Case Name: STATE of Florida, Appellant, v. Ralph Anthony CIONGOLI, Appellee
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1975-04-18
Citations: 313 So. 2d 41
Docket Number: No. 74-25
Parties: STATE of Florida, Appellant, v. Ralph Anthony CIONGOLI, Appellee.
Judges: CROSS and MAGER, JJ., concur.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 313
Pages: 41–47

Head Matter:
STATE of Florida, Appellant, v. Ralph Anthony CIONGOLI, Appellee.
No. 74-25.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.
April 18, 1975.
Rehearing Denied June 16, 1975.
Robert L. Shevin, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and Basil S. Diamond, Asst. Atty. Gen., West Palm Beach, for appellant.
Charles W. Musgrove, West Palm Beach, for appellee.

Opinion:
PER CURIAM.
A few minutes after a marijuana-buy related robbery of $93.00, the two victims gave the Boca Raton Police a detailed description of the two robbers and of their clothing and the gun and knife used. They described the robbers as driving a dirty, 1970 model, black over white, two-door Javelin automobile with Pennsylvania tag, the last three digits of which were 701. Within an hour, pursuant to a bolo, highway patrolmen apprehended the defendant and his companion at the Miami Turnpike exit and the pair were returned to the Boca Raton Police Station where, two to two and one-half hours after the robbery, both accused and their automobile were shown to, and positively identified by, both victims. There was no line-up as such. Eight months later an evidentiary hearing was held on a motion to suppress the evidence (gun, knife, marijuana, and $93.00) seized at the time of the arrest and all identification testimony of the victims. The .defendant, but not his co-defendant, was present at the hearing. There was some evidence of a change of appearance of the defendant between his arrest and the hearing.
The trial judge correctly ruled that there was ample probable cause to stop the vehicle, to arrest the accused and to conduct a search of their vehicle and their persons. The trial judge did not suppress the testimony of the two victims as to the robbery, which included the descriptions of the robbers, and he did not suppress or prohibit the victims-witnesses from identifying the accused in the courtroom at trial as being the robbers, but he did suppress the eye witness testimony concerning the two to two confrontation at the Boca Raton Police Station because at the evidentiary hearing, one witness could not then identify the defendant and the other witness was at first unsure and only after some observation became certain of the identity of the defendant as one of the robbers. The trial judge found the police station show-up "impermissibly suggestive and gives rise to a substantial likelihood of misidentification" because he believed that if the trial went like the evidentiary hearing (viz: that the witnesses might be unable, because of the passage of time, changes in appearance or otherwise, to readily or positively identify the accused) the jury would place "undue emphasis" on the police station show-up and convict the defendant on the basis of an out-of-court identification rather than an in-court identification at trial. This the trial judge thought was improper because he felt that the whole process of the jury trial — "the whole emphasis"— should be whether or not the witness-victim can then and there before the jury positively identify the defendant as the perpetrator.
United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967), and Gilbert v. California, 388 U.S. 263, 87 S.Ct. 1951, 18 L.Ed.2d 1178 (1967), relate only to the right of an accused to counsel at a post-indictment line-up, therefore, those cases are not directly applicable to the pre-indictment show-up here. However, the holding of Wade and Gilbert is that a post-indictment line-up, is a critical stage of prosecution and when conducted in violation of an accused's sixth amendment constitutional right to have counsel present, is illegal and evidence thereof is per se inadmissible and, further, such illegality is presumed to also "taint" the witness' memory and the witness' in-court identification must be conditionally excluded and is inadmissible unless the trial court first determines, by clear and convincing evidence, that the in-court identification is, in fact, not tainted by the illegal line-up but is based on sufficient prior dependable observations independent of those made at the illegal line-up. The second part of Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 87. S.Ct. 1968, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967), recognizes that, independent of any right to counsel under Wade and Gilbert, a confrontation "unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable mistaken identification" may deny due process of law under the fourteenth amendment to the federal constitution. Stovall noted that the practice of showing suspects singly to identifying witnesses was widely condemned but the court refused to hold that practice illegal per se and concluded that its validity "depends on the totality of the circumstances surrounding it." The court in Stovall did not in any way specify the procedural aspects of such a due process violation nor did it sug gest that, by analogy to the Wade-Gilbert counsel problem, the Wong Sun taint principle would conditionally exclude a later in-court identification.
