Opinion ID: 2292323
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The victim's out-of-court identification of defendant.

Text: Defendant alleges that the State intentionally arranged to have the victim identify defendant in a manner that violated defendant's fourteenth amendment right to due process. Prior to the morning she was scheduled to testify, the victim had never been asked to make an identification of defendant. She arrived at the courthouse early that morning and met with the assistant district attorney to review her testimony. The assistant district attorney told the victim that as she walked around the courthouse she might see the man who had raped her. If she did see the man, the victim was to let the assistant district attorney know. When the victim returned from breakfast, she informed the assistant district attorney that she had seen the man in the hallway. The man she identified was defendant. The presiding justice immediately held an evidentiary hearing to determine whether the identification violated defendant's fourteenth amendment right to due process. The presiding justice found that defendant had failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the identification was unduly suggestive. See State v. True, 464 A.2d 946, 950 (Me.1983). Thus, the court never reached the second step of the analysis described in State v. Cefalo, 396 A.2d 233, 240 (Me.1979), namely, [to] determin[e] whether the reliability of that identification or any subsequent identification outweighs the corrupting effect of the suggestive procedure. Instead, the presiding justice termed this incident a chance encounter and refused to suppress any subsequent in-court identification by the victim based on this out-of-court identification. In reviewing the presiding justice's denial of the motion to suppress, we are required to give great deference to his findings of historical fact and to accept those findings unless clearly erroneous. The legal conclusions drawn by the presiding justice, however, are subject to the independent examination and judgment of this court. State v. Commeau, 438 A.2d 454, 457 (Me.1981). In a federal case arising here in Maine, United States v. Hensel, 699 F.2d 18 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 958, 103 S.Ct. 2431, 77 L.Ed.2d 1317 (1983), an out-of-court identification involved a fact situation almost identical to the one we have here. In Hensel, the prosecutors told the witness to look around the halls of the courthouse in Portland to see if he could pick out the defendants. He saw them later in the courthouse snack bar. That out-of-court identification was held not unduly suggestive because there was no evidence that it occurred as a result of a confrontation prearranged by the prosecution. Hensel, 699 F.2d at 40. Similarly, in the case at bar, there is ample evidence to support the presiding justice's finding that this incident was a chance encounter. There is no evidence that this identification was orchestrated by the State. The presiding justice properly refused to suppress the victim's in-court identification of defendant.