UCD Student Acquitted of Resisting Arrest by Davis PD

On March 9, 2012, a Yolo County Jury of eight women and four men acquitted Christopher Spatola of a single misdemeanor count of a violation of Penal Code section 148, obstructing or delaying a peace officer in carrying out the legal performance of duties.

In the early morning hours of February 11, 2011, there was some sort of disturbance at KetMoRee in Davis, which serves as a restaurant until 10 pm and then a bar and club.

One of the workers at the bar, “Nate,” in charge of security, apparently flagged down officers and advised them that there had been a disturbance and the aggressor was refusing to leave.

The security employee Nate admittedly does not remember the facts of what happened inside, but testified that he directed Davis Police Corporal Michael Moore to Mr. Spatola.  Corporal Moore would make contact with Mr. Spatola, lead him around the corner away from the entrance to the establishment.  With his back up against a wall, the officers began to question him about whether or not he had been involved in a fight.

At this point, according to the prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Diane Ortiz, the defendant began acting in a way that made Corporal Moore uneasy.  Specifically, he put his hands in the air behind his head.

Corporal Moore asked him to sit down three times.  The first two times he ignored the request. The third time, instead of complying with the police officer’s request, the defendant stood looking directly at Corporal Moore and said, “No, I will not sit down.”

At this point, Corporal Moore tried to grab his wrist. The defendant, according to the prosecution, resisted and tried to get away.  Finally, Corporal Moore executed a take-down maneuver and put the defendant in handcuffs.

Even while in cuffs, the prosecution continued, Mr. Spatola continued to resist, at one time attempting to bite Officer Arimboanga and attempting to kick some of the other officers.  Eventually, Corporal Moore testified, they put his legs into a restraining device.

“This is a simple case, the bottom line is, the evidence is going to show that the cops were doing their best to sort out a barfight,” Ms. Ortiz argued in her opening statement.

All the defendant had to do was just cooperate, she said.  “However he decided to become defiant and ignore basic directions and he chose to physically resist.”

Mr. Spatola was represented by James Walker, the former Deputy District Attorney who in 2008 challenged Judge Timothy Fall for the judgeship.  Now Mr. Walker is a defense attorney working in Sacramento.

He argued that this was simply a case of a young college student, who admittedly had been drinking, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He was at KetMoRee that evening but was looking for his designated driver to take him home.  When he couldn’t find him outside, he attempted to go back inside.  But there had been some kind of disturbance inside – something we would never learn about because Nate did not remember it, and no witnesses came forward.

The bouncer believed Mr. Spatola had been involved and did not let him back in.

When confronted by police, Mr. Spatola became scared and uneasy.  He was asked to sit down, stressing that he was asked, and being scared, he decided not.

Corporal Moore testified that there are a lot of disturbances at the KetMoRee establishment, and he said he has personally responded to incidents at least fifty times.

He observed overt signs of intoxication in Mr. Spatola, including impaired speech, difficulty in maintaining balance, red eyes and liquid spilled on his shirt.

What concerned Corporal Moore was Mr. Spatola’s response when he put his hands up behind his head, and his failure to answer questions as he looked around from side to side.

The officer testified that both responses are unusual.  He said that it appears that he was attempting to find an avenue for escape.

He also testified that he did not feel safe with his arms up in that position – arguing that with an economy of motion it’s an easier position for attacking.

He testified, “I felt uneasy with arms up in the air in that fashion,” and thus he asked him to sit down.

Mr. Spatola did not respond, so he asked him again to sit down.

After the third time, he grabbed his wrist and attempted a “twist lock.”  He testified that when he grabbed the wrist, Mr. Spatola tensed up and attempted to pull his arm away from him.

The officer would use an arm bar take Mr. Spatola down.  As he was being arrested he continued to resist, and attempted to kick backwards, also attempting to bite one of the officers

Under cross-examination, Corporal Moore acknowledged his size advantage.  Whereas he is 6-3, Mr. Spatola is only 5-11 and 150 pounds.  Corporal Moore also testified that he was an expert in hand-to-hand combat.

Moreover, he did not order him to sit down, rather he politely asked and Mr. Spatola did not respond.

He never informed Mr. Spatola he was being detained, nor did he warn Mr. Spatola that he was under arrest.

He testified, “Typically it doesn’t work well if we tell someone they are under arrest in that situation because they are more likely to resist.”  He added, “He was obstructing and delaying our investigation because I didn’t feel safe interacting with him in that fashion.”

