Opinion ID: 484754
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: in court identification

Text: 90 At trial, when Cates was testifying as to the details of the January 1981 load, he stated that when he landed at Papa Joe's airstrip a gentleman named Gene and Ron Harrison were there. Cates stated that he did not know Gene prior to that meeting. Cates was then asked, do you see anybody in the courtroom now who you knew at that time as Gene? Cates responded that he did not. Later, Cates testified that he recognized Gene Slusser's voice in a subsequent telephone conversation because Cates had met Slusser at Papa Joe's airstrip in January 1981. At that point, Cates identified Slusser in court as the man he saw at Papa Joe's. In the voir dire that followed, Cates indicated that he had not been able to see Slusser in the courtroom when he was first asked to identify him because the row of defense attorneys blocked his view. Slusser's motion for a mistrial on the basis of a taint in Cates's identification was denied. 91 Slusser's claim must fail because he has produced no evidence indicating that the identification procedure was so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of misidentification. Albert v. Montgomery, 732 F.2d 865, 871 (11th Cir.1984). There is no evidence to suggest that Cates was lying when he stated that his initial failure to identify Slusser was due to the fact that his view of Slusser was obstructed. 24 Thus, the identification procedure was not impermissibly suggestive and the motion for a mistrial on that basis was properly denied.