Opinion ID: 2330747
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: the johnson case

Text: On 22 July 1982 four men entered the Memco Department Store before it opened for business, and at gun point robbed store employees, stealing money belonging to the store and money and property belonging to certain of the employees. On 30 July a police officer applied for a Statement of Charges on probable cause that Victor Salvadore Johnson, also known as Salvadore Victor Johnson, was one of the robbers. The same day a Maryland District Court commissioner issued a Statement of Charges, whereby Johnson was charged with armed robbery and the use of a handgun in its commission. A warrant for the arrest of Johnson was appended thereto. The warrant was executed on 1 August by the arrest of Johnson. He was exhibited at a lineup conducted by the police on 4 August. An indictment charging him with the armed robberies and related offenses was handed to the Circuit Court for Baltimore County on 23 August, thus aborting a preliminary hearing which had been scheduled for 26 August. When Johnson appeared in court on 1 September without counsel, arraignment was postponed. The appearance of counsel to represent him was entered on 10 September. Johnson went to trial in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County on 21 October 1982, and a jury convicted him of five offenses of robbery with a deadly weapon and various related crimes. He was sentenced to a total of 25 years. He appealed from the judgments. Before decision by the Court of Special Appeals, we ordered, on our own motion, that the record and proceedings be certified to us for review. Johnson filed two preliminary motions to suppress evidence. One sought to exclude any in court identification of him because the out of court identifications of him violated his 6th Amendment right to counsel or his Fourteenth Amendment right of due process. The other motion asked the court to suppress the line-up identification made of him out of court because it was overly suggestive and violated his 14th Amendment due process right. The trial judge deemed these motions to challenge the lineup on Sixth Amendment grounds (right to counsel), and on Fourteenth Amendment grounds (suggestibility). After a plenary pre-trial hearing, he denied the motions.