Court Opinion

ID: 9458888
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:04:34.088121+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:55.836171
License: Public Domain

LEVENTHAL, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
This is to add a thought as to useful procedure for consideration of the possibility of separate instruction on interracial identifications, discussed in Chief Bazelon’s separate opinion.
In my judgment, this subject is not appropriate for inclusion in the model instruction provided with the opinion. Whether this case may involve a problem of inter-racial identification is not knowable from the record, and the point was not argued by counsel. The issue arose only because the court became concerned with the responsibility of trial judges to focus on the general issue of identification, concluding the time is ripe to fashion a model instruction that will help make this “a matter of routine” for trial judges.1
A model instruction serves a useful function of survey and synthesis, to distill outstanding judgments on matters that have been pondered by this and other courts. The issue of inter-racial identifications is not ripe for this kind of distillation of wisdom involving as it does a matter on which' there is only “meager data” and an assertion of “common sense” views2 that merit further consideration. What seems obvious to one judge, based on his experience, may be questioned by another, see Quercia v. United States, 289 U.S. 466, 53 S.Ct. 698, 77 L.Ed. 1321 (1933). When we are dealing with an instruction to the jury on “the law,” we are or should be dealing with propositions that reflect the wisdom of the community.
My own reflections on the subject have been enhanced by some surprises encountered in a little reading undertaken after this subject arose in conference. Although some writers say it is “a well established socio-psychological phenomenon” that members of one race recognize each other more readily than members of another race,3 it develops that in at least one study — which apparently sought to confirm another point, that Negroes are more likely to recognize white than vice versa — the data seemed to show that Negroes recognize white faces with greater accuracy *562than black faces.4 If this is true, it would be necessary to investigate the possible explanations,5 and to provide the explanations and qualifications needed if a model instruction is to avoid distortion, and possibly outright error.
If the instruction refers to the ultimate ingredients of .the problems of identification, it might well have to note that identifiability depends on the ability (and opportunity) of the individual as perhaps influenced by such matters as his attitude toward the other race, the extent to which his ability to distinguish may have been enhanced by need or reward for such ability in past situations, and the factor whether in the individual instance the subject being identified had homogeneous characteristics (see note 5).
The wisdom of making haste slowly in discerning the generalization ready for inclusion in model instructions is underscored when what is involved is as sensitive as race relations in our society. If the subject of inter-racial identification is to be covered in instructions that are informative and objective, we may be opening the door to questioning and proffers of proof so that every time a witness makes an identification of an offender of another race, he is subject to cross-examination on the nature and extent of his contacts with and attitudes (favorable or not) toward the other race. The more I ponder the problems, the better I understand the kernel of wisdom in the decisions that shy away from instructions on inter-racial identifications as divisive.6
*563Chief Judge Bazelon’s separate opinion may well serve the useful purpose of identifying a problem that merits pondering and discussion. Perhaps this opinion, too, may be of assistance when the time comes for analysis. The more difficult question is, what is the optimum means of providing such consideration. If it is to be done solely by an appellate court, then the adversarial process — lacking in this ease — would seem to be a minimum requirement. What strikes me is that this is the kind of issue which appellate judges should explore with trial judges, and with lawyers, in a manner more like that of a legislative committee, than a decision in an adversarial proceeding. There are models in this circuit in the work of committees of the Judicial Conference. There are national models in the work of committees of the American Bar Association. At least where problems require careful further exploration, these models seem to me to provide a more felicitous means of conducting such exploration — permitting common' meetings on common problems between members of bench (trial as well as appellate judges), bar, and social scientists; providing time for further explorations after initial discussion; enhancing collaborative conference as distinguished from competitive or adversarial skirmish.
Mulling and interchange always take time. Yet if the problem of inter-racial identification is to be considered with discernment as well as authority, that time would be well spent.

. Macklin v. United States, 133 U.S.App. D.C. 139, 143, 409 F.2d 174, 178 (1969).

. See Chief Judge Bazelon’s dissenting opinion in United States v. Brown, Proctor & Williams, 148 U.S.App.D.C. at 55, 461 F.2d at 146 (March 1, 1972) :
The data on this point is unfortunately meager, but it offers at least tentative support for the widely-held, common sense view that whites have greater difficulty identifying blacks than identifying other whites. And it also seems true that blacks can identify other blacks more easily than they can identify whites.

. P. Wall, Eye-Witness Identification in Criminal Cases (1965), p. 123. No empirical data are cited.

. For this possibility I refer to the most recent of the studies referred to in Judge Bazelon’s dissent in Brown. See R. M. Malpass (of U. of Illinois) and J. Kravitz (of Howard University), Recognition for Faces of Own and Other Race, 13 J. of Personality and Social Psychology (1969) 330, 332.
This reports a study on students at University of Illinois (13 black, 13 white) and Howard University (7 black, 7 white). To each of these subjects was shown, as stimuli, slide photographs of 40 black and 40 white males of college age, flashed on a screen. The authors calculated a recognition index (d'), a composite for number of correct and false identifications, indicating the superiority of performance over chance expectation. The data showed:
Recognition index (d') at
U. of HI. Howard U.*
white subjects white stimuli 1.46 1.44
black subjects, white stimuli 1.35 1.41
black subjects, black stimuli 1.31 1.39
white subjects, black stimuli 1.09 1.07

 The raw Howard data showed a higher d' for black subjects than white subjects recognizing white stimuli. The authors found this “unexpected.” The data were revised to exclude one white subject with recognition scores so low, for both white and black stimuli, that they were regarded as “distinctly deviate” and eliminated.

. In referring to the data that white faces are recognized more easily than black as stimuli, Malpass and ICravitz (op. cit. supra note 4) offer as possible hypotheses differences in distinctiveness of stimuli, calling for investigation “of the dimensionality of faces of the two races; ” “thht black faces are more homogeneous than1 white faces;” that both black and white persons “have had more exposure to white faces than black faces in public media and also will have had more contact with white persons where discriminative ability has positive motivational value.”

. See People v. Burris, 19 A.D.2d 557-558, 241 N.Y.S.2d 75, 76 (2d Dept. 1963) reversing because both prosecutor and court “suggested to the jury that the identification' of the defendant by the complaining witness should be weighed in the light of the fact that both the defendant and the witness were negroes.” In *563Burris the court relied on People v. Hearns, 18 A.D.2d 922, 923, 238 N.Y.S.2d 173, 174-175 (2d Dept. 1903) where the issue was the voluntariness of defendant’s confession. The prosecutor noted that the (police officer) witnesses testifying that it was voluntary were members of his own race. The court repudiated any “plea to the jury, based on color and race no matter how artfully phrased,” and held the argument was improper. “The vice of sueli an argument is not only that it is predicated on a false and illogical premise, but more important it is divisive: it seeks to separate the racial origin of witnesses in the minds of the jury, and to encourage the weighing of testimony on the basis of the racial similarity or dissimilarity of witnesses.”