Enrique O.
Filed 8/7/13 In re Enrique O. CA5
NOT
TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
California
Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or
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as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This
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purposes of rule 8.1115.
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE
OF CALIFORNIA
FIFTH APPELLATE DISTRICT
In re
ENRIQUE O., a Person Coming Under the Juvenile Court Law.
THE PEOPLE,
Plaintiff and Respondent,
v.
ENRIQUE O.,
Defendant and
Appellant.
F066115
(Super.
Ct. No. 12CEJ600420-2)
THE COURT
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APPEAL from
a judgment of the Superior Court of
County. Timothy A. Kams, Judge.
Kristen
Owen, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Kamala D.
Harris, Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General,
Michael P. Farrell, Assistant Attorney General, Eric L. Christoffersen and John
G. McLean, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
The court adjudged appellant,
Enrique O., a ward of the court (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 602) after it
sustained allegations charging him with brandishing a weapon (count 1/Pen.
Code, § 417, subd. (a)(1)) and providing false information to a police officer
(count 2/Pen. Code, § 148.9, subd. (a)).
On September 24, 2012, the court
aggregated time from a previous petition, set appellant’s maximum term of
confinement at 10 months, and committed him to the Juvenile Justice Center for
60 days.
On appeal, appellant contends the
evidence is insufficient to sustain the court’s finding that he provided false
information to a police officer. We
affirm.
FACTS
At
appellant’s jurisdictional hearing Douglas Driggers testified that on the
evening of August 11, 2012, he walked down the driveway of his house and
noticed appellant and three other males down the street. Two of the males had stopped a couple and
were harassing them while appellant and the other male continued walking down
the street and stopped in front of Driggers’s house. When appellant, or the male with him, made a
comment about physically assaulting and robbing the couple, Driggers told them
to “take that crap and go to the park or to the mall.†During an ensuing exchange, appellant, or the
male with him, said they were Eastside Fresno Bulldogs and started barking at
him. Driggers told them he did not care
who they were and not to do that in front of his house. Appellant then produced a knife and exhibited
it in a threatening way as he took a few steps towards Driggers. Appellant told Driggers he was a Bulldog gang
member and if Driggers had a problem, appellant was going to take care of
it.
Driggers retreated to his garage
and grabbed his own knife. The other two
juveniles then came to appellant’s aid.
One of them took the knife from appellant and approached Driggers aggressively. Driggers told them they needed to stay off
his property because he would use his knife.
The juvenile with the knife passed it back to appellant and he put it in
his pocket. The juveniles then began
barking and yelling obscenities. They
also threatened to shoot at Driggers’s house, set it on fire, and kill members
of Driggers’s family. Driggers told them
he was going to call the police and there would be problems if they came back. The males replied that they were going to the
park to smoke marijuana and left.
Driggers told them that was fine and that the cops would be on their
way. Driggers called the police.
Fresno
Police Officer Robert Martinez testified he and Officer Jeremy Price responded
to Driggers’s house at about 8:15 p.m. Driggers
provided the officers a description of the juveniles including appellant whom
he described as wearing a gray shirt, tan shorts and red shoes. The officers went to a nearby park where they
contacted two juveniles who fit some of the descriptions of the juveniles
involved in the incident with Driggers.
As they spoke with the two juveniles a third juvenile came out of a
bathroom. The three juveniles admitted
that they had been walking down the street where Driggers lived. As Officer Price spoke to one of the
juveniles, a city worker advised the officers that someone was inside of a
stall in the women’s bathroom. The
officers walked toward the women’s bathroom just as appellant walked out. Officer Martinez contacted appellant to find
out what he was doing in the women’s bathroom and because he was wearing a gray
shirt, tan shorts and red shoes.
Officer Martinez asked appellant
his name. Appellant replied his name was
Casper O. and gave his date of birth.
Martinez asked him if Casper was the name his mother gave him and
appellant replied that it was. Appellant
also stated that he was not on probation.
Officer Martinez had dispatch run the name and birth date appellant
provided and dispatch got a hit for a missing person named Enrique O. Martinez asked appellant for his mother’s
name and appellant provided a name that matched the information the officer
received for the missing person.
Dispatch also informed Martinez that appellant was on probation. The officer took appellant into custody for providing
a false name. Appellant eventually
admitted that Casper was his gang name.
During a search of appellant,
Officer Martinez found a knife with a three-inch blade in one of the pockets of
appellant’s shorts.
The officer returned appellant to
Driggers’s house for an in-field lineup.
Driggers identified appellant as the juvenile who had brandished a knife
at him.
Appellant testified, in pertinent
part, that he told Officer Martinez his name was Casper because he had a
warrant for his arrest and he did not want to give the officer his full
name.
DISCUSSION
Appellant
contends the evidence is insufficient to sustain his adjudication for falsely
identifying himself to a police officer within the meaning of Penal Code
section 148.9, subdivision (a) (hereafter section 148.9(a)) because: 1) he provided his correct last name and
birth date; and 2) he was not detained or under arrest when he provided this
information. We reject these
contentions.
