People v. Luna-Solis

2013 CO 21, 298 P.3d 927, 2013 WL 1409894
CourtSupreme Court of Colorado
DecidedApril 8, 2013
DocketSupreme Court Case No. 12SA75
StatusPublished

This text of 2013 CO 21 (People v. Luna-Solis) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Colorado primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Luna-Solis, 2013 CO 21, 298 P.3d 927, 2013 WL 1409894 (Colo. 2013).

Opinions

En Banc

JUSTICE COATS delivered the Opinion of the Court.

¶ 1 The People filed an interlocutory appeal pursuant to section 16-12-102(2), C.R.S. (2012), and CAR. 4.1, as well as a petition pursuant to CAR. 21, seeking relief from an order of the district court both suppressing statements of the defendant and excluding DNA evidence. Athough the district court found that the statements in question were voluntary and were made after an effective waiver of Miranda rights, it nevertheless suppressed them on grounds that the Sixth Amendment barred the Denver police from questioning the defendant about an ongoing prosecution unless his counsel in that case were present. The district court similarly excluded DNA evidence collected by the Denver police in the execution of a Crim. P. 41.1 order of the Denver County Court, on grounds that they sought the order, at least in part, for the benefit of the prosecution in this ease, and that after filing a motion to admit evidence of an uncharged Denver assault in this case, the prosecution was permitted to acquire non-testimonial identification evidence from the defendant, even to verify his identity as a perpetrator in the Denver assault, only according to Crim. P. 16 11(a)(2), governing discovery in this ease.

¶ 2 Because the defendant’s Miranda waiver effectively waived his right to counsel as guaranteed by not only the Fifth but also the Sixth Amendment, the district court erred in suppressing statements as a violation of the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Because Crim. P. 16 II imposes disclosure obligations on criminal defendants without simultaneously barring the use of evidence acquired through otherwise lawful investigation, the district court erred in finding a discovery violation and excluding DNA evidence. The district court’s suppression order is therefore reversed, our rule is made absolute, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I.

¶ 3 In 2011, Jesus Luna-Solis was charged in Arapahoe County with various counts of kidnapping, sexual assault, and conspiracy, arising from a sexual assault committed by multiple assailants in April 2003. Following a hearing and arguments of counsel, the district court issued a 23-page order, resolving a number of motions concerning the admissibility of evidence from the investigation of a 2002 sexual assault in Denver. The court found evidence of this as-yet-uneharged Denver assault generally admissible pursuant to section 16-10-301, C.R.S. (2011), and CRE 404(b), but it excluded certain evidence as having been obtained without notice to and outside the presence of defense counsel in this case. Specifically, the court excluded evidence of a match between samples obtained from the defendant and DNA discovered on the victim of the Denver assault as the sanction for a discovery violation, and in the same order it suppressed an incriminating statement concerning the A’apahoe County assault, made to the Denver police, as a violation of the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

¶ 4 With regard to the similarity of the two assaults, the district court found that “the facts of the 2002 Denver sexual assault closely parallel those alleged in [this case], including an abduction of a female pedestrian late at night in the Denver metropolitan area by multiple males in an automobile, transport to a secluded area, oral and vaginal sexual assault, and subsequent abandonment.” From the documents submitted to and relied on by the court in ruling on this group of motions, it appeared that the prosecution’s theory of admissibility was premised on the proposition that if the defendant and another man were [930]*930accomplices in committing a very similar sexual assault, relatively close in time and location to the one for which the defendant is charged in this case, and it could be shown that the other man was one of those involved in the commission of this assault, it would be reasonable to infer that the defendant was also the other man’s accomplice in this assault as well. The prosecution’s interest in supporting this theory by demonstrating that the defendant was the second assailant in the Denver assault led to the court’s evidentiary rulings now challenged on review.

¶ 5 The record on appeal indicates that although both sexual assaults remained unsolved for a number of years, DNA left in both assaults was matched to the same unknown assailant. Unlike the Arapahoe assault, in which DNA from only one of the assailants was recovered, in the Denver assault DNA was also recovered from a second assailant. As the result of an otherwise unrelated conviction in another jurisdiction, a 2009 tentative DNA computer (CODIS) match pointed to the defendant in this case as the second assailant in the Denver assault. After additional investigation, including a photographic line-up at which the Arapahoe assault victim picked the defendant as one of her assailants, the current charges were brought in Arapahoe County.

¶ 6 In addition to moving to admit evidence of the Denver assault as uncharged criminal misconduct, the Arapahoe prosecutors moved pursuant to Crim. P. 16 11(a)(2) for non-testimonial identification, in order to confirm the tentative match in the Denver assault, and a DNA sample was therefore obtained from the defendant by the Aurora police. Because the Denver Crime Lab, however, declined to rely on samples not obtained by its own department, and because Denver had by then reopened its own investigation of the 2002 assault, Denver detectives obtained a Crim. P. 41.1 order for non-testimonial identification from the Denver County Court and executed it without notifying the defendant’s counsel in this ongoing prosecution. When the sample obtained pursuant to that order was subsequently analyzed by the Denver Crime Lab, it was determined to match the DNA profile for the second assailant on file in the 2002 Denver assault case. If the DNA evidence were credited by the trier of fact, it therefore would provide powerful evidence that the defendant and another unnamed man committed the Denver assault together and that this other man, along with at least one accomplice, committed the similar Arapahoe assault.

¶ 7 Prior to executing the non-testimonial identification order, the Denver detectives interviewed the defendant at the Arapahoe County jail, where he was already in custody. The district court below found that the defendant was brought to an interview room and told that the detectives wanted to discuss a 2002 Denver sexual assault. Although the defendant initially responded that he should probably have an attorney, .and the detectives therefore turned to pack up their recording device and simply collect the DNA sample, the defendant then “voluntarily and without solicitation or encouragement engaged Detective Garcia about the 2002 sexual assault case.” The court found that following a full advisement and waiver of his Miranda rights, the ensuing interview neither violated the defendant’s rights under Miranda nor resulted in any involuntary statements.

¶ 8 Notwithstanding compliance by the Denver police with the Denver court’s Crim. P. 41.1 order and the dictates of Miranda, the district court below excluded from this prosecution evidence derived from the DNA sample obtained by the Denver police and suppressed one particular sequence of questions and answers from the defendant’s interview with them.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
2013 CO 21, 298 P.3d 927, 2013 WL 1409894, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-luna-solis-colo-2013.