Opinion ID: 2619
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Alleged Suggestiveness of the Photographic Array

Text: As described in Part I.A. above, Vitetta identified Douglas at trial as the man he had seen in the parking lot just after Moran's body had been dragged on the ground and put in the trunk of the Toyota; and both Vitetta and Sarin testified that they had identified Douglas from the photographic array that they were shown in the days following April 22. Prior to trial, Douglas moved unsuccessfully to suppress those photographic identifications and to preclude any in-court identification of him on the ground that the photographic array was impermissibly suggestive and created a significant risk of misidentification (Memorandum in Support of Defendant's Pretrial Motions, dated February 4, 2005, at 9). On this appeal, Douglas contends that the district court erred in summarily denying this aspect of his suppression motion, arguing principally that (a) one of the photos was a picture of a known murderer that had been prominently displayed in tabloids in the New York area (Douglas brief on appeal at 35), and (b) the background colors in the photos made the picture of Douglas stand out from the others. His contentions are meritless. A defendant's right to due process includes the right not to be the object of suggestive police identification procedures that make an identification unreliable. See, e.g., Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 106, 97 S.Ct. 2243, 53 L.Ed.2d 140 (1977) ( Brathwaite ); Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188, 198, 93 S.Ct. 375, 34 L.Ed.2d 401 (1972) ( Biggers ); Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 384, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968). Generally, a witness will not be allowed to make an in-court identification if the authorities' pretrial photographic identification procedures were so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification. Simmons, 390 U.S. at 384, 88 S.Ct. 967 (emphasis added). And [w]hile th[at] phrase was coined as a standard for determining whether an in-court identification would be admissible in the wake of a suggestive out-of-court identification, with the deletion of `irreparable' it serves equally well as a standard for the admissibility of testimony concerning the out-of-court identification itself. Biggers, 409 U.S. at 198, 93 S.Ct. 375. Thus, in determining the admissibility of identification testimony for either pretrial or in-court identification, reliability is the linchpin. . . . Brathwaite, 432 U.S. at 106 n. 9, 114, 97 S.Ct. 2243. We review the district court's determination of the admissibility of identification evidence for clear error. United States v. Mohammed, 27 F.3d 815, 821 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 975, 115 S.Ct. 451, 130 L.Ed.2d 360 (1994). We may review the photographic array itself to assess its fairness. See, e.g., United States v. Jacobowitz, 877 F.2d 162, 168 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 866, 110 S.Ct. 186, 107 L.Ed.2d 141 (1989). We see no merit in Douglas's contention that the array was tainted by the presence of a picture of John Royster, a convicted killer of some notoriety. The frequent appearance of Royster's picture in New York area newspapers had occurred some eight years earlier, and the district judge noted, I did not recognize this photograph, although I regularly read the newspapers. . . . Order dated March 23, 2005, at 8. The district court stated that if a witness actually recognized Royster, that witness presumably would not have selected him, and thus would have viewed the array as a five-person array rather than a six-person array. There is nothing inherently improper about a five-person array. Id. We agree. Further, we have reviewed the photographic array and see no hint of suggestiveness. All are head-shot photographs, all of brown-skinned, non-bespectacled men in roughly the same age group, with short-cropped hair, non-receding hairlines, and thin or trimmed mustaches. Only one of the six (Royster) has a thin face, suggesting a thinner build than the others. As to the background colors of the photos, no two are the same, and no picture stands out because of its background color. The district court found that [i]t simply cannot be said that `the picture of the accused . . . so stood out from all [of] the other photographs as to suggest to an identifying witness that [the accused] was more likely to be the culprit.' Id. (quoting Jarrett v. Headley, 802 F.2d 34, 41 (2d Cir. 1986) (other internal quotation marks omitted)). We see no error in that finding. Given the lack of any suggestiveness in the photo array, the identification testimony of Vitetta and Sarin was admissible at trial without further inquiry into the reliability of the pretrial identification[s], United States v. Maldonado-Rivera, 922 F.2d 934, 973 (2d Cir. 1990), cert. denied, 501 U.S. 1211, 111 S.Ct. 2811, 115 L.Ed.2d 984 (1991), of Douglas as the man Vitetta saw standing behind the car into whose trunk Moran's body had just been dumped and as the man Sarin saw driving the SUV out of the parking lot. And if there had been any error in not conducting a further inquiry as to the reliability of those identifications, we would conclude that such an error was without a doubt harmless in light of the trial testimony of Douglas himself, described in Parts I.B. and I.C. above, that it was he who drove the SUV out of the parking lot, and that during his dealings with Moran's body, he had seen Vitetta watching him.