Court Opinion

ID: 9617724
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:00:31.894405+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:15.383854
License: Public Domain

Gordon, J.,
Dissenting.
Before Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 L.ed.2d 1199 (1967),, I would have agreed with the majority of this Court that the circumstances under which the prosecutrix identified Fogg raised not a constitutional issue, but only a jury issue. In my opinion the reasoning of the majority opinion in Stovall requires a holding that Fogg was denied due process of law as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.*
In Stovall, the Court said: “The practice of showing suspects singly to persons for the purpose of identification, and not as part of a lineup, has been widely condemned. However, a claimed violation of due process of law in the conduct of a confrontation depends on the totality of the circumstances surrounding it. . .”. Id. at 302, 87 S.Ct. at 1972, 18 L.ed.2d at 1206.
Mrs. Behrendt (a victim of the crime allegedly committed by Stovall) identified Stovall when he was brought to her hospital room soon after the crime, handcuffed to a police officer. The Supreme Court held this confrontation consistent with due process, but only because “an immediate hospital confrontation was imperative”. Id.
Mrs. Behrendt was the only person who could have exonerated Stovall, and no one knew how long she might live. The police fol*550lowed the only feasible procedure when they took Stovall to her hospital room. The Court pointed out that under those circumstances, “ ‘the usual police station line-up, which Stovall now argues he should have had, was out of the question’ ”. Id. at 302, 87 S.Ct. at 1972-73, 18 L.ed.2d at 1206.
Miss Shaw identified Fogg when policemen brought him into the courtroom where she was sitting, awaiting his preliminary hearing. Not only was Fogg identifiable as the person accused of the crime, because the police brought him in; the record does not show that any other Negro was in the courtroom. So Mrs. Behrendt’s and Miss Shaw’s identifications were made under similar circumstances. In each case the person to be identified had been singled out as the person accused of the crime. But the similarity between Stovall’s and Fogg’s cases ends there.
The record in this case affords no reason, much less an imperative reason, why the Commonwealth chose Fogg’s preliminary hearing and the courtroom as the time and place of the first confrontation between Fogg and Miss Shaw. There is no explanation why the Commonwealth did not give Miss Shaw the opportunity, before Fogg’s preliminary hearing, to identify him in a lineup or under other circumstances that did not single him out as the person accused of the crime.
Believing myself bound by the views of a majority of the Supreme Court, I would reverse the convictions and remand the cases for new trials..

As recited in the majority opinion in this case, Fogg’s counsel raised the constitutional issue, relying upon Stovall v. Demo, supra.