Court Opinion

ID: 9453913
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:28:14.974771+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:52.070871
License: Public Domain

ELY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent. Parker was tried before the time when the Supreme Court in Jackson, determined that the death penalty provision of the statute in question is unconstitutional. As is not true in the ordinary case, the jury here was, from the beginning,1 directly concerned with the penalty and performed its duties under the impression that it might eventually be obliged to decide that Parker should die. It is possible, although I concede that there is now no factual basis for the conclusion, that the effectiveness of Parker’s trial attorney was impaired because he labored under the strain of his then awareness, before Jackson, that mistake on his part could result in the extermination of his client’s life. I believe, however, as one who has appeared as an advocate in many jury trials, that it is not unreasonable to believe that a juror may have found it less difficult to resolve the issue of guilt in .favor of the prosecution when he would have, immediately thereafter, the opportunity to be merciful in his decision as to the imposition of the extreme penalty.
Parker denied his guilt. He was not arrested until twenty-three months after the commission of one of the offenses for which he was convicted.2 He is a Negro. In the lineup, there were seven to ten persons. Four cr five of them, including Parker, were Negroes, but none of them, except Parker, possessed the general physical characteristics of the culprit previously described by witnesses to the criminal acts. The offender had been described by certain of his victims as a Negro of light complexion, between six feet two inches and six feet four inches in height, weighing approximately one hundred ninety pounds. Parker met that description. His photograph had been shown to two of the identifying lineup witnesses prior to the time of the lineup, and some of the lineup witnesses discussed the offender’s identity before, at the time of, and after the lineup. Except for Parker, only two Negroes in the lineup were remembered by one of the four identifying lineup witnesses. Neither of these Negroes bore the slightest resemblance to the hunted man. Both of them had black complexions, and one of them was slight in build, standing approximately five feet eight inches in height and weighing only about one hundred forty pounds. It is true, as Judge Barnes recites, that Parker was subsequently identified by persons who did not attend the lineup. Suggestion follows upon suggestion, however, and the lineup, constituted in a manner which would more probably lead to the con*255firmation of police suspicion, contaminated the purity of constitutional process.
Parker should be tried anew, with the exclusion of the corrupt evidence resulting from the lineup and in an atmosphere not pervaded by the haunting spectre of capital punishment. I would reverse.

. As the jury was selected, all those expressing “objection” to capital punishment were immediately, without further interrogation, disqualified and excused by the court. In his brief, appellant makes no point of this, and the argument that such a procedure would tend to produce a jury which would necessarily be “prosecution prone” was rejected in Bumper v. State of North Carolina, 391 U.S. 543, 88 S.Ct. 1788, 20 L.Ed.2d 797 (1968).

. Parker was arrested on October 17, 1966, and, almost immediately thereafter, was made to participate, without the presence of counsel, in the police lineup. He was convicted of four offenses, alleged in the indictment to have been committed on March 15, 1966, October 28, 1965, July 1, 1965, and November 19, 1964, respectively.