Court Opinion

ID: 9725363
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:43:09.067437+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:14.455557
License: Public Domain

*454DeBRULER, Justice,
dissenting.
The same safeguards should be employed by the police forces in voice identification procedures as are employed in seeking visual or photographic identifications. Matthews v. State (1988), Ind., 518 N.E.2d 807. The admissibility of the products of such procedures is to be determined upon application of a two-pronged test, the first prong of which is the determination from a totality of the cireumstances of whether the procedures are unduly and unnecessarily suggestive, and the second prong of which is whether, if so unduly and unnecessarily suggestive, there was created a substantial likelihood of irreparable misidenti-fication. Norris v. State (1976), 265 Ind. 508, 856 N.E.2d 204. If a process fails the test and produces a tainted out-of-court identification by a witness, such witness may nevertheless make an in-court identification if that in-court identification does not depend upon the pre-trial one, but has an independent origin. Id.
Here, there is no evidence that the witness Standriff was previously acquainted with appellant's voice or that of the unidentified assailant before the night of the vice-tim's disappearance. - Her identification was very uncertain up to the point in time, one week before the trial, when she visited the police station. The voice which she did hear uttered only a few words. American English was not the mother tongue of the witness. She was from the Phillipines. She was not a victim, with attention fixed upon one who was attacking her, but simply a neighbor overhearing a neighborhood brouhaha. When, therefore, she came to the police station and asked to hear the suspect's recorded voice, and the police had such a recording, they were under a duty, the same as if the idea had been theirs, to present her with a fair voice identification array or lineup. Matthews, 518 N.E.2d 807. Under the totality of these cireum-stances, their failure to employ such a fair procedure created a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification. The same set of circumstances indicate that there was no independant origin for her in-trial identification from a similar tape of appellant's voice. It was therefore constitutionally inadmissible. I would reverse and remand for a new trial at which such identification testimony would be excluded.