Court Opinion

ID: 9474575
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:02:07.962156+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:11.558064
License: Public Domain

SCHROEDER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
This is a case in which identification testimony was important. The government called three identification witnesses. All were asked to identify the defendant in the suggestive surroundings of the courtroom without any safeguards such as a pretrial or in-court line up. This circumstance alone is sufficient to call into question the fairness of the trial. See, e.g., United States v. Williams, 436 F.2d 1166, 1168 (9th Cir.1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 912, 91 S.Ct. 1392, 28 L.Ed.2d 654 (1971). But *1374with two of the witnesses there were additional and much more serious problems.
One of the witnesses was asked to identify the defendant after he had donned the mask worn by the robber. Another was asked to identify the defendant’s voice after he spoke the very words spoken by the robber. It is difficult to imagine any more corruptively suggestive procedures, short of transporting the jury to the bank and asking the defendant to reenact the crime.
I dissent from the majority opinion because I believe that these procedures deprived the appellant of a fair trial. The Supreme Court has enunciated a test to determine the permissibility of out-of-court suggestive identification procedures. See Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 114, 97 S.Ct. 2243, 2253, 53 L.Ed.2d 140 (1977); Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188, 199, 93 S.Ct. 375, 382, 34 L.Ed.2d 401 (1972). This court today does not apply this test to in-court suggestive identification procedures that are at least as prejudicial to the defendant’s rights. In so doing, this court conflicts with the Eleventh Circuit, which applies the Supreme Court’s test to both in-court and out-of-court suggestive identification procedures. See Code v. Montgomery, 725 F.2d 1316, 1319-20 (11th Cir.1984) (per curiam).
Had the majority applied the appropriate test as set out in Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 97 S.Ct. 2243, 53 L.Ed.2d 140 (1977), it too would have reached the conclusion that appellant was denied a fair trial. The test which the Supreme Court laid out is the following:
[Reliability is the linchpin in determining the admissibility of identification testimony for both pre- and post-Stovall confrontations. The factors to be considered .... include the opportunity of the witness to view the criminal at the time of the crime, the witness’ degree of attention, the accuracy of his prior description of the criminal, the level of certainty demonstrated at the confrontation, and the time between the crime and the confrontation. Against these factors is to be weighed the corrupting effect of the suggestive identification itself.
Manson, 432 U.S. at 114, 97 S.Ct. at 2253 (citations omitted).
The corrupting effect of the identifications in this case is obvious. The reliability of these identifications is virtually nonexistent. There were no pretrial identification procedures to establish the reliability of any of the in-court identifications. The witnesses did not have a good opportunity to observe the masked robber at the time of the crime. There was no certainty in their identifications.
Witness Newton testified that the robber ran into the bank, then immediately ordered her to get under a desk from which she could not see the robbery, and, finally after committing the robbery, ran out of the bank. Even after the defendant donned the robber’s mask in open court, Newton was able to say only that the defendant had the same general appearance as the robber. She had earlier failed to tell the police about any distinctive features of the robber’s face. This throws further doubt on the reliability of her testimony that she believed the masked Domina was the robber because they both had long necks and pronounced chins.
Witness Dowdy was asked to make an in-court voice identification. She testified that she heard the robber’s voice for the ten minutes he was in the bank. She had no opportunity to hear the voice in the intervening five months before trial. Even after hearing the defendant say the same words as the robber had spoken, the witness was able to state only that the defendant’s voice was “very similar to the robber’s.” As the majority’s own opinion acknowledges, “neither witness identified Domina as the robber, only that his voice and general appearance were similar.”
The procedures at trial did not produce reliable or certain identifications. They did unfairly present the defendant to the witnesses and the jury in the guise of a criminal.
In United States v. Brown, 644 F.2d 101 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 881, 102 S.Ct. 369, 70 L.Ed.2d 195 (1981), Judge Oakes dissented from the decision uphold*1375ing a voice identification procedure in which the defendant was required to utter the robber’s words in open court. In that case there was only one suggestive identification, and that alone prompted Judge Oakes to state:
It is hard for me to conceive of a more prejudicial method of establishing a voice identification. Only if the jury had gone down to the bank and watched the defendant put on a ski mask, wave a toy gun, and shout “Give me your money or I’m going to blow you up,” could Brown have been worse off. I know of no case — certainly neither the Government in its brief nor the majority in its opinion has found one — which justifies the use of an in-court identification procedure as suggestive and prejudicial as the one used here.
U.S. v. Brown, 644 F.2d at 107 (Oakes, J., dissenting).
This case presents the situation which Judge Oakes could not even imagine. If we must accept the majority decision of the Second Circuit in Brown, despite the powerful arguments of Judge Oakes, then surely it should be regarded as the outer limit of what our system should tolerate. This case goes beyond it. I therefore respectfully dissent.