Title: Commonwealth v. Johnson

State: massachusetts

Issuer: Massachusetts Supreme Court

Document:

NOTICE:  All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal 
revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound 
volumes of the Official Reports.  If you find a typographical 
error or other formal error, please notify the Reporter of 
Decisions, Supreme Judicial Court, John Adams Courthouse, 1 
Pemberton Square, Suite 2500, Boston, MA, 02108-1750; (617) 557-
1030; SJCReporter@sjc.state.ma.us 
 
SJC-11876 
 
COMMONWEALTH  vs.  KYLE L. JOHNSON. 
 
 
 
Plymouth.     October 6, 2015. - February 12, 2016. 
 
Present (Sitting at New Bedford):  Gants, C.J., Spina, Cordy, 
Botsford, Duffly, Lenk, & Hines, JJ. 
 
 
Identification.  Evidence, Identification.  Practice, Criminal, 
Identification of defendant in courtroom. 
 
 
 
 
Indictments found and returned in the Superior Court 
Department on March 11, 2013. 
 
 
A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by 
Cornelius J. Moriarty, II, J. 
 
 
An application for leave to prosecute an interlocutory 
appeal was allowed by Cordy, J., in the Supreme Judicial Court 
for the county of Suffolk, and the appeal was reported by him to 
the Appeals Court.  The Supreme Judicial Court on its own 
initiative transferred the case from the Appeals Court. 
 
 
 
Carolyn A. Burbine, Assistant District Attorney, for the 
Commonwealth. 
 
Edward Crane for the defendant. 
 
Karen A. Newirth, James L. Brochin, & Jennifer H. Wu, of 
New York, & R.J. Cinquegrana, for The Innocence Project & 
another, amici curiae, submitted a brief. 
 
Lisa Kavanaugh, Benjamin H. Keehn, Patrick Levin, Radha 
Natarajan, & Paul R. Rudof, Committee for Public Counsel 
 
 
2 
 
Services, & David Lewis, for Committee for Public Counsel 
Services & another, amici curiae, submitted a brief. 
 
 
 
GANTS, C.J.  The issue presented in this case is whether 
the motion judge, applying the common-law principles of fairness 
in Commonwealth v. Jones, 423 Mass. 99, 109 (1996), committed an 
abuse of discretion in allowing the defendant's motion to 
suppress the victim's identifications of the defendant as the 
intruder he had struggled with in his home.  The judge found 
that, through no fault of the police, the identifications were 
"impermissibly tainted by the suggestive circumstances."  We 
provide guidance regarding the application of the Jones standard 
and conclude that the judge did not abuse his discretion in 
allowing the motion to suppress.1 
 
Background.  We summarize the facts found by the motion 
judge, supplemented where necessary with undisputed evidence 
that was implicitly credited by the judge.  See Commonwealth v. 
Jones-Pannell, 472 Mass. 429, 431 (2015), citing Commonwealth v. 
Isaiah I., 448 Mass. 334, 337 (2007), S.C., 450 Mass. 818 
(2008). 
 
On September 21, 2012, Adebayo Talabi, the victim, received 
a telephone call from a neighbor that the door to his apartment 
                                                          
 
 
1 We acknowledge the amicus brief submitted by the Committee 
for Public Counsel Services and the Massachusetts Association of 
Criminal Defense Lawyers and the amicus brief submitted by the 
Innocence Project and the Innocence Network. 
 
 
3 
 
was open.  He returned to his home and encountered a stranger, 
who was armed with a firearm, inside his apartment.  They 
struggled, and during the struggle the firearm went off, 
striking no one.  The intruder fled.  The victim reported the 
incident to the Brockton police department and described the 
assailant as a light-skinned black male wearing a gray hooded 
sweatshirt.  Brockton police Detective Jacqueline Congdon asked 
the victim to come to the police station to review booking 
photographs to see if he could identify the intruder, but he did 
not do so. 
 
