Court Opinion

ID: 9455497
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:24:16.956431+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:37.307260
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Chief Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part):
I agree with the majority that appellant did not waive the protections he should have been afforded under Wade. I have concluded, however, that on this record the in-court identifications by the Haydens should have been excluded and would therefore remand the case for a new trial.
As the court's opinion recites the facts concerning the crime, I turn directly to the stationhouse confrontations. Part V of the opinion declares that the “independent source” rule of Wade was satisfied in this case. While conceding that “the trial judge did not use the language of Wade in haec verba,” my brothers believe that the judge found an “independent source for Mr. Hayden’s in-court identification * * * [in] the prior spontaneous non-tainted identification” at the elevator.1 If I were satisfied that such a finding had been made, I could understand their refusal to disturb it. However, such a finding was not only lacking here in ant haec ant alia verba of Wade, but the facts do not provide a basis for this Court to construct such a finding.
After reviewing the suggestiveness of the elevator confrontation, the trial judge simply declared that “it is perfectly clear that the identification by Mr. Hayden was of such a nature as not to be suggestive in any way, shape or form.” If for the moment we suppose that there was an elevator identification, the trial judge’s statement does not amount to a finding that the identification provides an “independent source” for believing that Mr. Hayden could identify Long in the absence of any suggestion implanted during the squadroom proceedings. Rather, the trial court’s statement has the opposite import, i. e., that there was nothing about the elevator confrontation (such as a policeman constraining Long, etc.) that would have tainted the squad-room identifications. If we are going to defer to the trial judge’s findings because he is in a superior position to evaluate the witnesses’ credibility, we must at least have such findings so we can be sure that Mr. Hayden’s in-court identification was based solely on his recollection of the twenty second long hold-up and not on the image implanted in his mind by the quarter-hour unconstitutional confrontation in the Robbery Squad office.
The actual sequence of events makes clear that our proper concern is not the elevator confrontation’s possible tainting of the squadroom identification but vice versa. Mr. Hayden did not make a “prior spontaneous non-tainted identification” of appellant at the elevator. His “identification” came subsequent to the one-man show-up in the squad-room, of which the majority disapproves; it was anything but spontaneous; and it *806was very probably tainted by the squad-room proceedings, although the trial judge did not rule on this possibility, since he approved what took place in the squadroom.2
Moreover, it strains my sense of reality to say that any elevator “identification” took place. According to his testimony, Mr. Hayden entered the Municipal Building and found himself standing fifteen feet from a man whom' he now says had three weeks previously held a gun to his head and threatened to blow his brains out. He then proceeded to enter the elevator with this man. When he got off the elevator, he was met by the police officer in charge of investigating the case. As far as he knew, the police were still seeking the man who robbed him, yet he did not mention to this officer that he had just seen the robber. Instead he walked to the back of the squadroom where the books of suspects’ pictures were located, and rather than telling either of the detectives there or his own son that he had seen the robber, he settled down to look at pictures.2
3 While they were looking through the book, his son glanced up and identified Long as the man who robbed the truck; Mr. Hayden then chimed in with his son. Some ten minutes later, Long was brought back alone for a closer examination by Mr. Hayden and his son, who again identified him. At this point, Mr. Hayden informed the police that he had first seen the appellant that afternoon when he entered the Municipal Building.4 I cannot believe that statements which Mr. Hayden made as afterthoughts following the Robbery Squad office identifications- constitute an identification shown by “clear and convincing evidence” to provide an “independent source” for the in-court identification.

. Majority opinion, supra at 804.

. The majority disagrees with the trial judge’s Wade conclusions, but stops there. I cannot agree with this unspoken endorsement of the trial court’s conclusion that no taint of suggestiveness attended these confrontations. Particularly as to the squadroom identification, I think one must blink reality to find that an 18 year-old black suspect melts inconspicuously into a room populated with police detectives. The Supreme Court did not arbitrarily establish an exclusionary rule in Wade. Rather, the realities of cases such as this one led it to fashion a means of protecting suspects from the suggestive influences inherent in identification proceedings. See, e. g., “potential for substantial prejudice to the accused,” 388 U.S. at 232, 87 S.Ct. at 1935, “a process attended with hazards of serious unfairness to the criminal accused,” id. at 234, 87 S.Ct. at 1936, and “dangers inherent in eyewitness identifications and the sug-gestability inherent in the context of pretrial identification,” id. at 235, 87 S.Ct. at 1936.

. The majority places great emphasis on Mr. Hayden’s being “rushed” to the back of the squadroom, a description given not by Mr. Hayden of the way he felt but by the officer who accompanied him. There is no testimony, however, which would suggest that once he was at the table with the photograph books there was any pressure on Mr. Hayden which prevented him from telling about the elevator “identification.”

. Appellant testified at trial that Mr. Hayden was not in the elevator which appellant rode up to the Robbery Squad office.