Opinion ID: 3047630
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: William Brown

Text: Browns adopts Hernandez’s Hobbs Act and 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) arguments. For the reasons discussed above, we reject these arguments. Brown next argues that the District Court abused its discretion in admitting evidence of the victims’ pretrial and in-court identification of him. The standard is the same for pretrial identification and in-court identification: “In both cases, the eyewitness testimony will be permitted unless the pretrial identification procedure was so unnecessarily suggestive as to give rise to such a substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification that admitting the identification testimony would be a denial of due process.” Clausen, 328 F.3d at 713. This standard presents a two-pronged test. First, a district court must determine whether the photo array was unnecessarily suggestive. See United States v. Stevens, 935 F.2d 1380, 1389 (3d Cir. 1991). We review the District Court’s prong-one “finding that the [photo array] was not unnecessarily suggestive for clear error.” Id. at 1390. If the photo array was 5 unnecessarily suggestive, prong two provides that the district court will not suppress the identification unless the array was so suggestive that it resulted in a substantial likelihood of misidentification. See id. The District Court did not commit clear error because Brown’s argument relates to the police’s use of a personal photo, instead of a “mug shot,” which is not sufficient to reach the high standard of unnecessarily suggestiveness. See United States v. Lawrence, 349 F.3d 109, 115–16 (3d Cir. 2003). Brown finally argues that the District Court erred in admitting DNA evidence against him because that evidence was “of such marginal statistical significance that its admission unduly prejudiced the jury.” Brown’s challenge implicates Federal Rule of Evidence 403. Rule 403 states that “[a]lthough relevant, evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues . . ..” F ED. R. E VID. 403. A district court’s decision to admit evidence will be upheld absent abuse of discretion. E.g., United States v. Kemp, 500 F.3d 257, 295 (3d Cir. 2007). The District Court did not abuse its discretion because the DNA evidence was highly probative of the government’s argument that Brown could not be excluded as a contributor of the DNA sample.