But Mr. Spatola saw his actions very differently.

He said he did not answer because “I was totally in shock.”

“I told them I was not in a fight before I was asked to sit down,” Mr. Spatola testified.  “I was very frightened…I told him I wasn’t going to sit down.”

Mr. Spatola testified that Corporal Moore never ordered  him to sit down, he made it seem like a question.  He said, “I felt more comfortable standing up – for my safety…I was scared to sit down.”

With regard to his hands behind his head, “I was scared and didn’t want them to think I was trying to start something,” and thought the safest place for his hands to be was behind his head.

Mr. Spatola mentioned he had seen cop shows on TV and didn’t want his hands in his pockets.  He said he saw his positioning as an obvious location where they see you’re not going to do anything.

He would wake up the next morning complaining of headaches and sensitivity to light and sound.  His mother would testify to a huge bruise – of golfball size, behind his ear.

Under cross-examination, he was asked why he was afraid that the officer would “attack” him.  He said he had been previously attacked by other officers.

It then came out that there had been a 2009 arrest, in which he had been non-compliant with Officer Beckwith of the Davis Police.

He also testified that he had not attempted to bite Officer Arimboanga, but rather he had been taken down on the asphalt and was attempting to wipe his face on the officer’s sleeve.

Mr. Walker would counter that the 2009 incident was very different.  There had been an altercation of 150 people.  His client was given orders in this case and defied them.  However, Officer Beckwith only arrested him on a Penal Code section 647F violation, drunk in public, and never filed the charges.  He simply took him in and let him sleep it off.

Mr. Walker argued that is what should have happened here.  He argued that he and Corporal Moore just have to disagree as to what placing the hands behind the head meant – that he thought most reasonable people would not see that as a tactical move to attack a larger officer, but rather a defensive move to indicate that he was not intending to make problems.

Under PC section 148, Ms. Ortiz argued that the people must establish that the peace officer was lawfully performing his duties, that the defendant willfully resisted, obstructed or delayed, and that when the defendant acted, he knew or reasonably should have known that the officer was attempting to perform his duties.

She argued, “People have met all four [describing the first element as two-pronged, identifying the official as a peace officer, then describing that officer lawfully performing his or her duties],” and that the defendant’s non-response met elements required for this charge, both when he “delayed” and when he physically resisted.

The problem, I think, that the people faced here was several-fold.  First, Corporal Moore was attempting to be polite and ask Mr. Spatola to do something.  Corporal Moore at first characterized these as requests, but at some point he must have felt like the request became an order.

The problem that Mr. Spatola had was that he thought it was a request.  He testified to that.  A reasonable person would probably see it as a request.  Corporal Moore testified that he was not free to leave, therefore he was being detained, but he also said that he never informed him that that was case. However, if asked, he would have told him.

To the jury, it would seem that this was more ambiguous a case than Corporal Moore saw it.

The second problem is that Corporal Moore and Christopher Spatola probably saw the arm action very differently.  I spoke to an expert on the subject, and was told that putting one’s arms up behind one’s head is unusual.  Most people will keep their arms at their sides.  Police will get uneasy when a person acts unusually.

But Mr. Spatola, given his 2009 incident, likely saw it very differently.  He was probably thinking, just as he said, by putting his arms up, he was communicating his intentions not to be aggressive.

Although Corporal Moore interpreted the action differently, the problem is that this was not communicated well to Mr. Spatola.

Finally, we have the resisting after he was placed in handcuffs.  We have conflicting statements about what happened.

Here is where the law gets complicated.  Mr. Spatola was never charged with another crime.  There is limited to no evidence that he was involved in a barfight.  In fact, no one testified that he was, and Nate does not remember.

So, can he be arrested for simply refusing to sit down?  That is perhaps questionable.  In fact, under California law, a person being unlawfully arrested has the right to resist so long as he “uses that degree of force that he or she actually believes is reasonably necessary to protect himself or herself from the officer’s use of unreasonable or excessive force.”

To bolster their case then, the prosecution arguesd that the efforts to resist arrest after being placed in handcuffs are sufficient.  But are they?  It seems questionable, at best.

For the prosecution, this case comes down to the fact that, in their eyes, Mr. Spatola willfully disobeyed a lawful order.  However, the question is really whether it was perceived as an order, and whether it was lawful.

The bottom line for the defense is that this entire situation could have and should have been handled differently, and the event could have been avoided if the officer had acted with better discretion.

—David M. Greenwald reporting

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