On September 27, 2012, the victim telephoned Brockton 
police Officer Scott Besarick and told Besarick he now knew the 
identity of the intruder.  Officer Besarick transferred the 
telephone call to Detective Congdon's line, and the victim 
explained to her that he had recently spoken to his cousin, T.J. 
Hendricks, who lived in the Roxbury section of Boston and whose 
home had been broken into one day before the incident at the 
victim's apartment.  The victim then added Hendricks to the 
telephone call so that it was a three-way call.  Hendricks said 
that the break-in at his Roxbury home had been captured in a 
video recording by a neighbor's surveillance system that showed 
the person who had broken into his home.  By the "size and 
shape" of the person in the surveillance footage, Hendricks 
believed that the intruder "could possibly be" the defendant, 
 
 
4 
 
who was the boy friend of a cousin of both Hendricks and the 
victim.  Hendricks obtained a photograph of the defendant and 
his girl friend taken by Hendricks's mother at a cookout, which 
he forwarded to the victim.  The victim viewed the photograph 
and identified the defendant as the intruder he had discovered 
in his home. 
 
Using this information, Detective Congdon assembled an 
eight-person photographic array containing the defendant's 
photograph.  Detective Thomas Hyland met with the victim to show 
him the photographic array.  The victim positively identified 
the defendant's photograph in the array as the man he discovered 
in his apartment. 
 
The defendant was indicted on seven charges, including 
armed assault in a dwelling, in violation of G. L. c. 265, 
§ 18A, and breaking and entering in the daytime, in violation of 
G. L. c. 266, § 17.  The defendant moved to suppress all out-of-
court and in-court identifications of the defendant by the 
victim.  The motion judge held an evidentiary hearing at which 
Detectives Congdon and Hyland testified.  The judge found that 
the police did not violate the defendant's constitutional rights 
in administering the photographic array but allowed the motion 
to suppress the two out-of-court identifications under the 
common-law principles of fairness recognized in Jones, 423 Mass. 
at 109, concluding that they were "impermissibly tainted by the 
 
 
5 
 
suggestive circumstances."  The motion judge also allowed the 
motion to suppress any in-court identification, concluding that 
the Commonwealth had failed to meet its burden of showing by 
clear and convincing evidence that an in-court identification 
would be based upon an independent source, citing Commonwealth 
v. Botelho, 369 Mass. 860, 868 (1976).  The Commonwealth moved 
for reconsideration of the ruling, which was denied, and then 
sought leave to appeal the motion judge's decision.  A single 
justice allowed the application for interlocutory appeal, and we 
transferred the case to this court on our own motion. 
 
Discussion.  Before we address whether the judge was 
correct to suppress the eyewitness identifications in this case, 
we set forth our law regarding the admissibility of eyewitness 
identifications. 
 
1.  Law of eyewitness identifications.  a.  Out-of-court 
identifications made during a police identification procedure.  
Where an out-of-court eyewitness identification arises from an 
identification procedure that was conducted by the police, the 
identification is not admissible under art. 12 of the 
Massachusetts Declaration of Rights if the defendant proves by a 
preponderance of the evidence that the identification was "so 
unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable 
misidentification that its admission would deprive the defendant 
of his right to due process."  Commonwealth v. Walker, 460 Mass. 
 
 
6 
 
590, 599 (2011), and cases cited.  "In considering whether 
identification testimony should be suppressed, the judge must 
examine 'the totality of the circumstances attending the 
confrontation to determine whether it was unnecessarily 
suggestive.'"  Commonwealth v. Silva-Santiago, 453 Mass. 782, 
795 (2009), quoting Commonwealth v. Odware, 429 Mass. 231, 235 
(1999).  "Where the defendant satisfies this burden, the out-of-
court identification is per se excluded as a violation of the 
defendant's right to due process under art. 12 . . . ."  Walker, 
supra at 599 n.13.  See Commonwealth v. Johnson, 420 Mass. 458, 
462-463 (1995). 
 
