Court Opinion

ID: 9455221
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:15:05.988684+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:30.589119
License: Public Domain

PRETTYMAN, Senior Circuit Judge,
(dissenting):
/
Judge Matthews, the trial judge, was presented with questions she was required to decide, i. e., the suppression of evidence as to identification and as to alleged illegal detention, which questions had not been before Judge Jones. Also the Government proffered a witness not presented to Judge Jones. And moreover the trial judge could not ascertain from the record given her precisely what Judge Jones’s ruling had been as to the legality of the arrest. Therefore she correctly took testimony and ruled upon the problems before her.1 **I add that the extended consideration the court devotes to the right of the Government to renew a motion to supress is beside the point in this case.

II

In my opinion the circumstance of the football cleats puts the identification feature of the case beyond dispute. The victim in this rape had a son named Gregory. On the day of the relevant events a young man appeared at the front door of her home and said he had come for a pair of football cleats he had loaned Gregory. She went to the basement to get the cleats. She says the young man followed her and raped her. She called the police, telling them of the affair, including the reference to the cleats. Gregory, when questioned, said he knew who that friend was and gave the police a name and address. On sight the victim of the rape identified him. That chain of circumstances nullifies the possibility of misidentification, or at least puts the matter outside the curative effects of confrontation and lineups.
Identifications are frequently — indeed usually — established by human observation and recollection, without the aid of a notable feature or fact. Such processes are liable to grievous mistakes and, conversely, to suggestion, intentional or otherwise. The Supreme Court took note of that possibility and framed a series of cases to meet it. Among these cases are United States v. Wade,2 *1292Gilbert v. California,3 Stovall v. Denno,4 and Simmons v. United States.5 The crux of these cases is some action “conducive to irreparable mistaken identification”.6 But identifications are also frequently solidified by extrinsic aids. A suspect may have a peculiar scar, or a fantastic tattoo, or a notable deformity. The whole art and science of codes, passwords, fingerprints, and identifying phrases revolve about such circumstances. In such cases additional aids are unnecessary. The litanies of confrontations and line-ups prescribed by the cited Supreme Court cases do not apply. They are not only unnecessary but useless, or at best cumulative. If a suspect is described to the police as having one eye, a hairlip, and a four-inch scar on his cheek, a line-up or a confrontation serves no purpose beyond cumulation.
Such is the present ease, as I see it. McRae was not picked up or held by reason of Mrs. Allen’s description of his weight, size, color, or other characteristics, or her memory of his looks. He was arrested and accused upon a combination of two circumstances — (1) his own assertion that he loaned Gregory a pair of cleats and (2) Gregory’s assertion that he (McRae) was the one who loaned the cleats. I think the court errs when it tries to squeeze a case like this into the mold of Wade, Stovall and Simmons; they deal with a different subject. I think it errs when it reverses in order to add to a record items of evidence or procedure which will be entirely cumulative of what is already there.
Whether this young man committed the rape is another matter. And so too is the question whether the occurrence was a rape. But the identification is certain; this is the young man the woman says raped her.

. See Rouse v. United States, 123 U.S. App.D.C. 348, 359 E.2d 1014 (D.C. Cir. 1966).

. 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed. 2d 1149 (1967).

. 388 U.S. 263, 87 S.Ct. 1951, 18 L.Ed.2d 1178 (1967).

. 388 U.S. 293, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967).

. 390 U.S. 377, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968).

. Stovall v. Denno, supra note 4, at 301-302, 87 S.Ct. at 1972; and Simmons v. United States, supra note 5, at 384, 88 S.Ct. 967.