Opinion ID: 324559
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the photographic identification

Text: 9 The challenge to Ms. Butler's photographic identification of appellant is predicated upon three distinct grounds, the first of which may at once be discarded. That ground is that, because appellant was already in custody on another charge, 23 the police could not, in the absence of counsel on his behalf, utilize a photographic identification to link him to the robbery. The Supreme Court's recent holding in United States v. Ash, 24 that no Sixth Amendment right to counsel attaches at photo-identification sessions, plainly forecloses acceptance of that argument. 10 A second ground urged is that, with appellant in custody and assertedly available for a corporeal lineup, 25 a photo-identification procedure in lieu of the normally more reliable lineup procedure 26 was constitutionally impermissible because unnecessary. 27 We are unable to characterize the resort to photographs as a gratuitous undertaking here. 28 Photo-identification is an established investigative technique which the Supreme Court has refused to outlaw 29 and which, as Ash and other decisions demonstrate, may properly serve law enforcement needs other than apprehension of criminals at large. 30 Ms. Butler's examination of the photographs was designed to test unverified information from a paid informant that appellant was one of her assailants. We are less confident than appellant that his presence in a robbery lineup was then compellable, 31 but in any event we perceive no impediment to an effort to fortify the basis for moving in that direction. There is neither claim nor evidence that the methodology of the photographic display in question was in any way suggestive. 32 11 Appellant's remaining ground is that testimonial reference to the photographic identification unfairly embarrassed his ability to persuade the jury that Ms. Butler had misidentified him. The argument is that appellant could best defend against the identification by exhibition of the photographs to the jury for its appraisal of the accuracy of the identification, a course fraught with danger because the photographs were, in the vernacular, mug shots. In support of this argument, appellant relies on our holding in Barnes v. United States 33 that since an accused's mug shots intimate a prior criminal record, the Government may not ordinarily present them for the jury's inspection. 34 12 We think appellant presses Barnes much too far. The photographs themselves were not placed in evidence, 35 nor were they ever referred to in the jury's presence as mug shots; the question is whether the identification they promoted was outlawed simply by their character. We have consistently honored the Government's prerogative to show testimonially pretrial photographic identifications, which may well be 'more meaningful to the jury than the more ritualized in-court identification.' 36 Our decisions make clear that that prerogative extends to testimony of identifications based on photographs not typically mug shots, 37 and we see no sound reason for concluding differently when a mug shot is utilized, 38 for the accused need not face the Hobson's choice appellant imagines. The problem to which appellant points may be avoided simply by eliminating the objectionable features of the mug shots, 39 a course trial courts, in exercise of their powers to safeguard the fairness of trials, may insist upon. At appellant's trial, the District Court's discretion to that end was never invoked, 40 if indeed appellant wished to test the identification against the photograph. We cannot find just cause for the present complaint.