Court Opinion

ID: 9739539
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:17:12.58017+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:12.869375
License: Public Domain

R.S. Smith, J. (dissenting).
I dissent, because I think that requiring a Wade hearing in cases like this one, where the chance that the hearing will lead to the suppression of evidence is vanishingly small, is a waste of time and puts an unjustified burden on the criminal justice system.
The purpose of a Wade hearing is to decide whether a pretrial identification of the defendant violated the defendant’s constitutional rights and, if so, what the remedy should be (see United States v Wade, 388 US 218, 242 [1967]). In cases where a police officer who observed a crime identified the defendant some minutes or hours later, no court as far as I know has ever even reached the second question. Neither party has cited, the majority does not cite, and I have not been able to find any case in which any court held that an identification of this type violated a defendant’s constitutional rights.
This is not surprising, because, when a police officer has observed a crime, and a suspect is arrested shortly afterwards, getting the officer to look at the suspect as soon as possible is not only constitutionally permissible; it is a very good idea. The best way to find out whether the police have arrested the right person or not is to ask the officer who saw the event, and to ask quickly while the offender’s appearance is fresh in the officer’s mind. This procedure greatly increases the likelihood that people arrested by mistake will be set free at once, and that guilty people will be identified correctly. In this case, as the majority points out, the officer’s view of the burglar at the time of the crime was imperfect, and so a mistake in identification was possible—but delaying the postarrest identification would have increased the possibility. It would not have made sense to prevent Officer Cremin from seeing defendant until a lawyer could be found and a lineup arranged, and defendant does not argue that either counsel or a lineup was required here. (See State v Medley, 11 Wash App 491, 499, 524 P2d 466, 471 [1974] [“It is patently frivolous to contend that a law enforcement officer whose pursuit of criminal suspects is interrupted may not, a short time later, identify the suspects as the ones whose criminal conduct he has previously observed”].)
But defendant does argue, and the majority holds, that he was entitled to a Wade hearing to determine whether Officer *435Cremin’s identification of him was so tainted by suggestiveness that it deprived him of due process. It is theoretically possible that a due process violation could occur in such an encounter, but the possibility is remote. In People v Wharton (74 NY2d 921, 922-923 [1989]), we explained that a trained police officer’s identification of a defendant “at a place and time sufficiently connected and contemporaneous to the arrest itself as to constitute the ordinary and proper completion of an integral police procedure” was not the sort of event “ordinarily burdened or compromised by forbidden suggestiveness, warranting a lineup procedure or Wade hearing.” We pointed out in Wharton that such an observation did not entail “the kind of per se suggestive or improper bolstering present in show-up identifications by civilian witnesses” (id. at 923). The difference between police officers and civilians is significant here. An officer is much less likely than a civilian to be swayed by the assumption that a suspect who is in police custody must be guilty (cf. Wade, 388 US at 234).
In short, I think the procedure followed here was so obviously a desirable one, and the risk of suggestiveness so small, that here, as in Wharton, a Wade hearing was unnecessary. Several Appellate Division cases agree (see People v Suleman, 262 AD2d 337 [2d Dept 1999]; People v Campbell, 225 AD2d 1021 [4th Dept 1996]; People v James, 220 AD2d 370 [1st Dept 1995]; People v Starr, 221 AD2d 488 [2d Dept 1995]).
The majority limits Wharton to the situation where the officer’s “identification could not be mistaken” (majority op at 432). But Wharton does not say or imply that it is so limited, and logic does not support the limitation. The issue to be decided at a Wade hearing is not whether the officer made a mistake; that is for the jury to decide at trial. The issue is whether the postarrest identification was unduly suggestive—i.e., whether the circumstances of the identification increased the risk that the officer might err. A prompt postarrest viewing of a suspect by a police officer who saw the crime is virtually guaranteed to diminish the risk of error, not increase it.
The majority relies heavily on the text of CPL 710.30 (1) (b), which, it is true, makes no express exceptions to the requirement that the prosecution give notice when it intends to offer at trial “testimony regarding an observation of the defendant . . . by a witness who has previously identified him.” But we have already held—in Wharton and in People v Rodriguez (79 NY2d 445 [1992])—that exceptions do exist. Wharton and Rodriguez *436both hold, that there are cases where no Wade hearing is necessary, and that in those cases no notice under CPL 710.30 is necessary either. The question here is how the Wharton exception should be defined. I think the majority defines it too narrowly, thus making the system more complicated and cumbersome than it needs to be, and adding unnecessarily to the number of cases in which an offender walks free because police or prosecutors have slipped up in complying with a procedural rule.
Judges G.B. Smith, Ciparick, Rosenblatt, Graffeo and Read concur with Chief Judge Kaye; Judge R.S. Smith dissents in a separate opinion.
Order reversed, etc.