State v. Gonzalez

2021 UT App 83, 494 P.3d 1066
CourtCourt of Appeals of Utah
DecidedJuly 29, 2021
Docket20190810-CA
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 2021 UT App 83 (State v. Gonzalez) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Utah primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Gonzalez, 2021 UT App 83, 494 P.3d 1066 (Utah Ct. App. 2021).

Opinion

2021 UT App 83

THE UTAH COURT OF APPEALS

STATE OF UTAH, Appellant, v. JONATHAN A. GONZALEZ, Appellee.

Opinion No. 20190810-CA Filed July 29, 2021

Second District Court, Farmington Department The Honorable David R. Hamilton No. 181702012

Sean D. Reyes and Jeffrey S. Gray, Attorneys for Appellant Joseph Jardine and Peter D. Goodall, Attorneys for Appellee

JUDGE JILL M. POHLMAN authored this Opinion, in which JUDGES GREGORY K. ORME and DAVID N. MORTENSEN concurred.

POHLMAN, Judge:

¶1 In the middle of the night, an intruder entered Christina’s1 bedroom while she and her baby slept. He performed a lewd act while holding his cell phone and then left without further incident. After an investigation, the police believed Jonathan A. Gonzalez was the intruder and applied for a search warrant to obtain the cell tower location data for his cell phone. Based on an officer’s supporting affidavit, a magistrate granted the request. Armed with evidence obtained as a result of the search and its fruits, the State charged Gonzalez with burglary, lewdness

1. A pseudonym. State v. Gonzalez

involving a child, and lewdness. Gonzalez moved to suppress that evidence, arguing that the attesting officer had recklessly omitted material facts from the search warrant affidavit and that with the omitted material included, the affidavit did not support a finding of probable cause. The district court agreed with Gonzalez and granted his motion. Because we conclude that probable cause still exists with the inclusion of the omitted facts identified by the district court, we reverse.

BACKGROUND

¶2 After tossing and turning for several hours late at night, Christina finally dozed off while her baby lay sleeping in the same room. Christina’s husband was away, working a twelve- hour shift. When he returned home early the next morning, he noticed that several things appeared to be amiss. With his curiosity piqued, Christina’s husband checked the surveillance footage on the couple’s nanny cam, which was positioned in their bedroom. The nanny cam footage showed, at 3:42 a.m., a figure walking through the dark bedroom where Christina and the baby slept.

¶3 While the intruder moved through the room, he removed his penis from his pants and proceeded to masturbate in the presence of Christina and the baby. While performing the lewd act, the intruder held a cell phone in his left hand, possibly taking pictures or recording a video. Also visible on the footage was a wedding ring worn on the intruder’s left hand. Then, as abruptly as he entered, the intruder left.

¶4 The nanny cam never captured the intruder’s face; he could be seen only from the chest down, wearing what appeared to be a light-colored hoodie and dark pants. Christina slept unaware of the entire incident and remained asleep until her husband woke her up. After viewing the footage, the couple reported the incident to the police.

20190810-CA 2 2021 UT App 83 State v. Gonzalez

¶5 From the beginning of their investigation, the police suspected that the intruder was someone familiar with Christina and her home. For one thing, there was no sign of forced entry; all the exterior windows and doors were locked. Also, another person living in the home reported hearing the garage door open and close multiple times during the same early-morning time frame over the prior month, but Christina’s husband stated that he had “never repeatedly opened and closed the garage door” when coming home from work. And when the police first arrived at the scene, the cover to the garage keypad was partially opened, leading the police to suspect that the intruder gained access to the home through the garage.

¶6 A police lieutenant (Lieutenant) reviewed the nanny cam footage with Christina and asked her if she had any idea who the intruder might be. Christina first suggested her brother-in- law, stating that the intruder “looks similar to her brother-in- law, but that he doesn’t wear a wedding ring, which the intruder wore.” Next, she identified Gonzalez, a close family friend. She revealed to Lieutenant that “several years” ago she had fallen asleep on the couch and that she had woken up to find Gonzalez “snuggled up to her,” in a “spooning-type position.” She also said that “she believed” that Gonzalez’s wife, also a close friend, “would have had the garage code to her home.”

¶7 Later that day, Lieutenant visited the Gonzalezes’ residence and met with Gonzalez’s wife. Gonzalez’s wife had seen the nanny cam footage and was concerned for her friend. She gave Lieutenant permission to search areas of the home where Gonzalez had clothing, and Lieutenant looked for clothing items matching what he thought the intruder was wearing in the nanny cam footage—very dark pants and a light- colored hoodie. Lieutenant performed a brief search of two separate closets where he took “quick, cursory glances through the clothing,” but he did not find any items that matched the intruder’s clothing. Because Lieutenant wanted to keep the

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interaction “low-key,” he spent less than a minute searching each closet.

¶8 Eventually, a detective (Detective) took over the investigation. Lieutenant briefed him on its status, including Lieutenant’s search of the Gonzalezes’ home. Lieutenant also told Detective about the incident of Christina waking up to find Gonzalez lying next to her. After familiarizing himself with the rest of the case, Detective went to interview Christina.

¶9 During their conversation, Christina again suggested both her brother-in-law and Gonzalez as possible suspects. Referring to her brother-in-law, she told Detective that “the body type [in the footage] looks like his.” But she also expressed doubt that the intruder could be her brother-in-law because he was not married and the intruder wore a wedding ring. In addition, she noted that her brother-in-law did not own a cell phone like the one the intruder was seen holding in the footage. Finally, Christina stated that her brother-in-law “is just not that kind of person.”

¶10 Referring to Gonzalez, Christina pointed out characteristics that suggested he could be the intruder, such as “his features are long and his hands look long.” But she further observed that the intruder’s “legs looked too short to be” Gonzalez’s, while also speculating that the angle of the nanny cam may be to blame. She also led Detective to believe that she was “very apprehensive” about pointing the finger solely at Gonzalez for fear of harming her friendship with his wife.

¶11 On the same day Detective interviewed Christina, he discovered that the nanny cam inverted colors of clothing depicted in its footage—light-colored items appeared dark and dark-colored items appeared light. For example, the nanny cam reflected the black slacks worn by Detective as “pretty much pure white.”

20190810-CA 4 2021 UT App 83 State v. Gonzalez

¶12 The next day, Detective found Gonzalez in his driveway and asked to speak with him. Detective observed that Gonzalez’s physical “body type seemed very similar” to that of the intruder’s and that “[h]is hands . . . appeared to be very similar, [including] the way that the ring sat on the ring finger.” Detective also noticed that Gonzalez used his left hand to hold his cell phone, the same way the intruder did in the nanny cam footage.

¶13 After the encounter with Gonzalez, and after learning that the nanny cam inverted colors, Detective viewed photographs of Gonzalez on Gonzalez’s wife’s Facebook page. Detective observed from the photos that Gonzalez’s body type was similar to that of the intruder in the nanny cam footage, Gonzalez and the intruder shared the same hand structure, and Gonzalez wore his wedding ring in the same location on his finger as the intruder.

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2021 UT App 83, 494 P.3d 1066, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-gonzalez-utahctapp-2021.