Under our per se exclusion standard, a defendant must prove 
not only that the out-of-court identification procedure 
administered by the police was suggestive, but that it was 
"unnecessarily suggestive" (emphasis in original).  Commonwealth 
v. Crayton, 470 Mass. 228, 235 (2014), quoting Commonwealth v. 
Figueroa, 468 Mass. 204, 217 (2014).  This inquiry focuses on 
whether police had "good reason" to engage in a suggestive 
identification procedure.  Crayton, supra at 235-236.  Figueroa, 
supra.  See Commonwealth v. Austin, 421 Mass. 357, 361-362 
(1995) ("good reason" to conduct showup depends on "the nature 
of the crime involved and corresponding concerns for public 
safety; the need for efficient police investigation in the 
immediate aftermath of a crime; and the usefulness of prompt 
 
 
7 
 
confirmation of the accuracy of investigatory information, 
which, if in error, will release the police quickly to follow 
another track"). 
 
By adopting a rule of per se exclusion under art. 12, we 
rejected the rule under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United 
States Constitution in which a motion judge must apply a two-
step analysis to the question of admissibility.  Johnson, 420 
Mass. at 464-465.  Under the Federal two-step analysis, the 
judge asks first whether the eyewitness identification was 
obtained by a police procedure that was unnecessarily 
suggestive.  See Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 110 (1977).  
See also Perry v. New Hampshire, 132 S. Ct. 716, 726 (2012) ("A 
primary aim of excluding identification evidence obtained under 
unnecessarily suggestive circumstances . . . is to deter law 
enforcement use of improper lineups, showups, and photo[graphic] 
arrays").  If it was, the judge then asks whether, 
notwithstanding the unnecessarily suggestive procedure, the 
eyewitness identification is reliable under "the totality of the 
circumstances."  See Manson, supra.  Under Federal 
constitutional law, because "reliability is the linchpin," the 
out-of-court identification, if found reliable, is admissible 
even where obtained through an unnecessarily suggestive 
procedure.  See id. at 110, 114. 
 
 
8 
 
 
We rejected the Federal reliability test regarding out-of-
court identifications in part because it "does little or nothing 
to discourage police from using suggestive identification 
procedures."  Johnson, 420 Mass. at 468.  We noted that, under 
the Federal standard, "[a]lmost any suggestive lineup will still 
meet reliability standards" and be admitted in evidence despite 
the unnecessary suggestiveness of the identification procedure.  
Id., quoting Note, Twenty-Years of Diminishing Protection:  A 
Proposal to Return to the Wade Trilogy's Standards, 15 Hofstra 
L. Rev. 583, 606 (1987).  We concluded that, if we were to adopt 
the Federal reliability test under art. 12, it would send "a 
message to police that, absent extremely aggravating 
circumstances, suggestive showups will not result in 
suppression."  Johnson, supra. 
 
Under our per se standard, the reliability of an out-of-
court identification cannot save the admissibility of an 
unnecessarily suggestive out-of-court identification.  But we 
declared in Johnson, supra at 467, that "the per se approach 
does not keep relevant and reliable identification evidence from 
the jury" because the Commonwealth may admit a subsequent 
identification if it proves by clear and convincing evidence 
that the identification came from a source independent of the 
suggestive procedure. 
 
 
9 
 
 
b.  Out-of-court identifications made without police 
wrongdoing.  Where an out-of-court eyewitness identification is 
suggestive through no fault of the police, suppression cannot 
deter police misconduct because there is none.  Yet, as we 
recognized in Jones, 423 Mass. at 109, where a witness's 
identification of a defendant arises from highly or especially 
suggestive circumstances, its admissibility "should not turn on 
whether government agents had a hand in causing the 
confrontation" because "[t]he evidence would be equally 
unreliable in each instance."  A judge, applying "[c]ommon law 
principles of fairness," may decline to admit an unreliable 
eyewitness identification that resulted from a "highly" or 
"especially" suggestive confrontation with the defendant.  Id.2 
 
Among our "common law principles of fairness" is the 
evidentiary rule that a judge has discretion to exclude relevant 
evidence "if its probative value is substantially outweighed by 
the danger of unfair prejudice."  Crayton, 470 Mass. at 249 
                                                          
 
 
2 In Commonwealth v. Jones, 423 Mass. 99, 108 (1996), we 
recognized that, even where the police did not cause a highly 
suggestive confrontation, a judge might find identification 
testimony to be so unreliable that it must be excluded "as a 
matter of fairness on due process grounds."  We declared, 
however, that "[w]e need not base our decision on constitutional 
grounds," id. at 109, and ruled the eyewitness identification at 
issue in that case to be inadmissible on "[c]ommon law 
principles of fairness."  Id.  After our opinion in Jones, we 
limited our review of the admission of identification testimony 
where the police did nothing improper to common-law principles 
of fairness, see Commonwealth v. Odware, 429 Mass. 231, 236 
(1999), and we do so here. 
 
