Opinion ID: 2314684
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: bedney's identification of parks in the october 31, 1978 photo array

Text: Parks asserts that the trial court erred in refusing to suppress his identification by Mary Bedney in the October 31, 1978 photo array (as well as Bedney's subsequent identifications). He cites, first, a violation of his sixth amendment right to counsel because his attorney was not present when Bedney viewed the array. Parks also asserts a due process violation, claiming the array was unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable mistaken identification.
Although the right to counsel applies under some circumstances to in-person, pretrial confrontations such as lineups and show-ups, United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 236-37, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 1937-1938, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967), it does not apply to photographic identifications. United States v. Ash, 413 U.S. 300, 321, 93 S.Ct. 2568, 2579, 37 L.Ed.2d 619 (1973); Thomas v. United States, D.C.App., 382 A.2d 24, 27 (1978); Williams v. United States, D.C. App., 379 A.2d 698, 699 (1977). The right to counsel, moreover, applies even to lineups and show-ups only after formal prosecution has begun, e.g., after indictment. Moore v. Illinois, 434 U.S. 220, 226-27, 98 S.Ct. 458, 463-464, 54 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977); Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U.S. 682, 688-90, 92 S.Ct. 1877, 1881-1882, 32 L.Ed.2d 411 (1972) (plurality opinion); Washington v. United States, D.C.App., 334 A.2d 185, 186 (1975). [25] Thus, Parks' right to counsel has not been infringed; the challenged identification resulted from a photo display, not a confrontation, and took place on October 31, 1978, before the January 11, 1979 indictment.
Parks alleges that even if the October 31, 1978 photo presentation did not violate his right to counsel, it was so unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable mistaken identification that he was denied due process of law. Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 302, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 1972, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967); see Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 383, 88 S.Ct. 967, 970-971, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968). Such suggestiveness, he says, is attributable to four factors: Bedney knew at the time of the photo identification that Parks had been arrested for the crime; the array was the very one from which Bedney had identified Parks on July 11, 1978, with the result that Parks' photo was emphasized by repetition; Bedney's failure to make the lineup identification increased the pressure on her to make a photo identification a few minutes later; and, in any event, the array was suggestive because Parks' photo, in contrast with the others, was faded. We are not persuaded. In the first place, Bedney's knowledge that Parks had been arrested for the crime did not create impermissible suggestiveness, for she was not told that any of the persons depicted in the photo array had been arrested. Moreover, the fact that Bedney had chosen Parks' photo from the same array once before did not make the second viewing improperly suggestive, especially since the first identification had occurred three and one-half months earlier. Furthermore, Bedney's failure to make a lineup identification a few moments earlier did not create such pressure that we must conclude the photo array was unduly suggestive. Bedney, of course, knew that the purpose of the array was to allow her to pick out the third person, but she would have known this no matter what identification procedure was used, and, given Parks' different physical appearances in the lineup and the earlier photo array, see note 8 supra, nothing about the lineup made the October 31 showing of that photo array unduly suggestive. The fourth factor  the faded photo issue  is more difficult. By the time of the January 1980 suppression hearing, appellants' photos in the arrays shown to Bedney on June 28 (Greene), July 6 (Grinnage), and July 11 (Parks), 1978, and again on October 31, 1978 (Parks), were faded, in contrast with the others. Detective Slawson testified that the fading was attributable to different paper from that used for the other photos in the arrays, and that appellants' photos had not yet faded when Bedney viewed them in June and July, 1978. In finding that the June and July arrays were not suggestive, the trial court specifically credited Slawson's testimony. Slawson also testified, however, that he had noticed appellants' photographs even had faded by the time we were ready for trial the last time, in December 1979. He therefore had made fresh prints of appellants' photos in anticipation of trial, using the same process applied to the original prints. The relatively new, December 1979 prints were shown to Slawson at the suppression hearing, and he commented that they, too, had begun to fade but had been as dark as the other photos in the arrays when he had made them. It seems clear that, since the new prints had faded noticeably between December 1979 and the January 1980 suppression hearing, the identically produced, original print of Parks must have faded during the three and one-half month period between July 11, 1978 (when the print was first placed in an array) and October 31, 1978, when Bedney viewed the array for the second time. [26] Still, even assuming that the October 31, 1978 array was suggestive because Parks' photo had faded, [27] the array was not conducive to irreparable misidentification, since any suggestiveness occurred after a constitutionally acceptable identification. See United States v. Brannon, D.C.App., 404 A.2d 926, 928 (1979); Patterson v. United States, D.C.App., 384 A.2d 663, 667 (1978). More specifically, the trial court found  and the record reflects  that Bedney had made a constitutionally acceptable identification of Parks from the July 11, 1978 array. There was credible testimony that Parks' photo had not yet faded in July 1978. Nor was the manner of the display suggestive: Bedney went through the entire photo array, set aside Parks' photo, returned to it when she had finished, and said something to the effect that [t]his looks like the third subject who is the subject that hung [out] at 12th and U, this is the third subject. Furthermore, Bedney identified Parks by name, as Reggie, before she made a photographic or in-person identification. It follows that the trial court did not violate due process in refusing to suppress the testimony confirming Bedney's October 31, 1978 identification (and her later identifications) of Parks. See Brannon, supra at 930; Patterson, supra at 668. Once the due process concern is eliminated, the issue of suggestiveness should become a matter for exploration at trial and argument to the jury. Id., at 667 n. 6 (citations omitted). Here, the issue was explored and argued most thoroughly. See Turner v. United States, D.C.App., 443 A.2d 542, 552 (1982).