Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/445/463
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 11:00:28+00:00

Document:
Immediately after being assaulted and robbed at gunpoint, the victim notified the police and gave them a full description of her assailant. Several days later, respondent, who matched the suspect's description, was seen by the police around the scene of the crime. After an attempt to photograph him proved unsuccessful, respondent was taken into custody, ostensibly as a suspected truant from school, and was detained at police headquarters, where he was briefly questioned, photographed, and then released. Thereafter, the victim identified respondent's photograph as that of her assailant. Respondent was again taken into custody and at a court-ordered lineup was identified by the victim. Respondent was then indicted for armed robbery and other offenses. On respondent's pretrial motion to suppress all identification testimony, the trial court found that respondent's initial detention at the police station constituted an arrest without probable cause and accordingly ruled that the products of that arrestthe photographic and lineup identificationscould not be introduced at trial, but further held that the victim's ability to identify respondent in court was based upon independent recollection untainted by the intervening identifications and that therefore such testimony was admissible. At trial, the victim once more identified respondent as her assailant, and respondent was convicted of armed robbery. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the in-court identification testimony should have been excluded as a product of the violation of respondent's Fourth Amendment rights.
Three days later, on January 9, Officer David Rayfield of the United States Park Police observed respondent in the area of the Washington Monument concession stand and restrooms. Aware of the robberies of the previous week and noting respondent's resemblance to the police "lookout" that described the perpetrator, the officer and his partner approached respondent. 1 Respondent gave the officers his name and said that he was 16 years old. When asked why he was not in school, respondent replied that he had just "walked away from school." 2 The officers informed respondent of his likeness to the suspect's description, but there was no further questioning about those events. Respondent was allowed to leave, and the officers watched as he entered the nearby restrooms.
On the following day, January 10, the police showed the victim of the first robbery an array of eight photographs, including one of respondent. Although she had previously viewed over 100 pictures of possible suspects without identifying any of them as her assailant, she immediately selected respondent's photograph as that of the man who had robbed her. On January 13, one of the other victims made a similar identification. 3 Respondent was again taken into custody, and at a court-ordered lineup held on January 21, he was positively identified by the two women who had made the photographic identifications.
The grand jury returned an indictment against respondent on February 22, 1974, charging him with two counts of armed robbery, two counts of robbery, one count of attempted armed robbery, and three counts of assault with a dangerous weapon. 4 Respondent filed a pretrial motion to suppress all identification testimony, contending that his detention on the truancy charges had been merely a pretext to allow the police to obtain evidence for the robbery investigation. After hearing extensive testimony from the three victims, the police officers, and respondent, the trial court found that the respondent's detention at Park Police headquarters on January 9 constituted an arrest without probable cause. 5 Accordingly, the court ruled that the products of that arrestthe photographic and lineup identificationscould not be introduced at trial. But the judge concluded that the victims' ability to identify respondent in court was based upon independent recollection untainted by the intervening identifications, and therefore held such testimony admissible. At trial, all three victims identified respondent as their assailant. On April 23, the jury convicted him of armed robbery of the first victim, but returned verdicts of not guilty on all other charges. 6 Respondent was sentenced to four years' probation under the Federal Youth Corrections Act, 18 U.S.C. 5010(a).
On appeal, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, reversed respondent's conviction and ordered the suppression of the first robbery victim's in-court identification. 7 389 A.2d 277 (1978). The court viewed its decision to be a wholly conventional application of the familiar "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine. See Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963); Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385, 40 S.Ct. 182, 64 L.Ed. 319 (1920). After upholding the trial court's finding that respondent was detained without probable causea determination that is not challenged in this Court 8 the Court of Appeals turned to consideration of what evidentiary consequences ought to flow from that Fourth Amendment violation. In deciding whether the in-court identification should have been suppressed, the court observed that the analysis must focus on whether the evidence was obtained by official "exploitation" of the "primary illegality" within the meaning of Wong Sun, supra, 9 and that the principal issue was whether the unlawful police behavior bore a causal relationship to the acquisition of the challenged testimony. The court answered that question in the affirmative, reasoning that but for respondent's unlawful arrest, the police would not have obtained the photograph that led to his subsequent identification by the complaining witnesses and, ultimately, prosecution of the case. 10 Satisfied that the in-court identification was thus at least indirectly the product of official misconduct, the court then considered whether any of three commonly advanced exceptions to the exclusionary rulethe "independent source," "inevitable discovery," or "attenuation" doctrines 11 nonetheless justified its admission. Finding these exceptions inapplicable, the Court of Appeals concluded that the in-court identification testimony should have been excluded as a product of the violation of respondent's Fourth Amendment rights. We granted certiorari. 440 U.S. 907, 99 S.Ct. 1213, 59 L.Ed.2d 454 (1979). We reverse.
