Opinion ID: 1908635
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: identifying two photos from the array.

Text: Appellant Green contends that the trial court erred in admitting evidence that Givens had selected his photo from a police array before trial or, more precisely, had selected two photos, one of which was of Green. He articulates two grounds on which the evidence should have been excluded: reliability and relevance. [12] Green maintains that the pretrial identification was not sufficiently reliable to be a prior identification, which we have recognized as an exception to the hearsay rule. See generally Beatty v. United States, 544 A.2d 699, 701-02 (D.C.1988). Givens, the teenaged driver of the Oldsmobile, had been shown a police photo array before trial consisting of ten photographs and asked to identify the man who rode with him back into Montgomery County with the kidnapped McWeay. He chose photographs of two different people and said that one of them was the kidnapper, but Givens could not narrow his choice to one picture or the other. As between the two, he said, he was not sure. One of these two photographs depicted appellant Green. Green did not object to the admission of the pretrial identification, [13] so we review for plain error. See Watts v. United States, 362 A.2d 706, 709 (D.C.1976) (en banc). To merit reversal under this standard, the error complained of must be so clearly prejudicial to substantial rights as to jeopardize the very fairness and integrity of the trial. Id. A pretrial identification generally is admissible at trial if the identifying witness is available for cross-examination. See Beatty, supra, 544 A.2d at 702; see also FED.R.EVID. 801(d)(1)(C). In addition to the witness's availability for cross-examination, an important evidentiary consideration is the reliability of the prior identification. See Beatty, supra, 544 A.2d at 702; In re L.D.O., 400 A.2d 1055, 1057 (D.C.1979). Givens was in fact cross-examined by both appellants at trial. The only question Green presents on this point is whether the reliability of Givens's identification was so inherently suspect that its admission was plain error. We think the identification here was sufficiently reliable to withstand plain-error review. [14] This is not a case where the witness repudiates or otherwise expresses significant doubt at trial about the accuracy of his or her prior selection, as in L.D.O., supra, 400 A.2d at 1057 (witness at trial was not in the least bit positive of prior identification). Nor is it a case where the prior selection by the witness amounted to no real identification at all, as in In re R.H.M., 630 A.2d 705, 707-08 (D.C.1993) (witness set aside three photos from an array because they looked familiar). Here, Givens stated that the kidnapper was one of the two people picked from the photo array; he simply could not state which one. [15] Green's contentions would appear more properly to go to the weight of the prior identification process, that is, whether it met even the minimal requirement of relevance. We are extremely deferential to a trial court's ruling on relevancy, see, e.g., ( William) Johnson v. United States, 683 A.2d 1087, 1095 (D.C.1996) (en banc), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 117 S.Ct. 1323, 137 L.Ed.2d 484 (1997); Punch v. United States, 377 A.2d 1353, 1358 (D.C.1977), and we find no basis to disturb its decision here on that ground. Green had narrowed an array of ten photographs down to two and stated one or the other was the kidnapper. At least for purposes of plain error review, we think such an identification tended to make the existence or nonexistence of a fact, viz., whether Green kidnapped McWeay, more or less probable than would be the case without it, see Punch, supra, 377 A.2d at 1358, and there was a wealth of other evidence implicating Green, not the man in the second photograph, in these crimes.