 
10 
 
n.27, quoting Mass. G. Evid. § 403 (2014).  A judge's authority 
to exclude a suggestive and unreliable eyewitness identification 
under Jones is an exercise of this broader authority articulated 
in Mass. G. Evid. § 403.  See Commonwealth v. Alcide, 472 Mass. 
150, 166 (2015), quoting Jones, supra at 107 ("A judge's 
authority to exclude severely unreliable identification 
testimony is closely related to his or her more general 
'discretion to exclude evidence that is more prejudicial than 
probative'").3 
 
A motion to suppress an identification under Jones is 
similar to a motion to suppress an identification under art. 12 
in that the defendant must timely file the motion before trial, 
see Mass. R. Crim. P. 13 (d) (2), as appearing in 442 Mass. 1516 
(2004), and bears the burden of proof by a preponderance of the 
evidence.  See Walker, 460 Mass. at 604-605.  It is also similar 
in that the evidentiary hearing on the motion should be 
conducted and ruled on before trial, so that the Commonwealth 
                                                          
 
3 In Perry v. New Hampshire, 132 S. Ct. 716, 728 (2012), the 
United States Supreme Court declared that its "unwillingness to 
enlarge the domain of due process" to require exclusion of 
suggestive identifications that were not obtained through 
improper police conduct rested "in large part" on the presence 
of other safeguards in the adversary system that address the 
risk that juries will place "undue weight on eyewitness 
testimony of questionable reliability."  Among the protections 
cited was the authority of trial judges under State and Federal 
rules of evidence "to exclude relevant evidence if its probative 
value is substantially outweighed by its prejudicial impact or 
potential for misleading the jury," citing Fed. R. Evid. 403.  
Id. at 729. 
 
 
11 
 
and the defendant have the opportunity to challenge the ruling 
through an interlocutory appeal under Mass. R. Crim. P. 
15 (a) (2), as appearing in 422 Mass. 1501 (1996).  But a 
suppression ruling under Jones differs in two fundamental ways 
from the suppression ruling that a judge makes under art. 12 
where the police are alleged to have obtained an eyewitness 
identification through an unnecessarily suggestive 
identification procedure. 
First, the standard of admissibility is different; 
admissibility is determined not by a rule of per se exclusion, 
because there is no police misconduct to deter through 
suppression, but by weighing the probative value of the 
identification against the danger of unfair prejudice, and 
determining whether the latter substantially outweighs the 
former. 
The danger of unfair prejudice arises because the accuracy 
of an identification tainted by suggestive circumstances is more 
difficult for a jury to evaluate.  "Jurors . . . tend to be 
unaware of . . . how susceptible witness certainty is to 
manipulation by suggestive procedures or confirming feedback."  
Commonwealth v. Gomes, 470 Mass. 352, 373 (2015), quoting State 
v. Lawson, 352 Or. 724, 778 (Appendix) (2012).  "Social science 
research has shown that a witness's level of confidence in an 
identification is not a reliable predictor of [its] accuracy 
 
