Source: http://masscases.com/cases/sjc/379/379mass391.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 08:45:17+00:00

Document:
COMMONWEALTH vs. ALBERT J. CINCOTTA.
INDICTMENT found and returned in the Superior Court on August 5, 1976.
A pretrial motion to suppress evidence was heard by Brogna, J., and the case was tried before Bonin, C.J.
defendant was convicted [Note 1] and the Appeals Court affirmed, overruling, among other assignments of error, the claimed error in the failure to suppress the questioned identifications. Commonwealth v. Cincotta, 6 Mass. App. Ct. 812 (1979). We granted an application for further appellate review. 377 Mass. 920 (1979). We reach the same conclusion as the Appeals Court regarding the identifications, although a part of our explanation differs somewhat from theirs. We agree that other claimed errors are without merit.
Like the Appeals Court, we accept the motion judge's subsidiary findings as warranted by the evidence. And we owe respect to his conclusions of law although we are not bound by them. See Commonwealth v. Jones, 375 Mass. 349 , 354 (1978). Our references to the facts in this opinion draw on the findings, amplified by some recourse to the detailed evidence. An armed man with face and hair blackened [Note 2] entered the Quincy branch of the First Federal Savings and Loan Association on July 19, 1976, about 10:40 A.M. Cindy Carmusin, a teller, was at her station. Helen Sands, the branch manager, was in the ladies room. No one else was in the bank at the time. The robber vaulted over the counter and pointed a gun at Carmusin and ordered her to lie down on the floor. Emerging from the rear of the bank, Sands was grasped by the robber and also forced to lie down. Nevertheless both women were able to make observations of the robber at close range. [Note 3] The robber remained in the bank for four or five minutes. According to the findings, the witnesses "had ample opportunity . . . to view [the robber's] stature and facial characteristics."
The two women appeared at Quincy District Court under subpoena on July 29, the occasion of the probable cause hearing. They sat in the front row of the court room. Seated by himself, on a bench at right angle to the spectators' benches, was the defendant. Sands, upon seeing the defendant, immediately said to one of the detectives sitting near her, "That's him." Carmusin also promptly and separately identified the defendant as the robber. At the probable cause hearing which then occurred, Sands took the stand and testified; Carmusin, sequestered on motion of the defendant's counsel, was not called.
of looking through police photos" (Nassar v. Vinzant, 519 F.2d 798, 801 [1st Cir.], cert. denied, 423 U.S. 898 ), and cannot be considered offensive to due process. See the more extreme situations in Commonwealth v. Venios, 378 Mass. 24 , 30 (1979); Commonwealth v. Mobley, 369 Mass. 892 , 896 (1976). Bearing down on Carmusin, the defendant says she may have been unduly influenced in her selection by Sands's selection. But the motion judge found that though Carmusin was aware Sands had made a choice, she did not know what it was. [Note 7] In handing the pictures to Carmusin, the police did not single out any one of them, and Carmusin's choice was evidently circumspect, as indicated by her reservation. The motion judge concluded that the photographic identifications by Carmusin and Sands were not given under impermissibly suggestive conditions (although slight suggestiveness there may have been), and it is clear to us, as it was to the Appeals Court, that the defendant did not carry the burden which was upon him to demonstrate the opposite. See Commonwealth v. Venios, supra at 29; Commonwealth v. Chase, 372 Mass. 736 , 745 (1977); Commonwealth v. Botelho, 369 Mass. 860 , 867 (1976).
witness's memory and bolster any identification he might subsequently make, the suspect and his counsel being unaware, and having no reason to anticipate, that a prospective witness might be present in the court room at the time. See also Commonwealth v. Kazonis, 356 Mass. 649 (1970). Cf. Moore v. Illinois, 434 U.S. 220, 229-230 (1977). In the present case, by contrast, we have an unfabricated, common scene of witnesses quite naturally and expectedly appearing in a court room, awaiting the call of a probable cause hearing and seeing the defendant, relatively isolated, moments before the call. No doubt some element of suggestiveness is inherent. See Baker v. Hocker, 496 F.2d 615, 617 (9th Cir. 1974). But counsel has a responsibility to be alert and, as far as he thinks necessary or useful, to try to eliminate any suggestive influence; thus he may move in advance to have the defendant seated amid the court room audience, or for a lineup. See Commonwealth v. Jones, 362 Mass. 497 , 500 (1972); Moore v. Illinois, supra at 230 n.5. [Note 8] If precautionary measures are not sought, complaint cannot be later made of suggestiveness. Commonwealth v. Napolitano, 378 Mass. 599 , 603 (1979). Commonwealth v. Jones, 375 Mass. 349 , 358 (1978). The case is comparable to an ordinary identification from the witness stand proper, whether at a probable cause hearing or at trial, which--precautions not having been requested or taken--is in some degree suggestive, but is not for that reason invalidated. See Commonwealth v. Wheeler, 3 Mass. App. Ct. 387 , 390-391 (1975).
