Court Opinion

ID: 9454415
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:45:59.100824+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:06.606887
License: Public Domain

FAHY, Senior Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part and concurring in part):
I do not think a remand is required for a determination of the due process question involved in Krause’s confrontation of appellant at the police station, that is, to inquire further whether the confrontation there “was so impermis-sibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.” Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 384, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed. 1247. It is there stated also that this standard accords with the Court’s previous resolution of a similar issue in Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199. In Simmons the Court decided the due process issue on the trial record, as this court, en banc, also did with respect to the cell block confrontations in Clemons v. United States, 133 U.S.App.D.C. -, 408 F.2d 1230. I think we should do the same in this case. As the court’s opinion demonstrates we have a full statement of the facts about the police station confrontation, with corroborative testimony from a detective who was an eye witness to what occurred there. Neither party to the case intimates the availability of any new light.
*1301The facts referred to in the court’s opinion show that the pre-trial confrontation lacked the safeguards against a mistaken identification which accompany a properly conducted lineup.1 Appellant was presented alone to Mr. Krause as a single police suspect. This is like the instance the Supreme Court characterized in Stovall as follows: “The practice of showing suspects singly to persons for fthe purpose of identification, and not as part of a lineup, has been widely condemned.” 388 U.S. at 302, 87 S.Ct. at 1972 (footnote omitted).2 Moreover, the Krause testimony as a whole has the same feature which gave rise to the “per se exclusionary rule” of Gilbert v. California, 388 U.S. 263, 272-273, 87 S.Ct. 1951, 18 L.Ed.2d 1178, for it included a statement before the jury that he had identified appellant prior to the trial.3
There is no way to demonstrate with absolute certainty that the police station confrontation “was so unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable mistaken identification that [appellant] was denied due process of law.” Stovall, supra at 302, 87 S.Ct. at 1972. It is certain, however, that the confrontation was suggestive, and was unnecessarily so. No explanation occurs for the manner in which it was arranged. Being suggestive it was conducive to mistaken identification, and in the totality of the circumstances its conducive character I think cannot reasonably be deemed reparable. Mr. Krause’s opportunity at the scene of the crime to identify the thief was limited. Compare Wright v. United States, 131 U.S.App.D.C. 279, 404 F.2d 1256, with Hemphill v. United States, 131 U.S.App.D.C. 46, 402 F.2d 187, 192. It occurred before daylight from some distance away. Looking from above he saw a man in a broad-brimmed hat, and only briefly. When testifying about the police station identification he did not refer to any of the man’s characteristics which he had said he had noticed at the scene of the crime. In at least one respect he qualified that earlier identification, “Well, I thought the person looked younger than he actually turned out to be.”
The curious testimony of James Short at the first trial,4 and in whose car the fur stole was found, did not persuade the jury of appellant’s guilt,5 indicative of the importance of Mr. Krause’s testimony at the second trial and, therefore, of the care with which its trustworthiness should be considered under the due process standards of Sto-vall and Simmons. A reasonable application of these standards I think requires us to hold that the confrontation fell short of meeting them. There is no reason to believe that after the passage of two years any reliable additional information is available as to what there transpired. Compare Sera-Leyva v. United States, 133 U.S.App.D.C. -, 409 F.2d 160.
*1302Under Clemons,6 however, notwithstanding the police station confrontation might be found on the remand, as I find now, defective under due process, if it can be shown to have had an independent source the taint of its illegality is removed sufficiently to support the admissibility of the identification which resulted. Om this record, however, I do not see how it can be said there was an effective independent source. The only possible other source was the single incident of Krause seeing the man across the street with the white stole in the circumstances I have set forth. Perhaps he could. identify the man by that incident. His testimony to that effect would of course be admissible and if believed by the jury would result in a conviction. But the suggestive confrontation at the police station cannot in my view free the resulting identification there of the effect of that suggestiveness. In Clemons the factual situation affecting the issue of the independent source of the cell block identifications is distinguishable. Several possible sources were available, as pointed out by the court in its opinion in that case.
’ It accordingly seems to me we should hold that it was error to admit during the direct testimony of the Government the evidence of the police station identification, tainted by the confrontation there which was defective under due process. This would require a new trial at which that evidence would be excluded. The in-court identification itself would not cure the error because in the minds of the jurors it necessarily would be shored up by the testimony of the same witness that he had identified appellant at the police station. In any event the combination of the two would taint the conviction. Here, in contrast with Clemons, there was no identifying testimony except that of Krause,7 though the fact of his identification at the police station was testified to by a detective who witnessed it, thus increasing by this verification the prejudice of its admission.
The end result of my conclusion that the police station confrontation was defective under due process is that the conviction should not be held to be free of prejudicial error. I understand from footnote 3 of the court’s opinion this would be the court’s position if the remand should result in a like conclusion as to the police station confrontation and a finding that the in-court identification was tainted by it. I should also think, though this cannot be a basis for decision, that the over-all expenditure of judicial effort in the end would be no greater were the clear-cut course of a new trial adopted now, rather than the course which in all probability will result from the remand, accompanied too as it will be by the shadow of an erroneous conviction if it does not result in a new trial.
In the event the remand results in setting aside the conviction I think the disposition by this court of appellant’s contention that we should direct dismissal of the indictment because of the delay in preparation of the transcript is appropriately left to the District Court in the first instance.

. As to the suggestibility of pre-trial identifications see the authorities arrayed in United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 229 n. 7, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149.

. The identification in Stovall of a single suspect was held not to violate due process of law because in the totality of circumstance there the Court said an immediate hospital confrontation by the critically injured victim was imperative.

. In Clemons this court noted that it “makes little sense to reverse a conviction on the basis of a per se exclusionary rule expressly intended to operate as a deterrent.” (Footnote omitted.) However, this function of prospective deterrence is hut a corollary to the main thrust of the Gilbert, Wade and Stovall cases. The .Gilbert due process sanction, even in its retrospective operation as determined in Clemons, seeks to make effective the fundamental constitutional guarantee of a fair trial. Gilbert, supra at 274, 87 S.Ct. 1951. See also dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Douglas in Biggers v. Tennessee, 390 U.S. 404, 409, 88 S.Ct. 797, 19 L.Ed.2d 1267, affirmed by an equally divided Court. See footnote 6, infra.

. Mr. Krause did not testify at the first trial.

. See footnote 2 of the court’s opinion.

. As a Senior Circuit Judge I did not participate in the Clemons and accompanying en banc cases.

. See opinion of Mr. Justice Douglas in Biggers v. Tennessee, note 3 supra, dis-seating from affirmance by an equally divided Court, and Gilbert, supra at 272 n. 3, 87 S.Ct. 1951.