 
12 
 
. . . , especially where the level of confidence is inflated by 
its suggestiveness."  Crayton, 470 Mass. at 239, citing Supreme 
Judicial Court Study Group on Eyewitness Evidence:  Report and 
Recommendations to the Justices 19 (July 25, 2013) (Study Group 
Report).  See Crayton, supra at 239 n.15, quoting Wells & 
Quinlivan, Suggestive Eyewitness Identification Procedures and 
the Supreme Court's Reliability Test in Light of Eyewitness 
Science:  30 Years Later, 33 Law & Hum. Behav. 1, 12 (2009) 
("Studies have shown . . . that 'confirmatory suggestive remarks 
from the lineup administrator [like 'Good, you identified the 
actual suspect'] consistently inflate eyewitness certainty for 
eyewitnesses who are in fact mistaken'").  Yet, studies have 
shown that juries tend to give great weight to a witness's 
confidence in an identification.  See Perry, 132 S. Ct. at 739 
(Sotomayor, J., dissenting) ("Study after study demonstrates 
that . . . jurors place the greatest weight on eyewitness 
confidence in assessing identifications even though confidence 
is a poor gauge of accuracy" [footnotes omitted]).  See also 
Study Group Report, supra at 69-70, citing Leippe, Eisenstadt, & 
Rauch, Cueing Confidence in Eyewitness Identifications: 
Influence of Biased Lineup Instructions and Pre–Identification 
Memory Feedback Under Varying Lineup Conditions, 33 Law & Hum. 
Behav. 194, 194 (2009), and Wells, Lindsay, & Ferguson, 
Accuracy, Confidence, and Juror Perceptions in Eyewitness 
 
 
13 
 
Identification, 64 J. Applied Psychol. 440, 446 (1979) ("Studies 
show that eyewitness confidence is the single most influential 
factor in juror determinations regarding the accuracy of an 
eyewitness identification"). 
Suggestive identification procedures may also affect a 
witness's memory regarding the quality of his or her observation 
that led to the identification.  See Gomes, 470 Mass. at 373 
("Preidentification feedback may contaminate the witness's 
memory").  In one study, witnesses who received confirmatory 
feedback reported "'a better view of the culprit, a greater 
ability to make out details of the face, greater attention to 
the event, [and] a stronger basis for making an identification,' 
compared to witnesses receiving no feedback."  Id. at 374 n.35, 
quoting Wells & Bradfield, "Good, You Identified the Suspect":  
Feedback to Eyewitnesses Distorts Their Reports of the 
Witnessing Experience, 83 J. Applied Psychol. 360, 366 (1998).  
See Commonwealth v. Collins, 470 Mass. 255, 263 (2014). 
In short, suggestiveness is likely to inflate an 
eyewitness's certainty regarding an identification and to alter 
the eyewitness's memory regarding the quality of his or her 
observation of the offender to conform to the eyewitness's 
inflated level of confidence in the identification.  We 
recognized this danger, and the effect it could have on a jury's 
ability accurately to evaluate identification evidence, in 
 
 
14 
 
Jones, where we declared that "cross-examination and a judge's 
jury instruction concerning eyewitness identification testimony" 
could not "fairly protect the defendant from the unreliability" 
of the identification in that case.  Jones, 423 Mass. at 110. 
 
The probative value of the identification depends on the 
strength of its source independent of the suggestive 
circumstances of the identification.  See Allen v. Moore, 453 
F.2d 970, 975 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 406 U.S. 969 (1972) 
("the firmer the contemporaneous impression, the less is the 
witness subject to be influenced by subsequent events").  In 
determining the strength of an identification's independent 
source, we consider such factors as the quality of the witness's 
opportunity to observe the offender at the time of the crime, 
the amount of time between the crime and the identification, 
whether the witness's earlier description of the perpetrator 
matches the defendant, and whether the witness earlier 
identified another person as the perpetrator or failed to 
identify the defendant as the perpetrator.  See Johnson, 420 
Mass. at 464; Botelho, 369 Mass. at 869.  Another factor is the 
witness's prior familiarity with the person identified, where 
that person is a witness's family member, friend, or long-time 
acquaintance.  See Model Jury Instructions on Eyewitness 
Identification, 473 Mass. 1051, 1054 (2015).  After weighing the 
risk of unfair prejudice arising from the suggestiveness of the 
 
 
15 
 
identification against the strength of its independent source, 
the judge must determine whether the identification is so 
unreliable that it would be unfair for a jury to give it any 
weight in their evaluation of the evidence.  If it is, the judge 
must rule it inadmissible. 
 
