Opinion ID: 1120118
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the show-up

Text: Howe allegedly exhibited a shotgun to Schmidt, the clerk of the Circle S grocery store in Chugiak, Alaska, and told Schmidt that he was going to rob the store. Schmidt placed $166 and some change into a paper bag and Howe left. Schmidt observed the car turning out towards the Glenn Highway. Schmidt called the Alaska State Troopers within two minutes of the robbery. The dispatcher put out a bulletin describing the car and its two occupants. Trooper McKillop saw a green Torino matching the description of the car used in the robbery and stopped it. Meanwhile, other troopers were with Schmidt in Chugiak. Officer Hagan was dispatched to the scene of the stop and decided Schmidt should be driven there for identification purposes. Schmidt had heard some of the conversations pertaining to the apprehension of the suspects over a police radio. When Schmidt arrived, there were several police vehicles and men in uniform surrounding Howe's car. Schmidt made a positive identification of the car as the one used in the robbery. Several minutes later, he observed Howe, either sitting in a police cruiser or standing beside it, and made a positive identification of Howe as the man who had robbed him. The identification of Howe apparently took place between two and three o'clock in the morning, approximately one and one-half hours after the robbery. Howe made a motion to suppress identification of himself at the show-up and all the evidence that allegedly derived from it, including some shotgun shells, a bag of money, and gloves belonging to him. The motion was denied. The essential question is whether the confrontation was so unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable mistaken identification that [Howe] was denied due process of law. Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 302, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 1972, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199, 1206 (1967). As noted in Stovall, [t]he practice of showing suspects singly to persons for the purpose of identification, and not as part of a lineup, has been widely condemned. Id. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia wrote: Doubtless a man seen in handcuffs or through the grill of a police wagon looks more like a crook than the same man standing at ease and at liberty. Russell v. United States, 408 F.2d 1280, 1284 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 395 U.S. 928, 89 S.Ct. 1786, 23 L.Ed.2d 245 (1969). Nevertheless, evidence of suggestive pre-trial identification procedures has not been subject to strict exclusionary rules either in the United States Supreme Court or in this court. Suggestiveness alone does not require exclusion. The test is whether, under the totality of the circumstances, the identification is reliable. In Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 114, 97 S.Ct. 2243, 2252, 53 L.Ed.2d 140, 154 (1977), the Supreme Court held that reliability is the linchpin in determining the admissibility of identification testimony... . Recently, in Holden v. State, 602 P.2d 452 (Alaska 1979), we followed Manson and its suggested criteria for determining reliability. [2] Analyzing these factors leads to the inescapable conclusion that the identification of Howe was reliable. Schmidt saw Howe twice under commercial lighting on the evening of the robbery, once when he came to pay for gas and once when he returned to rob the store. Schmidt gave an accurate description of Howe that led police to stop his vehicle within less than an hour of the robbery. He saw Howe again and identified him within less than two hours of the robbery. See Holden v. State, 602 P.2d at 456-58. He stated that Howe was the man that robbed him without a doubt. We have previously discussed specifically the validity of confrontations arranged by the police between a witness and a suspect shortly after a crime has been committed. [3] Numerous cases from other jurisdictions have held that confrontations between a witness and a possible suspect immediately after a crime has been committed may be necessary so police still have time to pursue the real culprit, or to ensure proper identification when events are still vivid and fresh in the witness's mind. In Bates v. United States, 405 F.2d 1104 (D.C. Cir.1968), an assailant was returned to the scene of a crime about thirty minutes after the crime. The victims identified the suspect while he sat in the back of a patrol car. Chief Justice Burger, then a circuit judge, wrote: There is no prohibition against a viewing of a suspect alone in what is called a one-man showup when this occurs near the time of the alleged criminal act; such a course does not tend to bring about misidentification but rather tends under some circumstances to insure accuracy... . Prudent police work would confine these on-the-spot identifications to situations in which possible doubts as to identification needed to be resolved promptly; absent such need the conventional line-up viewing is the appropriate procedure. Id. at 1106 (footnote omitted). Bates has been widely cited and followed. It has been applied in circumstances where the suspect was first viewed by the victim in a police station, [4] in a police car, [5] in handcuffs, [6] in hospital rooms, [7] at the scene of the crime [8] or at the scene of arrest. [9] The time of the confrontation has varied from a few minutes to several hours after the crime. [10] In one case, a victim heard the description and apprehension of suspects over a police radio in circumstances similar to those here. [11] In short, there is no basis for suppressing evidence of the show-up confrontation in this case both because the identification was reliable, and because it falls within a widely recognized exception to the ordinary requirement for a line-up where the police arrange a show-up immediately in the wake of a crime to promptly eliminate or arrest suspects. [12]