WOODLAND, CA – The case against two accused charged with felonies after a traffic infraction here was tossed in Yolo County Superior Court Wednesday after Judge Sonia Cortés ruled “the deputy’s testimony was not credible.”
The judge’s decision was made after the prosecution’s witness, Deputy Daniel Schraer, mistakenly identified the accused and conducted unlawful vehicle searches.
Both accused were charged with the felony of carrying a concealed firearm in a vehicle, but the second accused was also charged with the misdemeanor of resisting/obstructing a police officer.
Deputy District Attorney Aaron Rojas addressed the defense motion to dismiss the felony, saying its interpretation is “overly broad.”
DDA Rojas brought in the first and only witness, Schraer, who had stopped the accused on March 3 when he noticed their white Cadillac had expired registration.
When Deputy Schraer pulled over the driver (the second accused) for the infraction, Schraer asked the driver and passenger (the first accused) for their identification.
The driver provided the ID but the passenger only gave his name and birthdate. Both accused said that they were “not on probation or parole,” according to Deputy Schraer.
Deputy Schraer said he heard “an unconfirmed probation hit in Los Angeles county” for the passenger over his radio.
When speaking to the accused in the initial interaction, deputy Schraer said “the passenger… had a satchel bag or a fanny pack on his lap… in the closed position, but when he returned to the vehicle to have the driver sign the citation, he noticed the passenger’s satchel bag was now open and empty, “12 in. in length and five in… tall” and “three or four in. thick.”
When asked by DDA Rojas if this was significant, Schraer claimed, “sometimes suspects will hide knives, firearms, narcotics, in similar bags” so the deputy asked the passenger if he could search his person, but was unable to locate any of these items.
Deputy Schraer took the passenger into cuffs and placed him by the hood of his patrol car so he could conduct a pat down of where the passenger was sitting. Schraer said he saw, in the center console, a “considerable amount of trash and the wooden handle of a handgun” so he asked the driver to put his hands on the wheel and went back to the patrol car where he “pushed, no placed, (the passenger) into the vehicle” while the driver drove off.
Deputy Schraer arrested the passenger and took him to Yolo County Jail where he found that the gun was “not registered to anyone” and realized he had misspelled the passenger’s name, finding in his actual information: a past misdemeanor not probation.
Deputy Public Defender Danielle Craig asked Deputy Schraer to clarify that in the first contact, the passenger’s satchel was closed with nothing in his hand but when the deputy returned to have the citation signed, the satchel was open and the passenger was texting on his phone. Deputy Schraer agreed, adding the dimensions of the satchel could hold said phone.
Deputy Schraer’s body cam footage showed the center console opened from the driver’s side, so DPD Craig asked if it would be easier for the driver to move the gun since the passenger would have to “go up and over” the console lid, to which Deputy Schraer said he “can’t testify one way or the other.”
DPD Craig argued that “the only reason [the passenger] aroused suspicion was because of the satchel being open” and the unconfirmed hit on the passenger’s probation, and Schraer said “yes, those two things.”
Defense attorney James Granucci began his cross-examination, asking if deputy Schraer spoke Spanish or provided an interpreter for the driver who only spoke Spanish, and Deputy Schraer said he did not.
After the deputy denied the driver seemed nervous, attorney Granucci asked why he had asked the passenger for his identification and why the driver “was still detained in your mind,” regarding the driver’s misdemeanor, after the driver signed the citation and had his ID returned, to which Deputy Schraer responded, “Officer safety.”
Defense attorney Granucci also asked Deputy Schraer, “if I (as a white man) was wearing a satchel bag and you pulled me over for expired registration would you prolong the detention to question me?… Did my client’s race play a factor in you prolonging this detention?”
Deputy Schraer answered “no” to both questions.
Regarding Deputy Schraer’s search of the vehicle, Granucci claimed that “you never asked consent, he never gave you consent to search, isn’t that correct?” Deputy Schraer responded “correct.”
DPD Craig showed body cam footage from the scene, where Deputy Schraer said “copy” to dispatch indicating the driver had an unconfirmed hit for probation out of LA county.
Deputy Schraer confessed, “Yes I made the mistake… I switched the occupants around. I thought it was the passenger that was on probation out of LA county.” Despite confirming the passenger’s identity at the Yolo County Jail, in Deputy Schraer’s report he had not corrected the mistake, said the defense.
Deputy Schraer had a conversation with his sergeant “within a week of the arrest,” where he realized his mistake and wrote a supplemental report, but on March 20 he testified that his original police report was “true and accurate to the best of his knowledge.”
DPD Craig asked for a “no holding order on count one” for the passenger, saying, “There is no evidence to indicate or to tie [the passenger] to the firearm. It’s found in a vehicle that does not belong to him… it’s found in a compartment of the vehicle he would have tricky access to… the two things that officer Schraer testified to that he believed tied (the passenger) to the firearm I don’t believe to be credible at all.”
Defense attorney Granucci argued that on count two for the driver, Deputy Schraer was not lawfully performing his duty because “an officer may legally detain someone if the person consents to detention. In this case (the driver) did not consent to detention,” and the detention “should have been over once the purpose of the stop was completed” but continued because he believed that there “may possibly have been a thing in the satchel bag.
“When [the driver] left, he was free to go, and so I don’t think (the driver) did anything on the night in question that could be a violation” of restricting/obstructing a police officer.
On count two, Granucci said deputy Schraer had agreed the driver was not nervous, was cordial, and there was no indication that the driver knew the gun was in the console or had put it there.
Before Judge Cortés could issue her ruling, DDA Rojas said that “the evidence that came out in today’s hearing was a little bit different than in previous hearings. Based on the evidence, I don’t think I can, in good faith, ask this court to hold either defendant to answer.”
