Summary
The Rhode Island Supreme Court affirmed Willie Washington’s convictions for firearm and assault offenses arising from a 2014 shooting in Providence. The court rejected challenges to show-up identifications, admission of an anonymous 911 call, alleged Brady violations, and denial of a motion to recuse the trial justice.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the two show-up identification procedures were impermissibly suggestive and whether the resulting identifications were nevertheless independently reliable.
- Whether the recording of the anonymous 911 call was admissible under the excited-utterance exception to the hearsay rule.
- Whether admission of the 911 recording, even if erroneous, was harmless because the evidence was cumulative and Washington's guilt was established by other evidence.
- Whether the State violated Brady v. Maryland by failing to disclose its pretrial telephone call with the anonymous 911 caller or information allegedly obtained during that call.
- Whether the trial justice should have recused himself based on his daughter's professional relationship with a prosecutor involved in the case.
Holdings
- The show-up procedures were somewhat suggestive, but the identifications were independently reliable under the totality of the circumstances and were properly admitted.
- The trial justice did not abuse his discretion in admitting the anonymous 911 recording under the excited-utterance exception based on the information available at the pretrial hearing.
- Any error in admitting the 911 recording was harmless because the evidence was cumulative and Washington's guilt was sufficiently established by proper evidence.
- The State did not violate Brady because the pretrial call did not yield favorable, material information and was not deliberately suppressed.
- The trial justice properly denied the recusal motion because Washington did not establish personal bias, prejudice, or facts that would cause a reasonable member of the public to question the justice's impartiality.
Key quotations
“Suffice it to say that a witness’s degree of certainty in an identification should be weighed with great caution.” (at 24)
“The goal of every criminal trial must always be to obtain a just result.” (at 37)
Factual background
On November 15, 2014, Rudy Basquez was shot in the arm during a road-rage incident in Providence involving a dark-colored SUV. Two witnesses observed the shooter and identified Washington in separate police show-up procedures conducted approximately one hour after the shooting. An anonymous 911 caller reported a license plate number, but later evidence showed that the caller had received the number from another person rather than personally observing it. Washington was located near the scene, fled from police, and was arrested; a jury later convicted him of four offenses.
Procedural history
A Providence County Superior Court jury convicted Washington on four counts arising from a November 15, 2014 shooting. The trial justice denied Washington's motion for a new trial, and Washington timely appealed. During the appeal, the Supreme Court remanded the Brady issue to the Superior Court; the trial justice denied both the Brady-related new-trial motion and the recusal motion. The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of conviction and remanded the case to the Superior Court.
Remand instructions
The judgment of conviction and the denials of the Brady-related motion for a new trial and recusal motion were affirmed; the case was remanded to the Superior Court.