When confronted with this, he gave a second fake name.  While giving his second fake name, he claimed to have forgotten his middle name.

   The Oregon officer, apparently deciding that enough is enough, arrested Williams.  That led to the discovery of Williams' real identity, and then a Denver officer learned the identity of the driver of the car from the Oregon officer's report, and the driver of the car (who apparently also had knowledge of the murder) later testified against Williams.  In appealing his conviction, Williams argued that he was illegally detained by the Oregon officer, who did not have reasonable suspicion when he asked for Williams' ID, and that this illegal detention was the only reason that the Denver police learned the driver's identity, and so the driver's later testimony about the murder should be suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree.  Pretty convoluted, right?  Anyway, the Court of Appeals observed that officers do not need reasonable suspicion just to ask someone for their ID, but that when it becomes obvious that someone is giving a fake name (like when they forget their middle name, or don't match the physical description), then that creates probable cause to arrest.  This means that the Oregon officer did not illegally detain Williams, and so the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine doesn't apply.

   Now on to the agg robbery issue... robbery involves taking something from the presence of another by force or intimidation.  The courts have held that "presence" for robbery purposes isn't a question of line of sight, but one of the victim's control over the property taken.  This means that the victim has to have some authority over the property in question, and that the victim's present influence over the property must be sufficient that they would have been able to keep it if it weren't for the suspect's threats or intimidation.  In this case, the court held that the drug dealer and his wife both had authority to control the money in his pockets, and were both exercising some control over it.  On the other hand, the third person in the shop had no authority over money in the drug dealer's pockets, so she wasn't actually a victim of aggravated robbery (there are other crimes that could have been charged instead, but not agg robbery).  So one of Williams' three robbery convictions was reversed, everything else was affirmed.

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