Opinion ID: 284440
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The identification of Haywood

Text: 33 Haywood's main contention relates to his pre-trial identification by Summerill. 34 In his direct testimony Summerill gave the account summarized in fn. 1 and made a court-room identification of Caroline. Cross-examination brought out grand jury testimony by Summerill that an Assistant United States Attorney had showed him several pictures of Negroes from which he selected one as Caroline. When defense counsel indicated an intention to pursue the matter, the prosecutor requested a side-bar conference and warned that the picture which the witness identified from several others is a mug shot and   . Defense counsel interrupted to say he didn't know that and appreciated having been told. Apparently the photographs were shown to the judge who stated, outside the hearing of the jury, that, reading from left to right, these were Bennett, Haywood, Stanton, Harris, Jessup and Thomas. Defense counsel said that under these circumstances he would not introduce the photographs, and the matter was dropped. Haywood argues that the identification as a result of the exhibition of only six photographs violated the due process standard laid down in Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed. 1247 (1968), and that the procedure followed by the prosecution deprived him of the right to the assistance of counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. We find both contentions unsustainable. 35 The Court held in Simmons, 390 U.S. at 384, 88 S.Ct. 967, at 971, that each case must be considered on its own facts, and that convictions based on eye-witness identification at trial following a pretrial identification by photograph will be set aside on that ground only if the photographic identification procedure was so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification. The record is inadequate for us to make such a finding here. We know only that Summerill was shown photographs of six men, four of them Negroes, and that Haywood's photograph was a mug shot. The latter point might be of considerable consequence if Haywood's was the only mug shot but the record does not tell us that. While counsel understandably did not wish to develop this fact before the jury, there was nothing to prevent making an adequate record at side-bar or interrogating Summerill outside the presence of the jury. See United States v. Davis, 399 F.2d 948, 950 (2 Cir. 1968). Moreover this was by no means a case where proof of a defendant's participation rested wholly on identification, see fns. 1 & 4. 36 The Sixth Amendment directs that In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right    to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense. There is every reason to think this was intended only to reject the then rule in England whereby defendants charged with felonies other than treason could not have the aid of retained counsel at their trials with respect to issues of fact, see Beaney, Right to Counsel 8-12, 22-30 (1953). However, a broad consensus has developed that, as stated in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 344, 83 S.Ct. 792, 796, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), which made binding on the states the rule that Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 463, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 82 L.Ed. 1461 (1938), had applied to the United States, in our adversary system of criminal justice, any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him. Haywood's argument raises a question how far the guarantee of the Assistance of Counsel for his defense in all criminal prosecutions applies before a prospective defendant is haled into court. 37 The high watermarks of such an expansion of the Sixth Amendment have been Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201, 84 S.Ct. 1199, 12 L.Ed.2d 246 (1964), dealing with interrogation, and the lineup trilogy, United States v. Wade, supra, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967); Gilbert v. California, 388 U.S. 263, 87 S.Ct. 1951, 18 L.Ed.2d 1178 (1967); and Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967). 10 Although in all four cases the defendant had been indicted or arraigned and either had counsel or had manifested an intention to get one, both Wade and Stovall contain expressions indicating that confrontation at a line-up, even before arraignment or indictment, is a critical stage in a prosecution, requiring that an opportunity for the assistance of counsel be afforded. See Wade, 388 U.S. at 227, 228, 229-230, 236-237, 87 S.Ct. 1926; Stovall, 388 U.S. at 298, 87 S.Ct. 1967. Haywood argues that the reasons given in Wade for insisting on counsel at a line-up, namely, that eyewitness identifications are inherently untrustworthy, that the police may suggest whom the witness should pick, and that it may be hard later to reconstruct what actually happened, apply in equal or even greater measure to an exhibition of photographs which the accused has not even seen. See United States v. Marson, 644 F.2d 408 (4 Cir. 1968) (concurring and dissenting opinion of Judge Winter); Comment, Criminal Procedure — Photo Identifications, 43 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 1019 (1968); Lawyers and Lineups, 77 Yale L.J. 390 (1967). 38 Against this, to require that defense counsel be allowed or appointed to attend out-of-court proceedings where the defendant himself is not present would press the Sixth Amendment beyond any previous boundary. None of the classical analyses of the assistance to be given by counsel, Justice Sutherland's in Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 68-69, 53 S.Ct. 55, 77 L.Ed. 158 (1932), and Justice Black's in Johnson v. Zerbst, supra, 304 U.S. at 462-463, 58 S.Ct. 1019, and Gideon v. Wainwright, supra, 372 U.S. at 344-345, 83 S.Ct. 792, suggests that counsel must be present when the prosecution is interrogating witnesses in the defendant's absence even when, as here, the defendant is under arrest; counsel is rather to be provided to prevent the defendant himself from falling into traps devised by a lawyer on the other side and to see to it that all available defenses are proffered. Many other aspects of the prosecution's interviews with a victim or a witness to a crime afford just as much opportunity for undue suggestion as the display of photographs; so, too, do the defense's interviews, notably with alibi witnesses. Although in Simmons the Court noted that the right to counsel was not involved, since the photographs were shown to the witnesses before any arrests had been made, Mr. Justice Harlan's opinion contains language bearing on this problem, 390 U.S. at 384, 88 S.Ct. 967, at 971: 39 Despite the hazards of initial identification by photograph, this procedure has been used widely and effectively in criminal law enforcement, from the standpoint both of apprehending offenders and of sparing innocent suspects the ignominy of arrest by allowing eyewitnesses to exonerate them through scrutiny of photographs. The danger that use of the technique may result in convictions based on misidentification may be substantially lessened by a course of cross-examination at trial which exposes to the jury the method's potential for error. We are unwilling to prohibit its employment, either in the exercise of our supervisory power or, still less, as a matter of constitutional requirement. 40 And in Wade itself, the Court listed as one of the ways the prosecution might attempt to show that a witness' identification of defendant at trial was not the fruit of a lineup held in the absence of counsel a showing of the identification by picture of the defendant prior to the lineup, 388 U.S. at 241, 87 S.Ct. 1926, at 1940, which clearly implies that such identifications are permissible even when defendant's counsel is not present. Since we thus refuse to project United States v. Wade and its siblings into new ground, see McGee v. United States, 402 F.2d 434, 436 (10 Cir. 1968), we have no occasion to consider the effect or validity of 18 U.S.C. § 3502, added by § 701 of the Crime Control Act of 1968.