We believe this case should be and is controlled by Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968), a case considering the misidentifi-cation possibilities and the suggestiveness involved in the police showing an identifying witness only the photographs of a single suspect. Simmons is pertinent as follows: (1) it recognizes that the Wade-Gilbert holding constitutes a departure from the general rule that the manner of an extra-judicial identification affects only the weight, not the admissibility, of identification testimony at trial; (2) it recognizes that the suggestiveness issue involved in photographic displays is similar to that involved in the Stovall type "one-man lineup" ; (3) while recognizing the hazards involved in displaying photographs of suspects to victims, the court declined to prohibit its employment; (4) after noting that the unmasked robbers were viewed for up to five minutes in a well lighted bank in the afternoon and reviewed the photographs "only a day later, while their memories were still fresh" the court concluded that even though the procedure was short of ideal there was little room for doubt that the identification of Simmons was correct.
We hereby reverse and vacate the order suppressing evidence of the police station identification. We do not reverse because the trial judge here, as in Cribbs v. State, did not apply Wade and presume an improperly suggestive pre-trial identification taints and conditionally excludes an in-court identification. We do not agree that Wade applies here. Neither do we reverse because the trial judge here, as in Rudd v. Florida, did not specifically find the show-up was likely to induce irreparable misidentification, although that would be a sufficient technical basis. We conclude that neither the Supreme Court of the United States nor of the State of Florida has mandated an eviden-tiary rule of exclusion applicable to suggestive pre-indictment or pre-trial identification procedures. Further, we respectfully disagree with the trial judge on his reasons and conclusions. For example, we do not agree that evidence should be suppressed because of concern as to the weight ("undue emphasis") the jury might give the evidence. The difficulty of the victims in identifying the accused at the suppression hearing would lead us to the conclusion, contrary to that of the trial judge, that the police station show-up was not suggestive because anything causing the witnesses to form or retain a mental image of the accused at the police station would have aided the witness to more readily recognize the accused at the hearing. The observation and ready identification of the accused by the witnesses so soon after the alleged robbery appears to us to be conducive to an accurate identification and entitled to be given more weight, by both the court and the jury, than the difficulty by the witnesses in making an identification after the lapse of eight months, especially in view of the change in appearance of the accused.
The order appealed is affirmed insofar as it denies the motion to suppress evidence seized from the searched car and is reversed as to the portion suppressing evidence relating to identification.
CROSS and MAGER, JJ., concur.
COWART, JOE A., Jr., Associate Judge, concurs specially.
. Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U.S. 682, 92 S.Ct. 1877, 32 L.Ed.2d 411 (1972) affirmed that the constitutional rights announced in Wade and Gilbert accrued only with the commencement of criminal prosecution and declined to extend a per se exclusionary rule to testimony of identification taking place prior to indictment. Florida bad previously taken the same position, see Perkins v. State, 228 So. 2d 382 (Fla.1969), and Robinson v. State, 237 So.2d 268 (4th DCA Fla.1970).
. Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441.
. The trial judge in Cribbs v. State, 297 So.2d 335 (2d DCA Fla.1974), found a line-up im-permissibly suggestive and suppressed the line-up but not the in-court identification. In vacating judgment the Second District Court of Appeal held this to be a misunderstanding of Wade and specifically declined to •limit the conditional exclusionary rule of Wade to the counsel at line-up question and apparently apihied it to the Stovall suggestive identification procedural due process viola-lation question. Our conclusion in this case is in conflict with the views expressed in Cribbs.
. Wade does not apply because the right to counsel at a post-indictment line-up is not involved here.
. In Rudd v. Florida, 477 F.2d 805, 809 (5 Cir. 1973), the trial judge "did not specifically find- that the showup was likely to induce irreparable misidentification, a finding indispensable to proper application of the Simmons test."
. Our Supreme Court in Chaney v. State, 267 So.2d 65 (Fla.1972), held that the showing of a. single photograph of a suspect to the victim did not fatally taint the victim's identification in view of her prior opportunity to observe her attacker and the corroborating effect of his fingerprints. In Ashford v. State, 274 So.2d 517 (Fla.1973), a conviction following a one-to-one pre-indictment confrontation identification was upheld.
. See Annotation entitled "Admissibility of evidence of show-up identification as affected by allegedly suggestive show-up procedures", 39 A.L.B.3d 791.