We should perhaps add, for completeness, that whereas Sands, the more mature witness, may be assumed to have realized that the man on the bench was the defendant who had been charged, [Note 9] that may well not have been the case with Carmusin, so that her attention was not drawn in any particular direction. She had no experience of courts or court rooms and gave no thought to whether there was an accused who would appear in court; she said in effect that she simply reacted to seeing the man who robbed the bank. An assistant district attorney thoughtlessly asked Carmusin to look around and see if she recognized anyone, but Carmusin testified she did not recall the attorney's remark, and Detective Casey, who was nearby, said the remark came after Carmusin told him that she recognized the defendant.
Commonwealth v. Botelho, 369 Mass. 860 , 874-875 (1976). In fact we considered the question still open, as we indicated clearly in Commonwealth v. Venios, 378 Mass. 24 , 27-28 (1979), decided some four months after the Appeals Court's decision of the present case. The present case does not require that we consider any application of Manson, as we hold that in the live identifications there was no passing or near passing of the constitutional boundary into fatal suggestiveness. Of course it was for the jury to decide how much weight to attach to these identifications, as well as to the others, when they were admitted at trial.
Identification and alibi were the main issues that developed at trial, and there is no serious claim before us that any of the judge's instructions was deficient. We agree with the Appeals Court that the motion for a directed verdict of acquittal at the close of the Commonwealth's case, and the renewed motion when all the evidence was in, were correctly denied, as was the defendant's motion after verdict for a new trial. Those motions went to the sufficiency of the evidence to support the conviction. To that question the "reliability" of the identifications in the Manson sense was pertinent, and therefore we add that we think the Appeals Court's discussion of "reliability" was sound, and although addressed to the evidence adduced at the suppression hearing, also applied to the similar evidence produced before the jury.
[Note 1] He was sentenced to five to seven years' imprisonment at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Walpole.
[Note 2] Which accounts for the indictment under the statute for robbery with features artificially distorted.
[Note 3] Sands said she had three chances to see the robber's face; Carmusin probably had the same number.
[Note 4] Sands's description was quite full, Carmusin's somewhat less so. Although the detectives first spoke briefly to the two women together, descriptions were apparently elicited from them separately.
[Note 5] It is indicated that Carmusin was emotionally upset when asked to assist with the composite. Carmusin did not see the composite until after the probable cause hearing, and then only by accident.
[Note 6] Apparently the detectives did not inform the women that their identifications tallied.
[Note 8] The granting or denial of such requests rests in the sound discretion of the judge. See Commonwealth v. Pearsall, 370 Mass. 413 , 415 (1976); Commonwealth v. Jones, 362 Mass. 497 , 501 (1972).
In the present case, the defendant has claimed that he was deprived of the benefits of counsel in violation of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution because he was not informed that prosecution witnesses would be on hand at the hearing. The Appeals Court properly held that counsel should have been aware of the likelihood, see 6 Mass. App. Ct. at 820, and cases cited. As noted, counsel did request sequestration of witnesses. On the facts of the case it is unlikely that the defendant would have benefited materially, had the earlier precaution been requested and taken.
[Note 10] The judge denied the entire motion to suppress, including the live identifications, and, in saying that those identifications rested on the witnesses' independent recollections of the man who robbed the bank, he was likely indicating that any suggestiveness at the District Court was minimal or nonexistent. The judge did not mention "reliability" and several times during the suppression hearing indicated that he was interested in suggestiveness, not in the strength or weight of the identifications.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.