In this case, the robbery victim's presence in the courtroom at respondent's trial was surely not the product of any police misconduct. She had notified the authorities immediately after the attack and had given them a full description of her assailant. The very next day, she went to the police station to view photographs of possible suspects, and she voluntarily assisted the police in their investigation at all times. Thus this is not a case in which the witness' identity was discovered or her cooperation secured only as a result of an unlawful search or arrest of the accused. 15 Here the victim's identity was known long before there was any official misconduct, and her presence in court is thus not traceable to any Fourth Amendment violation.
Nor did the illegal arrest infect the victim's ability to give accurate identification testimony. Based upon her observations at the time of the robbery, the victim constructed a mental image of her assailant. At trial, she retrieved this mnemonic representation, compared it to the figure of the defendant, and positively identified him as the robber. 16 No part of this process was affected by respondent's illegal arrest. In the language of the "time-worn metaphor" of the poisonous tree, Harrison v. United States, 392 U.S. 219, 222, 88 S.Ct. 2008, 2010, 20 L.Ed.2d 1047 (1968), the toxin in this case was injected only after the evidentiary bud had blossomed; the fruit served at trial was not poisoned.
Insofar as respondent challenges his own presence at trial, he cannot claim immunity from prosecution simply because his appearance in court was precipitated by an unlawful arrest. An illegal arrest, without more, has never been viewed as a bar to subsequent prosecution, nor as a defense to a valid conviction. Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 119, 95 S.Ct. 854, 865, 43 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975); Frisbie v. Collins, 342 U.S. 519, 72 S.Ct. 509, 96 L.Ed. 541 (1952); Ker v. Illinois, 119 U.S. 436, 7 S.Ct. 225, 30 L.Ed. 421 (1886). 20 The exclusionary principle of Wong Sun and Silverthorne Lumber Co. delimits what proof the Government may offer against the accused at trial, closing the courtroom door to evidence secured by official lawlessness. Respondent is not himself a suppressible "fruit," and the illegality of his detention cannot deprive the Government of the opportunity to prove his guilt through the introduction of evidence wholly untainted by the police misconduct.
Respondent argues, however, that in one respect his corpus is itself a species of "evidence." When the victim singles out respondent and declares, "That's the man who robbed me," his physiognomy becomes something of evidentiary value, much like a photograph showing respondent at the scene of the crime. 21 And, as with the introduction of such a photograph, he contends that the crucial inquiry for Fourth Amendment purposes is whether that evidence has become available only as a result of official misconduct. We read the Court of Appeals' opinion as essentially adopting this analysis to support its suppression order. See 389 A.2d, at 285-287.
We need not decide whether respondent's person should be considered evidence, and therefore a possible "fruit" of police misconduct. For in this case the record plainly discloses that prior to his illegal arrest, the police both knew respondent's identity and had some basis to suspect his involvement in the very crimes with which he was charged. Moreover, before they approached respondent, the police had already obtained access to the "evidence" that implicated him in the robberies, i. e., the mnemonic representations of the criminal retained by the victims and related to the police in the form of their agreement upon his description. In short, the Fourth Amendment violation in this case yielded nothing of evidentiary value that the police did not already have in their grasp. 22 Rather, respondent's unlawful arrest served merely to link together two extant ingredients in his identification. The exclusionary rule enjoins the Government from benefiting from evidence it has unlawfully obtained; it does not reach backward to taint information that was in official hands prior to any illegality.
Because Mr. Justice BRENNAN leaves open the question whether a defendant's face can be considered a suppressible fruit of an illegal arrest, a question I think has already been sufficiently answered in Frisbie, I cannot join his opinion, although I concur in the result. * I note that a majority of the Court agrees that the rationale of Frisbie forecloses the claim that respondent's face can be suppressible as a fruit of the unlawful arrest.

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