Second, the standard of appellate review under art. 12 
differs from the standard of review under the common-law 
principles of fairness articulated in Jones.  Where an 
identification arises from a police procedure, we apply the 
standard appropriate for review of a decision implicating 
constitutional rights:  we review a judge's findings of fact to 
determine whether they are clearly erroneous but review without 
deference the judge's application of the law to the facts as 
found.  See Commonwealth v. Watson, 455 Mass. 246, 250 (2009).  
Where an identification does not arise from a police procedure, 
admissibility rests on an evidentiary judgment regarding the 
reliability of the identification, so we review under the abuse 
of discretion standard and ask "whether the judge's decision 
resulted from 'a clear error of judgment in weighing the factors 
relevant to the decision . . . such that the decision falls 
outside the range of reasonable alternatives.'"  Commonwealth v. 
Kolenovic, 471 Mass. 664, 672 (2015), quoting L.L. v. 
Commonwealth, 470 Mass. 169, 185 n.27 (2014). 
 
 
16 
 
 
c.  In-court identifications.  Where a judge excludes an 
out-of-court identification arising from a suggestive police 
procedure under our art. 12 standard of per se exclusion, the 
judge must still consider whether to admit a subsequent out-of-
court or in-court identification by the witness.  Where a 
witness's out-of-court identification is excluded, the 
Commonwealth may offer a subsequent out-of-court or in-court 
identification by the witness if the Commonwealth proves by 
clear and convincing evidence that the subsequent identification 
is reliable because it rests on a source independent of the 
unnecessarily suggestive confrontation.  Johnson, 420 Mass. at 
463-464.  Botelho, 369 Mass. at 867-868.  We recognize that we 
have recently declared that an "in-court identification is 
comparable in its suggestiveness to a showup identification" and 
have prohibited its admission in the absence of a showing of 
"good reason" where there was no out-of-court identification of 
the defendant by the witness before trial, Crayton, 470 Mass. at 
236, 241, or where the out-of-court identification by the 
witness was "something less than an unequivocal positive 
identification of the defendant," Collins, 470 Mass. at 262.  We 
need not consider in this case whether the reasoning in Crayton 
and Collins dictates that we eliminate or revise the independent 
source doctrine as applied to in-court identifications because 
the identifications here were not obtained through any fault of 
 
 
17 
 
the police.  We will await an appropriate case to address that 
issue. 
 
But this is an appropriate case to consider whether the 
independent source doctrine applies to an in-court 
identification where both out-of-court identifications were 
declared inadmissible under common-law principles of fairness.  
We conclude that it does not apply.  Where the suggestiveness 
does not arise from police conduct, a suggestive identification 
may be found inadmissible only where the judge concludes that it 
is so unreliable that it should not be considered by the jury.  
In such a case, a subsequent in-court identification cannot be 
more reliable than the earlier out-of-court identification, 
given the inherent suggestiveness of in-court identifications 
and the passage of time.  See Model Jury Instructions on 
Eyewitness Identification, 473 Mass. at 1055 endnote j, quoting 
Study Group Report, supra at 31-32 ("The more time that elapses 
between an initial observation and a later identification 
procedure . . . the less reliable the later recollection will 
be").  In sum, because a judge declares an out-of-court 
identification to be inadmissible under Jones only where it is 
unreliable, the Commonwealth cannot prevail in proving by clear 
and convincing evidence that the witness's in-court 
identification would be reliable. 
 
 
18 
 
 
2.  Application of law to the facts of this case.  We turn 
now to the Commonwealth's arguments that the judge abused his 
discretion in declining to admit in evidence the victim's out-
of-court and anticipated in-court identifications of the 
defendant.  The Commonwealth contends that the identifications 
may be excluded under Jones only if they were made under 
"highly" or "especially" suggestive circumstances and that the 
judge abused his discretion in finding that the circumstances 
here met that standard.  In Jones, we characterized the 
witness's confrontation with the defendant as both "highly 
suggestive" and "especially suggestive," but we did not define 
either term or clarify whether they were two different 
characterizations of the same standard.  See Jones, 423 Mass. at 
109.  Nor have we done so in subsequent cases that applied the 
Jones standard. 
 
