Opinion ID: 6972191
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Were the pretrial identification procedures unnecessarily suggestive?

Text: In August 1996, officers of the DEA and RCMP showed photos of Montgomery, Marks, and McClain to Blondin. He identified Montgomery as the person who, using the name “Jim Luna,” had purchased a large quantity of red phosphorous on a rush basis. Several weeks prior to trial, Blondin requested that the DEA fax him a photograph of Montgomery, to “have it right in [his] mind that [he] could identify Montgomery.” He later called an agent at the DEA to inform her that the map in the photograph was Montgomery. Blondin pinned this photograph to the wall of his office and looked at it several times prior to testifying. The day before Blondin was scheduled to testify, he entered the courtroom with a DEA agent and looked at Montgomery, who was seated at the defense table. Blondin testified that he asked the DEA agent to bring him into the courtroom so that he could “have it straight in my mind that Montgomery was the fellow that had purchased the chemicals from us_” Montgomery asserts that the combination of identification procedures—the initial photo-identification, the subsequent single photograph identification, and the one-on-one confrontation—was “unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable mistaken identification.” An identification procedure is suggestive when it “emphasize[s] the focus upon a single individual” thereby increasing the likelihood of misidentification. Bagley, 772 F.2d at 493 (“The repeated showing of the picture of an individual, for example, reinforces the image of the photograph in the mind of the viewer.”); Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 302, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967) (“The practice of showing suspects singly to persons for the purpose of identification, and not as part of a lineup, has been widely condemned.”). We agree with Montgomery that showing Blondin the photographs of Marks, McClain, and Montgomery, granting Blondin’s request for a photograph of Montgomery, and permitting Blondin to view Montgomery in the courtroom the day before the witness was scheduled to testify, were suggestive procedures that emphasized the focus of the investigation on Montgomery as the person who purchased the red phosphorous. The Court in Stovall explained that a suggestive pretrial identification procedure does not violate due process when use of the procedure is “imperative.” See Stovall, 388 U.S. at 301-02, 87 S.Ct. 1967 (holding that a one person show-up in a hospital room of critically wounded victim did not violate due process where the record revealed that the suggestive confrontation was “imperative”). The issue before the Court in Stovall was whether the pretrial identification procedure was “so unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable mistaken identification that [the defendant] was denied due process of law.” Id. at 301, 87 S.Ct. 1967. We read Stovall to mean that an identification procedure is unnecessarily suggestive when its use is not imperative. The record in the case before us is devoid of any indication that the Government’s use of the suggestive identification procedures was imperative. The initial photo identification by Blondin took place one year after the purchase of red phosphorous by Montgomery. The Government had ample time to prepare a non-suggestive photographic array. The faxed photo identification and the in-court one-on-one confrontation were not compelled by any exigent circumstances. Accordingly, we conclude that the identification procedures employed by the Government were unnecessarily suggestive.