Court Opinion

ID: 9457102
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:12:32.439567+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:13.243905
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Chief Judge
(concurring in the result):
Appellant argues that a photographic identification should not be allowed into evidence when the array of photographs shown the witness cannot be reassembled. I think that the court, in dismissing • this argument, pays insufficient heed to our recent decision in United *715States v. Bryant, 142 U.S.App.D.C. 132, 439 F.2d 642 (1971).
I
In Bryant a unanimous panel of this court held that the Government’s duty to disclose relevant evidence upon request implied a duty to preserve the evidence. That case concerned a tape-recording of a narcotics transaction between appellant and a government undercover agent. This tape was obviously a critical piece of evidence for the defense to examine before trial, but their efforts to discover it, under Rule 16, were unavailing. A few days before trial, the Government finally admitted that the tape had been unaccountably lost.
The Bryant court examined the Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. Augenblick, 393 U.S. 348, 89 S.Ct. 528, 21 L.Ed.2d 537 (1969), and concluded that
criminal convictions otherwise based on sufficient evidence may be permitted to stand so long as the Government made “earnest efforts” to preserve crucial materials and to find them once a discovery request is made.1
How indeed can we guarantee a fair trial if we fail to concern ourselves with the evidence which will permit us to determine whether defendant has received a fair trial? For the future, the Bryant court went on to say, “earnest efforts” will be defined quite strictly.
[W]e hold that sanctions for nondisclosure based on loss of evidence will be invoked in the future unless the Government can show that it has promulgated, enforced and attempted in good faith to follow rigorous and systematic procedures designed to preserve all discoverable evidence gathered in the course of a criminal investigation.2
This holding is directly in point for this case. If the Police Department had not already promulgated Memorandum Order No. 16, quoted in footnote 7 of the court’s opinion, we would have the authority to require them to do so, on pain of having subsequent convictions based on missing photographic arrays reversed. In fact, that step has already been taken in Bryant, since that case refers to all discoverable evidence. The Police Department should be placed on notice that promulgation of Memorandum Order No. 16 is not alone sufficient to satisfy due process standards. As the above quote from Bryant makes clear, good faith efforts to follow and enforce the regulation are required as well.
II
Granted that these arrays must be produced in the future, what about this particular case?
The court in Bryant noted that the loss of the tapes fell on a spectrum between bad faith suppression and good faith loss. It remanded the case to the District Court with instructions that it should
weigh the degree of negligence or bad faith involved, the importance of the evidence lost, and the evidence of guilt adduced at trial in order to come to a determination that will serve the ends of justice.3
The court in this case has a manifest obligation to determine whether a similar remedy is appropriate here.
This is a different case from Bryant and Augenblick, where it seemed out of the ordinary for the tapes to be unavailable. That is, it seemed clear that the tapes, ordinarily preserved, had been “lost.” The question in those cases was the degree of fault. Here, it cannot be said that the photographs were “lost.” We may take judicial notice that until Memorandum Order No. 16 it was not the practice of the Police Department to keep records of the photographs which had been shown to witnesses. In this *716case, therefore, there seems to be no need for a remand for further findings of fact.
That records of photographic arrays were never routinely kept does not, of course, insulate the practice from retrospective review. We are dealing here not with a prophylactic rule designed to discourage police misconduct which abridges the rights of individuals in a manner unrelated to their guilt or innocence ; fair identification procedures must be the cornerstone of any minimally just criminal system. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the fact that retroactive application of a preservation requirement would have a substantial impact on the administration of the criminal laws, and that law enforcement officials were relying on long-standing judicial acquiescence in the procedures attacked today. Such considerations persuaded the Supreme Court not to make the Wade rule retroactive,4 and I feel bound by this rationale to apply the strict requirements of Bryant only prospectively. I therefore concur in the result in this case.

. 439 F.2d at 651.

. Id. [Italics in original.]

. 439 F.2d at 653.

. Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967).