Court Opinion

ID: 9454302
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:42:38.984958+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:03.864438
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Chief Judge
(concurring) :
Although I find the questions presented by this case very close on the score of both the required corroboration as to identity and the propriety of the pre-trial identification, on the facts presented I concur in affirming the conviction.
The police practice of allowing witnesses and victims of crimes to identify suspects in the unstructured, largely unreviewable surroundings of the Court of General Sessions could certainly not be tolerated after Wade v. United States, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967). As this Court pointed out in Clemons v. United States, 133 U.S.App.D.C. -, -, 408 F.2d 1230, 1240 (1968).
It must be evident * * * that the conditions of such a confrontation are much harder to control than those of a formal lineup, and that it is also much more difficult to establish by clear and undisputed testimony exactly what these conditions were. It is, at the least, a practice fraught with perils to a degree suggesting its sparing use as the part of prudence.
The pre-trial identification here, however, occurred before the police were freshly placed on notice by Wade of the need for scrupulous fairness in arranging such confrontations. Although there is no suggestion in the record why a lineup was not possible, and why in fact a lineup was not . held, the identification procedure employed here does not, on the record, seem to have been unnecessarily suggestive in other respects.