Court Opinion

ID: 9646367
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 12:58:01.607889+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:37.693139
License: Public Domain

MANDERINO, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. In this case, in-court identifications were made by witnesses who had made pre-trial photographic identifications of appellant. These pre-trial identifications were suppressed by the trial court because they were secured under highly suggestive circumstances. Such photographic identification procedures created a substantial risk of misidentification. See Foster v. California, 394 U.S. 440, 89 *124S.Ct. 1127, 22 L.Ed.2d 402 (1969); Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1972). The in-court identifications should not have been permitted unless it was first shown that the proposed in-court identifications were reliable.
An in-court identification is a one-on-one confrontation between a witness and the accused under highly suggestive circumstances. As stated in Commonwealth v. Fowler, 466 Pa. 198, 203-04, 352 A.2d 17, 19-20 (1976):
“Trial testimony identifying one as the person observed at the time of a crime is a one-on-one confrontation involving circumstances even more suggestive than those present at pretrial one-on-one confrontations. During the trial, the identifying witness knows that the defendant present in the courtroom has been accused, arrested, and is being tried for the crime. Prior to trial, such circumstances may not yet have occurred or may not yet be known to the witness. Thus, the testimony of a witness who will point an accusing finger at the defendant during the trial, should be prohibited unless the prosecution establishes by clear and convincing evidence at a suppression hearing that the witness’s proposed trial identification will be reliably based on the witness’s observation at the time of the crime, and that the identification was not induced by events occurring between the witness’s observations at the time of the crime and the witness’s in-court identification.” (Emphasis added.)
Because of the highly suggestive nature of in-court identifications, an “independent basis” for the witness identification must be established prior to trial or outside the hearing of the fact-finder in order to assure that the in-court identification is reliable. Evidence that the witness was able to pick out the accused in a fairly conducted pre-trial “line-up procedure provides some assurance that the in-court identification is reliable. Without such evidence, the in-court identifications which are highly suggestive cannot be effectively tested.