Opinion ID: 59670
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Styron’s In-court Identification

Text: As this Court’s opinion noted in Ball’s direct appeal, trial counsel used Styron’s inability to identify Ball in the photo lineup and the police’s suggestive procedures to impeach her credibility rather than to try and suppress her in-court testimony. Because this strategic decision is presumed to be reasonable, Ball was required to show that no competent counsel would have made that decision. See Grayson, 257 F.3d at 1216; Chandler, 218 F.3d at 1315. The test is not “what the best lawyers would have done,” or “what most good lawyers would have done,” but “whether some reasonable lawyer at the trial could have acted, in the 9 circumstances, as defense counsel acted at trial.” Waters v. Thomas, 46 F.3d 1506, 1512 (11th Cir. 1995) (en banc) (quoting White v. Singletary, 972 F.2d 1218, 1220 (11th Cir. 1992)). As the Supreme Court has explained, “[t]here are countless ways to provide effective assistance in any given case.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 689, 104 S. Ct. at 2065. In determining whether counsel’s conduct falls “outside the wide range of professionally competent assistance,” we are to “keep in mind that counsel’s function, as elaborated in prevailing professional norms, is to make the adversarial testing process work in a particular case.” Id. at 690, 104 S. Ct. at 2066. “If a defense lawyer pursued course A, it is immaterial that some other reasonable courses of defense . . . existed . . . . The lawyer’s strategy was course A. And, our inquiry is limited to whether this strategy, that is, course A, might have been a reasonable one.” Chandler, 218 F.3d at 1315 n.16. An unduly suggestive photographic lineup does not necessarily require the suppression of an in-court identification. See, e.g., Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 114, 97 S. Ct. 2243, 2253 (1977) (rejecting a per se rule requiring exclusion of an identification when it was obtained following unduly suggestive procedures). Instead, whether an in-court identification tainted by suggestive police procedures should be suppressed turns on its reliability as assessed by a 10 variety of factors, called the Biggers factors. See Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188, 199-200, 93 S. Ct. 375, 382 (1972); Code v. Montgomery, 725 F.2d 1316, 1319-20 (11th Cir. 1984). These factors include the witness’s opportunity to view the criminal, the degree of attention, the accuracy of the witness’s prior description of the criminal, the level of the witness’s certainty and the length of time between the crime and the identification. Biggers, 409 U.S. at 199-200, 93 S. Ct. at 382. The in-court identification will be suppressed only if, after considering these factors, there is a “very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.” See Manson, 432 U.S. at 116, 97 S. Ct. at 2254 (explaining that short of a “very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification . . . . such evidence is for the jury to weigh”) (quotation marks omitted). Some of the Biggers factors weighed in favor of admission in Styron’s case (such as the fact that Styron had a good opportunity to view the bank robber and gave an accurate description of Ball right after the robbery, as reflected in the composite sketch), and we cannot say suppression was a forgone conclusion. Furthermore, the government did not rely solely upon Styron’s identification of Ball, but presented other evidence linking Ball to the Chemical bank robbery, including the composite sketch (which was not tainted by suggestive procedures), the positive identification of the firearm found in Ball’s car, and Ball’s $8,000 in 11 money order stubs. Under the circumstances, competent counsel could have concluded that, rather than telegraph his impeachment strategy as to Styron in a possibly unsuccessful motion to suppress, he would save it in hopes that his crossexamination would be more effective. Thus, we cannot say no reasonable attorney would have opted to risk Styron identifying Ball in court and then used the damaging information challenging the reliability of her identification to discredit her. We certainly cannot say that trial counsel’s choice in Ball’s case caused the adversarial testing process not to work, which is our ultimate concern. Because Ball has not carried his burden to show that trial counsel’s decisions not to pursue an alibi defense and not to move to suppress Styron’s in-court identification were objectively unreasonable, the district court did not err in denying Ball’s § 2255 motion. AFFIRMED. 12