Opinion ID: 2224109
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Pre-trial Identification Procedures.

Text: Appellant contends that the trial court erred in denying the motion to suppress Rebecca Westcott's in-court identification of him, as her attacker, claiming that such identification was solely the product of tainted pre-trial identification procedures. The day after the occurrence, the police came to Rebecca's home to show her some photographs. Rebecca had described her assailant to her mother and from such description her mother selected several photographs which the mother thought fit the description. Rebecca rejected her mother's selections. Rebecca also rejected all the other photographs she was shown, noting only that the eyes of certain of the pictures resembled those of the defendant, which she described as bulging out from the side. Appellant claims that actions of Rebecca's mother were so impermissibly suggestive as to lead to his misidentification by Rebecca. On the contrary, Rebecca refused to be swayed by her mother's suggestion and stated that the pictures proffered by her mother (which apparently were not pictures of the appellant) were not of her abductor. About three weeks later, the Highland police came to Rebecca's home and told her they had a man in custody (actually, the appellant was in the custody of the Gary Police Department, apparently on other charges). She was taken to a room in the Gary Police Department and asked to look around the room. In an adjoining room, she saw the appellant, seated next to another man whom she apparently knew was a detective. She also was shown photographs of the appellant only, although the record is confused as to whether this was before or after the show-up. This action by the authorities in singling out the appellant as the perpetrator of the crime is shoddy and deplorable police work. Such identification procedures are undeniably impermissibly suggestive within the guidelines of Simmons v. U.S. (1968), 390 U.S. 377, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247. About a week later, Rebecca attended a lineup at the Highland Police Station. From a lineup of four men, she selected the appellant as her abductor. Appellant maintains that the lineup was impermissibly suggestive because it lasted for only five minutes. With regard to lineups, we believe that suggestivity may be evidenced by overt words or actions; for example, where the police ask the viewer if the third person from the left isn't the one who committed the act. Improper suggestivity may also be evidenced by the composition of the lineup itself, as where the members of the lineup are all of one race and the accused is of another. It might be possible to set up a lineup where the viewer would observe via closed-circuit television while the camera panned the line in stroboscopic fashion, so that a great likelihood of misidentification would exist. Such was not the lineup here conducted, and in the absence of other proof of suggestivity as outlined above, we see nothing inherently violative of due process in a lineup which takes but five minutes.