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Description: Albuquerque, New Mexico criminal defense lawyer represented Defendant charged with armed robbery.


{¶2} On February 3, 2016, Victim[1] was walking on Colombia Drive near the University of New Mexico (UNM) when someone pulled on his shoulder and robbed him at gunpoint. The robber took Victim's cell phone and blue Nike backpack. After robbing Victim, the robber got into the passenger seat of a nearby Chevrolet truck, and the truck drove away. After the truck drove away, Victim used a bystander's cell phone to call the police. During the call, Victim provided the police with the truck's license plate number. Victim, using the Find My iPhone application, located his phone, and he gave its location to the police. Initially, Victim described the robber as a six-foot-tall African American male with dreadlocks. Twelve days after he was robbed, Victim called police to tell them that, after viewing a news report on a local television station that described Defendant as a person of interest in several robberies, including Victim's own robbery, he recognized Defendant as the man who robbed him. After viewing this news report, Victim changed his description of the robber's ethnicity and hairstyle. Victim testified at trial that based on the news report, Victim believed Defendant was the person who robbed him and notified the police of this fact. He believed this because Defendant "looked really familiar" and the way that a different victim was robbed was similar to the way Victim was robbed.

{¶3} At the time Victim was robbed, Albuquerque Police Department Detective Koury Church was investigating several robberies near the UNM and Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) campuses that were similar to the robbery of Victim. Based on the investigation, Detective Church and other police officers arrested an accomplice of Defendant at Defendant's apartment complex. At that time, police also attempted to arrest Defendant at this apartment, but Defendant jumped out of a second-story window of the apartment building and fled. Defendant was arrested shortly afterward on the roof of a nearby building.

{¶4} On the day of Defendant's arrest, police obtained a search warrant for Defendant's apartment. During the search of the apartment, police recovered Victim's blue Nike backpack. On February 15, 2016, Victim called Detective Church to tell him that he had seen Defendant and the other men police arrested in
connection with this string of robberies on the news. To avoid tainting the identification of Defendant because of what Victim had viewed during the news report, Detective Church did not ask Victim to view a photo array to identify his assailant.

{¶5} As a result of its investigation, the State charged Defendant with three counts of armed robbery, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, and several other offenses. Before trial, Defendant moved to suppress Victim's identification. However, the district court dismissed the motion without reaching its merits because the district court found that the motion was untimely filed contrary to the scheduling order issued pursuant to LR 2-308 NMRA (the local rule). At trial, Defendant was convicted of armed robbery, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, and resisting, evading, or obstructing an officer. This appeal followed.

Outcome: {¶34} For the reasons stated above, we affirm Defendant's convictions for armed robbery, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, and resisting, evading, or obstructing an Officer.

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Defendant's Experts:

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