Opinion ID: 2320334
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Alonzo Smith's Previous Identifications of Appellants

Text: Appellants attack the trial court's admission of MPD Detective Lupercio Rivera's testimony that Alonzo Smith had each appellant, and the respective roles of each, as a participant in the shooting of Tillman on Q Street. Specifically, relying on In re L.D.O., 400 A.2d 1055, 1057 (D.C.1979); Fletcher v. United States, 524 A.2d 40, 43 (D.C.1987), [17] they contend that such hearsay identification evidence is inadmissible as substantive evidence because Smith destroyed the predicate for admissibility when he repeatedly indicated that he only selected the photographs of appellants after police officers told him whom to select and what [the suspects] had allegedly done. Furthermore, appellants argue that to permit introduction of an out of court identification, as substantive evidence, in the face of an outright denial by the witness that such an identification ever took place, would improperly extend the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Owens, 484 U.S. 554, 108 S.Ct. 838, 98 L.Ed.2d 951 (1988), and overrule Fletcher and L.D.O.  The government contends that the trial court properly admitted the identification testimony as substantive evidence because the declarant was available for cross-examination at trial, and that under D.C.Code § 14-102(b)(3) (2001) [18] a statutory provision which admittedly post-dated the trial in this casethe introduction of the prior identification would be allowed as substantive evidence should a new trial be granted. The government further argues that, even if § 14-102(b)(3) is inapplicable, the Supreme Court's Owens decision substantially undermined L.D.O. and Fletcher to the point that we can ignore their evidentiary constraints. Becauseeven with Rivera's testimony in evidenceall Q Street convictions must be reversed because of harmful trial court error in the admission of Tillman's dying declarations, we need not address the respective arguments here, as elaborated below.