The Commonwealth contends that the "degree of 
suggestiveness required for exclusion" under Jones's common-law 
rule "is higher than that required for exclusion based on 
improper law enforcement procedures, since no possible deterrent 
effect is involved."  We disagree.  Where an identification is 
obtained by law enforcement, our rule of per se exclusion means 
that the out-of-court identification must be suppressed where it 
derived from an unnecessarily suggestive procedure even if the 
identification was reliable because of the strength of its 
 
 
19 
 
independent source.  Accordingly, we have set a high standard:  
the identification must be "so unnecessarily suggestive and 
conducive to irreparable misidentification that its admission 
would deprive the defendant of his right to due process."  
Walker, 460 Mass. at 599.  Where, as here, there was no 
misconduct by the police in obtaining the identification, 
suggestiveness, by itself, does not mandate suppression.  
Rather, the danger of unfair prejudice arising from the 
suggestive circumstances will always be weighed against the 
independent source of the identification, with reliability the 
ultimate measure.  Because suggestiveness simply triggers a 
reliability analysis, the suggestiveness standard need not be 
set so high.  To trigger a Jones analysis, the circumstances 
surrounding the identification need only be so suggestive that 
there is a substantial risk that they influenced the witness's 
identification of the defendant, inflated his or her level of 
certainty in the identification, or altered his or her memory of 
the circumstances of the operative event.  Where the independent 
source of an identification is slim, this level of 
suggestiveness may be sufficient to support a finding of 
inadmissibility; where the independent source is substantial, a 
greater level of suggestiveness would be needed to support a 
 
 
20 
 
finding that the danger of unfair prejudice substantially 
outweighs the probative value of the identification.4 
 
We recognize that the victim's identification of the 
defendant in this case was less suggestive than the 
identification in Jones.5  But the judge did not err in 
concluding that it was sufficiently suggestive to trigger a 
reliability analysis.  The judge reasonably found that Hendricks 
suggested to the victim that the man who invaded the victim's 
home on September 21, 2012, might have been the same man he 
suspected broke into his own home the previous day -- a man who 
was connected to both of them because he was the boy friend of 
their cousin.  The judge reasonably could have found a 
substantial risk that these suggestive circumstances influenced 
the victim when he examined the cookout photograph of the 
                                                          
 
 
4 We need not address here whether a judge may exclude an 
identification where there was no suggestiveness in the 
identification but where the identification might be unreliable 
because of the circumstances surrounding the witness's 
perception of the event, such as the distance between the 
witness and the perpetrator, the poor quality of the lighting, 
or the brevity of the observation. 
 
 
5 In Jones, 423 Mass. at 101, a motel employee saw an 
African-American man come into the lobby of the motel, spend 
approximately one minute in the lobby, return to the lobby about 
ten minutes later, and drive away in a vehicle.  The employee 
saw the African-American man for a total of only approximately 
three minutes and there was no event that caused her to pay 
particular attention to him.  Id. at 101-102.  However, at two 
pretrial hearings, the witness, having learned that the crime in 
that case had been committed by Vietnamese and African-American 
men, saw the defendant, who was African-American, shackled to a 
Vietnamese man.  Id. at 102-103, 110. 
 
 
21 
 
defendant and identified the defendant as the intruder from that 
photograph and from the subsequent photographic array.  The 
judge also reasonably could have found a substantial risk that 
this suggestion affected the witness's level of certainty in the 
identification and his recollection of his observations of the 
intruder during the incident. 
 
The judge also did not err in giving little probative 
weight to the independent source of the identification.  The 
judge noted that the victim's encounter with the intruder was 
brief and his description meager:  a light-skinned black male 
wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, with no information regarding 
the intruder's height, weight, or facial hair, or the lighting 
conditions in the apartment.  The judge also noted from his own 
observation that the defendant was not light-skinned.  In view 
of the substantial deference given to the motion judge under the 
abuse of discretion standard, we conclude that the judge did not 
abuse his discretion in allowing the motion to suppress the 
identifications.  We therefore affirm the allowance of the 
defendant's motion to suppress the out-of-court and in-court 
identifications of the defendant by the victim. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
So ordered.