Opinion ID: 2325777
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Failure to Suppress Heard's Identification of Brooks

Text: Brooks' second contention is that it was error for the trial court to have failed to suppress Heard's in-court and pretrial identifications of Brooks. Appellant claims that Heard's in-court identification of Brooks as the man who stood behind him during the robbery was tainted by the unreliability of and suggestiveness surrounding his pretrial identification of Brooks. We hold that both identifications were properly admitted. On April 18, 1978, nine days after the robbery and murder, Heard was shown a photograph of a lineup held on August 31, 1977, some seven and one-half months before the incident. Although Brooks was a participant in this lineup, Heard failed to identify him from the photograph. Heard was also unable to recognize Brooks in an array of individual mug shots. However, Heard did identify appellant Turner as the gunman from a second lineup photograph dated September 14, 1977, and from a separate photographic array. A lineup was held on May 9, 1978 at which Heard successfully identified both appellants. He later made in-court identifications of both Turner and Brooks at trial. Brooks first urges that the pretrial identification procedures were unduly suggestive. Specifically, Brooks contends that the May 9, 1978 lineup was impermissibly tainted by the fact that the only participants therein whose pictures had also been shown to Heard on April 18, 1978 were Turner (who Heard had then identified) and Brooks (who Heard had not recognized from his photograph). Brooks suggests that Heard recognized him at the lineup only because (i) it was the same face he had seen twice before in photographs, (ii) Brooks was shown with Turner, and (iii) Brooks was the only lineup participant whose photograph was with Turner's photograph when Heard identified Turner. The Supreme Court suggested in Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967) that the admission of identifications secured through unnecessarily suggestive procedures might violate due process. But as the Court later made explicit in Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 97 S.Ct. 2243, 53 L.Ed.2d 140 (1977), Stovall was not intended to announce a perse exclusionary rule; rather, the Manson Court stated, reliability is the linchpin in determining the admissibility of identification testimony. Id. at 114, 97 S.Ct. at 2253. If, under the totality of the circumstances, the court is convinced that the identification was reliable even though the identification procedure was suggestive, the identification evidence should be admitted. Id. at 106, 97 S.Ct. at 2249; see Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188, 199, 93 S.Ct. 375, 382, 34 L.Ed.2d 401 (1972); United States v. Marchand, 564 F.2d 983, 995-96 (2d Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1015, 98 S.Ct. 732, 54 L.Ed.2d 760 (1978). There is, in such a case, no substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification so as to deny due process, see Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 384, 88 S.Ct. 967, 971, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968), and short of that point, such identification evidence is to become grist for the jury mill. Manson v. Brathwaite, supra 432 U.S. at 116, 97 S.Ct. at 2254. As a preliminary matter, we are unimpressed by appellant Brooks' contention that the identification procedures employed here were necessarily suggestive. First, the mere fact that a full three weeks before the May 9 lineup, Heard had been shown two photographs of Brooks hardly suggests that the police were in effect saying  This is the man. See Foster v. California, 394 U.S. 440, 443, 89 S.Ct. 1127, 1129, 22 L.Ed.2d 402 (1969). The detective who had shown Heard the photographs testified at trial that he showed Heard the individual photo of Brooks only because the photo of the lineup was seven and one half months old; but the individual photo proved to be an even poorer likeness of Brooks as he looked at the time of the crimes, and there is no indication that Heard even noticed that he had been shown two photographs of the same man. Heard's failure to recognize Brooks at this photograph viewing session makes it unlikely that his unequivocal identification of Brooks at a live lineup three weeks later was due to the earlier presentation of two photographs. Second, placing Brooks and Turner in the same lineup on May 9 would not tend to focus more attention on Brooks than on any other participant in the lineup. Finally, in light of Heard's failure to focus on, much less identify, Brooks' photos at the photograph viewing session, we think it unlikely that Heard would have detected that he had been shown photos of only one individual in the lineup besides Turner at the session three weeks earlier. In short, these facts and nothing more do not present a prima facie case of suggestiveness. Even if we assume arguendo, however, that there was some amount of unnecessary suggestiveness surrounding Heard's identification of Brooks, we are satisfied that the corrupting effect of this suggestiveness would not outbalance the independent indicia of the identification's reliability. See Patterson v. United States, D.C. App., 384 A.2d 663, 666 (1978); Manson v. Brathwaite, supra 432 U.S. at 114, 97 S.Ct. at 2253. While it is true that Heard testified that he had been asleep when Turner and Brooks entered, and that he only had occasion to look at the face (but not the clothes) of the man behind him for a short time soon after waking, he also testified that he looked at him pretty good and noted that he had close-cropped hair. Moreover, on the night of the crimes, Heard stated to police that the man behind him was younger, shorter and less heavy than himselfa description perhaps not overly specific, but not challenged as inaccurate. Finally, Heard said that it was only when he saw Brooks in the flesh at the May 9 lineup that he knew Brooks was the man he had seen, a confidence he reaffirmed in identifying Brooks in court. Our conclusion that Heard's lineup identification of Brooks was basically reliable is not, of course, to say that it was absolutely reliable. It is only to say that due process does not require suppression of either the lineup or in-court identification. [11] Heard's identification of Brooks was not unimpeachable. At trial, defense counsel thoroughly exposed the weaknesses attending Heard's pretrial identification of Brooks. As the Supreme Court stated in Manson v. Brathwaite, supra : We are content to rely upon the good sense and judgment of ... [the] jur[y], for evidence with some element of untrustworthiness is customary grist for the jury mill. Juries are not so susceptible that they cannot measure intelligently the weight of identification testimony that has some questionable feature. [ Id. 432 U.S. at 116, 97 S.Ct. at 2254] In the absence of suggestive procedure, the reliability of an identification may be challenged in the traditional manner before a jury in the courtroom by attacking the credibility of the witness. Allen v. Estelle, 568 F.2d 1108, 1112 n.6 (5th Cir. 1978).