Court Opinion

ID: 9558274
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:05:47.579201+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:08:37.158804
License: Public Domain

BUSSEY, Judge,
dissenting:
On March 6, 1982, Marne Jarvis, who lived across from the appellant in an apartment complex, observed the appellant in another friend’s apartment bleeding from a gash over his eye and injury to his ear. She testified that the lacerations appeared to her to be scratch marks and a bite mark. Later the same evening, Ms. Jarvis was awakened by a dog fight outside her apartment and she heard the appellant “talking about taking a girl down to the river and killing her.” After Ms. Jarvis heard about the murder of Tamara Carter, she informed the police of the statement, and agreed to try to set up the appellant in order to apprehend him. On the following day, the appellant came to her apartment looking for marijuana, and while talking to Ms. Jarvis, stated, “I could have told them where Bobby was and that we killed her and took her to the river, but I’m not a snitch and I’m not going to rat on them.”
Approximately one week before the murder occurred, Randall Dickerson was at Doug Beck’s home with the appellant, Bobby Standridge, and Timothy Rist and he overheard them talking about needing money. Mr. Dickerson heard appellant say that it would be easy to “hit” a certain Moore laundromat and that he knew a girl who worked there named Tammy.
I am of the opinion that even if the in-court identification was tainted by imper-missibly suggestive hypnosis, the evidence supporting the conviction in the instant case is strong enough that notwithstanding the tainted identification the judgment and sentence should be affirmed. In Robison v. State, 677 P.2d 1080 (Okl.Cr.1984), this Court held in pertinent part that:
The identification was inadmissible and the trial court erred in permitting it to be made. Nevertheless, this error is not grave enough to predicate reversal of the conviction. The evidence apart from Ms. Henderson’s identification is far too overwhelming for us to conclude that her identification determined the verdict.
Moreover, even assuming that the evidence was less conclusive, this case should not be reversed on the basis of a per se exclusionary rule of post-hypnotic identification. In Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 97 S.Ct. 2243, 53 L.Ed.2d 140 (1977), the United States Supreme Court held in substance that the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process does not require a per se rule of exclusion regarding pretrial identification evidence developed under un*218necessarily suggestive procedures, instead of a rule which permits admission of such evidence if, under the totality of the circumstances, the identification is reliable.
At the very minimum, this Court should remand this matter to the trial court for it to make findings of fact concerning the suggestiveness, if any, of the recorded hypnosis procedure and transmit such findings of fact to this Court.