Court Opinion

ID: 9518936
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:05:16.954115+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:39:01.449675
License: Public Domain

Levin, J.,
(concurring). Initial identification by photograph has been widely and effectively used in law enforcement. When the suspect is at large the display of photographs to eyewitnesses can facilitate the investigation by putting the police on the right track. It can exonerate an innocent man. Such use of photographic identification, with appropriate safeguards,1 is necessary and desirable and should be encouraged. Simmons v. United States (1968), 390 US 377 (88 S Ct 967, 19 L Ed 2d 1247).
The defendant Rowell was not, however, at large when the photographs were shown to the principal complaining witness in this case. Rowell was then already in custody. There was no need to show photographs, including a photograph of Rowell, to that witness on the day before she viewed Rowell in a lineup.
In Simmons the United States Supreme Court recognized the dangers involved in photographic identification. Even if scrupulously correct procedures are followed by the police in displaying photographs (frequently mug shots) to eyewitnesses there is some danger, said the court, that the witness may make an incorrect identification and, however the *198initial misidentification comes about, “the witness thereafter is apt to retain in his memory the image of the photograph rather than of the person actually seen, reducing the trustworthiness of subsequent lineup or courtroom identification.” (pp 383, 384)
The photographic identification stage is as critical as the lineup stage, perhaps more so. The danger of misidentification at the photographic identification stage is as great, perhaps greater. Just as the facts and circumstances of a lineup identification cannot be readily reconstructed at trial (United States v. Wade [1967], 388 US 218, 230-232 [87 S Ct 1926, 18 L Ed 2d 1149] and Gilbert v. California [1967], 388 US 263 [87 S Ct 1951, 18 L Ed 2d 1178]), so too the facts and circumstances of a photographic identification preceding the lineup cannot later be readily reconstructed.
I am persuaded, and this is the reason I write to state my separate views, that on principle photographic identification should be prohibited where the defendant is in custody2 unless the witness is physically incapacitated from going to a place where a lineup can be conducted. Compare Stovall v. *199Denno (1967), 388 US 293 (87 S Ct 1967, 18 L Ed 2d 1199). The convenience of witnesses not so incapacitated and the convenience of police officers should be subordinated to the people’s interest in avoiding misidentifications and miscarriages of justice based thereon. And in that rare situation where photographs may properly be displayed of an accused person already in custody, the accused person is entitled to be represented by counsel at the photographic identification stage for the reasons expressed in Wade and Gilbert.
Generally when police display photographs they show photographs of a person with a criminal conviction record. An accusing finger pointed at a person with a prior conviction record by an eyewitness who has made a “positive” identification generally will bring about the accused person’s conviction. His record will come out if he takes the stand and, generally, he cannot defend himself without taking the stand. The fate of such an accused person may well be decided months before the trial when, as occurred in this case, the police displayed, in circumstances which it is difficult if not impossible accurately to reconstruct, his photograph to the victim anxious to assist in solving the crime.
Pertinent are the observations of the United States Supreme Court in United States v. Wade, supra, pp 224, 235, 236:
“today’s law enforcement machinery involves critical confrontations of the accused by the prosecution at pretrial proceedings where the results might well settle the accused’s fate and reduce the trial itself to a mere formality. * * *
“The trial which might determine the accused’s fate may well not be that in the courtroom but that at the pretrial confrontation, with the State aligned against the accused, the witness the sole jury, and *200the accused unprotected against the overreaching, intentional or unintentional, and with little or no effective appeal from the judgment there rendered by the witness — 'that’s the man.’ ”
The integrity of the lineup should not be jeopardized by pre-lineup photographic displays unless there is the kind of necessity which exists when the suspect is at large or unknown or, if in custody, the witness is physically incapacitated from attending a lineup. Wade’s and Gilbert’s holdings entitling an accused person to the assistance of counsel at the lineup would be undermined by a rule which would deny him assistance of counsel at a pre-lineup photographic display.
I have signed the opinion of the Court in this case and concur in the disposition of this case rather than dissent because the rules expressed in Wade and Gilbert are not effective as to confrontations which occurred at the time this defendant was accused (Stovall v. Denno, supra), and also because it has been the police practice to conduct investigations even where the suspect is already in custody in the manner this investigation was conducted for so long that it would unduly impede the administration of justice to make effective without advance warning standards the violation of which could result in barring the use of the identifying witness’s testimony. Compare Wright v. United States (1968), 131 App DC 279 (404 F2d 1256); United States v. Wade, supra, p 242. It is our duty to improve the judicial process but in doing so we should proceed in an orderly manner.3

 Fairness requires that a reeord be made of the names of all who are present whenever photographs are displayed. If at all possible, a substantially larger number of photographs should be shown than the 5 or 6 photographs displayed in this ease. Copies of all photographs displayed should be added to the file so that defense counsel ean attaek and the jury can appraise the validity of the sample. A reeord should also be made of the order of presentation of photographs and the number of times eaeh photograph is disjilayed.

 In Simmons the United States Supreme Court noted that the felons there were unknown and at large at the time the photographs were shown to eyewitnesses (p 384) :
“In the first plaee, it is not suggested that it was unnecessary for the UBI to resort to photographic identification in this instance. A serious felony had been committed. The perpetrators were still at large.”
In Smith v. United States (CA DC, 1968), 413 F2d 366, the majority of the United States Court of Appeals remanded for the taking of evidence on the issue whether a pretrial photographic identification of the defendant violated due process and, if so, whether it tainted the lineup and in-court identifications, and the making of such findings as may be appropriate, “using the criteria announced in Simmons * * * and applying the principles announced in [Wade, Gilbert and Stovall] * * *. These criteria include (1) the necessity to use photographs for identification; (2) the number of photographs of different persons used in the identification procedure; and (3) the information or instructions, if any, given by the police to the identifying witness immediately prior to the identification.” (Emphasis supplied.)

 The district attorney and public defender for Clark county, Nevada, have agreed upon a procedure for lineup identification which, among other things, requires presence at the lineup of a member of both the district attorney’s and defender’s office, the making of a lineup photograph, separation of eyewitnesses prior to the completion of the lineuq5 and that “all efforts should be made to prevent *201a witness from viewing any photographs of the suspect prior to giving the lineup.” 4 Crim L B (1968), 98, 99.
Compare United States v. Marson (CA 4, 1968), 408 F2d 644, where a majority of the court concluded that a pre-Wade photographic identification of a defendant already in custody did not deny the defendant due process. The dissenting judge would have applied Wade’s and Gilbert’s principle to the case there at bar as a reward to the “diligence and astuteness of defendant’s counsel [in advancing] a constitutional contention, not obvious on its face and not a single application of Wade and Gilbert.’’ The dissenting judge observed (p 2280):
“I cannot read Wade and Gilbert to express considerations substantially less applicable to identification by the exhibition of photographs than to identification by exhibition of the person.”
Generally, see Murray, The Criminal Lineup at Home and Abroad, Utah L Rev, p 610 (1966); and Wall, Eye Witness Identification in Criminal Cases.