Court Opinion

ID: 9744415
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 22:02:36.759058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:49.113523
License: Public Domain

Armstrong, J.
(dissenting, with whom Keville, J., joins). We are of the opinion that there was evidence sufficiently “clear and convincing” to warrant the judge’s implied finding that the victim’s in-court identification was independent of the unnecessarily suggestive out-of-court identifications improperly set up by the police. There was evidence at the hearing on the motion to suppress that the victim immediately recognized and identified her attacker at the time of the second rape as the same person who had raped her two weeks previously (as well as evidence at the trial that prior to the second rape, while walking on the street with a friend, she recognized the person who had raped her earlier and identified him as such to the friend). This testimony, if believed, coupled with her observations over a forty minute period before, during, and after the first rape, clearly warranted a finding that she could identify (because she had in fact identified) her attacker independently of the subsequent suggestive police procedures. For this reason the present case must be distinguished from Commonwealth v. Teta, 358 Mass. 814 (1971).