Opinion ID: 38435
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Suppression of Identification

Text: Juluke next argues that police testimony about Raeford’s identification of him and Raeford’s testimony that he identified Juluke should have been excluded. First, Juluke contends that Raeford’s 7 identification of Juluke was impermissibly suggestive because the officers informed Raeford that Juluke had been apprehended in the same car with Gable and Nelson.2 Second, Juluke argues that while testifying, Raeford did not make clear that he could not identify Juluke at the scene and only stated that he was in the car because the police told him he was caught with Gable and Nelson. Moreover, Juluke alleges, the prosecutor referred to the police broadcast during his closing argument to suggest that Raeford’s on-the-scene identification was the motive for Juluke to change the name he gave the police. The use at trial of unreliable identification evidence obtained by police through unnecessarily suggestive procedures violates a defendant’s right to due process. Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188, 198 (1972). An identification procedure violates due process when it is “‘unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable mistaken identification.’” United States v. Atkins, 698 F.2d 711, 713 (5th Cir. 1983) (quoting Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 302 (1967)). It is not clear from the record whether Raeford was told that the suspects had been apprehended together before or after he identified Juluke. However, even if the identification was unduly suggestive, its admission would amount to a trial error rather than a structural error. Watkins v. Sowders, 449 U.S. 341, 348 (1981). Such trial errors are subject on habeas review to harmless error analysis under Brecht v. Abrahamson, which permits relief only upon a showing that a particular constitutional error had a “substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury’s verdict.” 507 U.S. 619, 623 (1993). 2 During the suppression hearing Raeford testified that all three defendants were presented for identification together. At trial, however, he stated that he viewed them individually. Detective Anthony Small and Tamborella testified at trial that the defendants were led into a room one by one for Raeford to identify. On appeal, Juluke does not argue that the three defendants were viewed simultaneously. 8 Raeford’s testimony clarified for the jury that his identification of Juluke that night, both at the scene and during the line-up, was not based on any sighting of him in the car that night during the shooting. Thus, the jury was aware that Raeford identified Juluke based on circumstantial evidence (whether because the line-up was suggestive or because he saw the three defendants together earlier on the day in question) rather than an eye-witness sighting. Additionally, the jury’s verdict was not at all dependent on Raeford’s identification of the driver of the vehicle at the time of the shooting. Most notably, Juluke was sighted with Gable and Nelson both before and right after the incident, in a car matching the description of the vehicle in the question. Juluke did not assert a defense that Gable and Nelson had had another driver during the shooting and that he had joined them in the vehicle after the shooting. Rather, Juluke argued that Raeford’s failure to identify him supported a larger alibi theory that all three defendants were innocent. The fact that Raeford surmised, rather than saw, that Juluke was the third party in the Beretta with Gable and Nelson, cannot be considered as having a substantial and injurious effect on Juluke’s guilty verdict.