Opinion ID: 2330747
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: the webster case

Text: Sally Ann Bowen was raped on 6 July 1982. Six days later a police detective applied for the issuance of a Statement of Charges, setting out probable cause that Bernard Webster was the rapist. A Maryland District Court commissioner promptly issued a Statement of Charges, which charged Webster with first degree rape. At the same time, the commissioner issued a warrant for Webster's arrest. The warrant was executed on 20 July by the arrest of Webster. On the same day, he was exhibited in a lineup and positively identified as the criminal agent. On 30 July Webster waived a preliminary hearing. On 27 August a criminal information charging him with first degree rape and related offenses was filed in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County. He was tried before a jury, convicted of rape in the first degree and a related offense and sentenced to a total of 30 years. He noted an appeal. On our own motion we certified the record to us for review prior to decision by the Court of Special Appeals. Webster filed four motions seeking to suppress any judicial identification of him and all evidence of an extra-judicial identification of him. The reasons set out in the motions boil down to a claim that the lineup was illegal because it was conducted in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to the assistance of counsel and in derogation of his Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of due process of law. [12] There was a pre-trial hearing on the motions. At the outset, the State suggested that because of unusual circumstances surrounding the lineup regarding the right to counsel, even if the court makes a preliminary ruling that there was no taint or undue suggestiveness, the State still would ... prefer to proceed to try and establish an independent source [for an in-court identification]. The unusual circumstances surrounding the lineup regarding the right to counsel were brought out at the hearing on the motions. At the time the police decided to exhibit Webster in a lineup he was not represented by counsel, and, apparently, was indigent. [13] So that Webster would have the assistance of counsel at the lineup, the police informed the Public Defender for Baltimore County of the impending lineup, and Robert B. Aguilar, Jr., an employee of the Public Defender, was dispatched to monitor the proceedings. Aguilar was not then licensed to practice law, but, as was natural in the circumstances, he was accepted by the police as duly representing Webster. [14] The lineup was conducted under the observation of Aguilar. Webster was positively identified as the rapist. The trial court denied the motion to suppress. With respect to the right to counsel claim, the court said: The Court will not suppress the testimony as to the lineup on the sheer technical grounds that the clerk was not a licensed lawyer but merely a third year or second year, at that time, law student. To rule otherwise would be to exalt meaningless form over important substance.... The court's decision was correct, although for a different reason than that expressed. See Robeson v. State, 285 Md. 498, 502, 403 A.2d 1221 (1979), cert. denied, Robeson v. Maryland, 444 U.S. 1021, 100 S.Ct. 680, 62 L.Ed.2d 654 (1980). Webster argues before us that the absence of counsel at the lineup infringed his Sixth Amendment right to counsel and thereby rendered the lineup illegal. Therefore, the exclusionary rules enunciated in Wade and Gilbert were invoked. He urges that evidence as to identifications made at the lineup was per se to be excluded and that in-court identifications were inadmissible because their source was the illegal lineup. His argument is not tenable, however, because he was not an accused at the time of the lineup.