“‘Any person who falsely
represents or identifies himself ... as another person or as a fictitious
person to any peace officer ... upon a lawful detention or arrest of the
person, either to evade the process of the court, or to evade the proper
identification of the person by the investigating officer is guilty of a
misdemeanor.’ [Citations.] The purpose of this law is to require the
defendant to give ‘sufficient information to allow law enforcement to locate
the person if he or she does not appear in court.’ [Citation.]
In reviewing the evidence, we draw all reasonable inferences to support
the judgment and resolve neither credibility issues nor evidentiary
conflicts. [Citations.]
“In assessing a claim of
insufficiency of the evidence, our ‘task is to review the whole record in the
light most favorable to the judgment to determine whether it discloses
substantial evidence--that is, evidence that is reasonable, credible, and of
solid value--such that a reasonable trier of fact could find the defendant
guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.’
[Citations.]†(
468, 471-472.)
Appellant falsely told Officer
Martinez that his first name was Casper and he admitted he did so because he
had an outstanding warrant. The juvenile court could reasonably infer
from these circumstances that appellant falsely told the officers his name was
Casper in order to evade being properly identified by the officer so that he
would not be arrested on his outstanding warrant. Thus, the record contains substantial
evidence that supports the court’s finding that appellant violated section
148.9(a). (Cf. People v. Hunt (1990) 225 Cal.App.3d 498, 502, 506 [Defendant whose
name was Bruce Hunt violated section 148.9(a) when he identified himself as
Paul Hunt].)
In In re Ivan J. (2001) 88 Cal.App.4th 27, 30-31 (Ivan J.), the court discussed the critical role a birth date plays
in establishing a person’s identity.
Appellant cites Ivan J. to
contend he could not have intended to deceive Officer Martinez because he provided
the officer with his true last name and birth date, two key pieces of
indentifying information, and appellant had to know this would allow the
officer to identify him. We disagree.
Appellant may have been foolish to
provide Officer Martinez with a false first name knowing that the officer would
probably discover his true identity.
This, however, does not negate the juvenile court’s implicit finding
that his intent in doing so was to evade being properly identified by the
officer. In any event, we do not reweigh
the evidence or resolve conflicts in the evidence. (People v. Young (2005) 34 Cal.4th
1149, 1181.) Reversal on a substantial
evidence ground “is unwarranted unless it appears ‘that upon no hypothesis
whatever is there sufficient substantial evidence to support [the conviction].’
[Citation.]†(People v. Bolin
(1998) 18 Cal.4th 297, 331.)
Moreover, appellant was lawfully
detained when he provided a false name to Officer Martinez. “A person is deemed to have ‘“been ‘seized’
within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment:†[citation] ... “only if, in view
of all of the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would
have believed that he was not free to leave.â€â€™
[Citations.] ‘Examples of
conditions which might indicate a “detention†or “seizure†under a reasonable
person standard include a threatening police presence, the display of a weapon
by an officer, the physical touching of the citizen approached, or the
officer’s language or voice indicating compliance with police demands might be
compelled. [Citations.] There is no bright line rule indicating the
point at which police conduct becomes a seizure. The degree of intrusion will vary with each
set of facts involving police conduct and the actions of the suspect.’ [Citation.]â€
(People v. Walker (2012) 210
Cal.App.4th 1372, 1382-1383.)
Driggers told appellant and the
other minors as they left that he was going to call the police and appellant
replied that they would be at the park smoking marijuana. A short while later, Officers Martinez and
Price confronted appellant at a park as he walked out of the women’s bathroom,
where he did not belong, wearing the same clothes he wore earlier. These circumstances provided Officer Martinez
a reasonable basis to detain him.
Further, given these circumstances, a person in appellant’s situation
would have known that when the officers confronted him he was detained and not
free to leave while the officers investigated his involvement in the earlier
incident.
Appellant cites
793 (Voeurn O.), to contend he did
not violate section 148.9(a) because he was not detained when he provided
Officer Martinez with a false first name.
In Voeurn O., a police officer
responding to a report of “suspicious juveniles loitering†at an apartment
complex found a minor lying on some grass at the complex and began asking him
questions. The minor told the officer he
was waiting for a friend, for whom he could not provide an address, and he
provided a false name. Although the
minor was released, he was arrested three weeks later when the officer
discovered his true identity. (
At the start of the jurisdictional
hearing, the minor moved to suppress his false statements arguing that they
were the product of an unlawful detention.
The trial court, however, found that he was not detained and denied the
motion. On appeal, the minor claimed
this ruling precluded a finding that he violated section 148.9(a). The appellate court agreed. (Voeurn
O., supra, 35 Cal.App.4th at pp.
795, 797.)
Voeurn
O. does not help appellant because in that case the minor was not
detained. Here, appellant was lawfully
detained because Officer Martinez had an objectively reasonable basis for
believing appellant earlier had brandished a weapon and a reasonable person in
appellant’s situation would have known he was detained. Accordingly, we conclude the evidence is
sufficient to sustain the juvenile court’s adjudication of appellant for
providing a police officer with false information in violation of section
148.9(a).
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
other males at the park five to ten minutes after he called the police.
