People v. Rodriguez.
2022 COA 11. No. 19CA0529. Traffic Stop—Evidence—Chain of Custody—Testimony—Authentication—Jury Instructions—Prosecutorial Misconduct.
January 13, 2022
Defendant was a passenger in a car stopped by Officer Gardner. During the stop, defendant jumped out of the vehicle and ran along the side of the highway. Officer Gardner and another officer gave chase, and during the pursuit, defendant threw down a small plastic bag containing a white powdery substance. The officers apprehended defendant, and Officer Gardner recovered the bag that defendant discarded during the chase. At trial, the prosecution sought to establish that the substance in the plastic bag recovered from the scene was the same substance that a chemist tested and determined was cocaine (Exhibit 1). Defendant was convicted of possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance and obstruction of a peace officer.
On appeal, defendant argued that the trial court erred by admitting a bag of cocaine allegedly recovered during the traffic stop because the prosecution failed to establish a sufficient chain of custody and therefore failed to authenticate it. Here, Officer Gardner testified that after he retrieved the bag of cocaine, he gave it to Sergeant Manzanilla at the scene. After this point, Officer Gardner did not see the bag again until he purportedly identified it at trial; he did not have any personal knowledge of how the substance from the plastic bag recovered at the scene supposedly ended up in Exhibit 1. Sergeant Manzanilla did not testify. The police chemist testified that he had no knowledge of the circumstances under which Exhibit 1 was created, including who had previously handled the substance or who had prepared and sealed the exhibit bag. Therefore, the chain of evidence was broken, and the jury had no basis to determine that the powder in Exhibit 1, whose origin was unknown, was the same powder that defendant had possessed before discarding it during the traffic stop. Accordingly, the trial court erred by admitting the evidence, and the error was not harmless.
Defendant also contended that the trial court committed two errors that required reversal of his conviction for obstructing a peace officer. First, defendant claimed that the jury instruction misstated the law and violated his constitutional right to a trial by jury. Here, the court did not tell the jurors that they did not have the power to nullify; the court told the jurors that they had a duty to follow the law, which was not an error. Second, defendant argued that the prosecutor’s comments in closing argument misstated the law by equating a knowing mens rea with mere voluntary conduct. To prove the charge of obstructing a peace officer, the prosecutor had to show that defendant knowingly obstructed, impaired, or hindered a peace officer’s enforcement of the law. Here, the prosecutor’s references to sleepwalking and being awake were merely dramatic ways of emphasizing that, to act knowingly, defendant only needed to know what he was doing. While the comments were a bit hyperbolic, they were not so improper as to constitute plain error.
The conviction for possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance was reversed and the case was remanded for a new trial on that charge. The conviction for obstruction of a peace officer was affirmed.