Court Opinion

ID: 9698234
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:45:29.895032+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:39.531246
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge,
concurring:
Commonwealth v. Richman, 458 Pa. 167, 320 A.2d 351 (1974), established the general rule that in Pennsylvania an accused is entitled to counsel at any lineup or showup conducted after his arrest. In establishing this rule, however, the Court specifically noted that an exception to the rule was that an accused is not entitled to counsel at *300“prompt on-the-scene identifications.” See in particular footnote 5 of the majority opinion, 458 Pa. at 174, 320 A.2d at 354, and also footnote 8 of Mr. Justice (now Mr. Chief Justice) EAGEN’s concurring opinion in which Mr. Chief Justice JONES joined, 458 Pa. at 182, 320 A.2d at 366. The problem presented by the case at hand is that the Court has not defined the dimensions of this exception.
One way to define those dimensions is to adopt a formula stated in such a way as to permit of mechanical application, in the hope that thereby uncertainty may be avoided. That, it seems to me, is what Judge HOFFMAN does in his dissent, when he says, quoting Commonwealth v. Hall, 217 Pa.Super. 218, 228, 269 A.2d 352, 358 (1970), that the exception does not apply “when the scene changes or the time becomes late.” At 1014. Another formula, very different from Judge HOFFMAN’s, is that adopted by the United States Supreme Court in Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U.S. 682, 92 S.Ct. 1877, 32 L.Ed.2d 411 (1972). There the Court focused its attention not on the relationship between the lineup and showup and the crime but on the criminal process, holding that the right to counsel did not attach unless the lineup or showup occurred after the arraignment. The result of adopting this formula was to define away the problem that we are struggling with here: under Kirby, so long as the lineup or showup is before the arraignment the accused is not entitled to counsel; it is immaterial, as regards the right to counsel, whether the lineup or showup is prompt or late, at the scene or in the station house. See N. Sobel, Eye-Witness Identification § 19 (1972).
It seems to me that we should avoid any mechanical formula; either it will not in fact achieve the desired certainty (when does “the time become[] late”?), or (as Kirby does, in my opinion) it will so undercut the right to counsel that “[t]he suggestive showup will again become commonplace,” Sobel, supra, § 17 at 34. A better approach is to try to define the dimensions of the on-the-scene exception in terms of the conflicting considerations at issue.
*301This was attempted in Russell v. United States, 133 U.S. App.D.C. 77, 408 F.2d 1280 (1969). That was a pre-Kirby case, and the Court of Appeals decided it on the assumption that by virtue of United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967), the general rule was that an accused was entitled to counsel at a lineup or showup. Proceeding from this assumption, the court then considered whether there was an exception for the on-the-scene identification, and decided that there was. In defining this exception, the court described the conflicting considerations at issue as follows:
Unquestionably, confrontations in which a single suspect is viewed in the custody of the police are highly suggestive. Whatever the police actually say to the viewer, it must be apparent to him that they think they have caught the villain. Doubtless a man seen in handcuffs or through the grill of a police wagon looks more like a crook than the same man standing at ease and at liberty. There may also be unconscious or overt pressures on the witness to cooperate with the police by confirming their suspicions. And the viewer may have been emotionally unsettled by the experience of the fresh offense.
Yet, on the other hand, recognition of a person or face would seem to be as much the product of a subjective mental image as of articulable, consciously remembered characteristics. A man may see clearly in his “mind’s eye” a face or a figure which he is hard put to describe adequately in words. Though the image of an “unforgettable face” may occasionally linger without any translation into words, photographic recall is most often ephemeral. Vivid in the flash of direct observation, it fades rapidly with time. And the conscious attempt to separate the ensemble impression into particular verbalized features, in order to preserve some recollection, may well distort the original accurate image so that it is the verbalized characteristics which are remembered and not the face or the man.
*302Balancing all the doubts left by the mysteries of human perception and recognition, it appears that prompt confrontations in circumstances like those of this case will “if anything promote fairness, by assuring reliability * This probability, together with the desirability of expeditious release of innocent suspects, presents “substantial countervailing policy considerations” which we are reluctant to assume the Supreme Court would reject. We therefore conclude, with some hesitation, that Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 does not require exclusion of McCann’s identification.
133 U.S.App.D.C. at 81, 408 F.2d at 1284 (footnote omitted).
A similar statement appears in Part IC, Section 160.2(a), of the American Law Institute’s Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure (adopted 1975), where it is said that as a general rule a lineup (“an array of several persons . .”) must be held “except ... in any of the following circumstances”:
(a) Confrontation promptly after commission of a crime. A law enforcement officer arranges a confrontation by a witness to a crime promptly following the commission of that crime, unless there is reason to believe that a line-up or other procedure is necessary to make the identification reliable.
In the Note to this section the following is said:
Paragraph (a) authorizes the so-called alley-way confrontation even in cases where a more formal identification procedure would be practicable. A number of decisions and writers have offered the judgment that such prompt confrontation, even without the benefit of an array of persons from whom an identification is to be made, is particularly desirable since the witness’ recollection will be fresh. Moreover, it must be recognized that in many situations the prompt confrontation with a witness or victim will either be hard to avoid in the nature of the circumstances or will appear the entirely natural way of proceeding to all concerned. Such confrontations have the *303further advantage that if the police have the wrong man he may be released forthwith without even the necessity of a formal arrest or booking at the police station. There may, however, be circumstances in which such a confrontation will not be particularly reliable, as where the witness may not have had a good look at the suspect or exhibits such confusion that there is reason to believe that whoever is presented to the witness first will be the person upon whom the witness fastens an identification. In those cases a line-up or other more formal procedure must be held.
I should like to see us adopt the approach reflected in Russell v. United States, supra, and the Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure. Doing so here, I conclude that the show-up was within the prompt on-the-scene exception. True, it was not literally on the scene, and neither was it prompt in the sense of being immediately after the crime; also true, a formal lineup could have been held. Nevertheless, it was not long after the crime, the witnesses’ recollection was fresh, and the circumstances of the crime and the descriptions given by the witnesses made it reasonable to suppose that a showup in the hospital would result in a reliable identification.
I therefore agree that the judgment of sentence should be affirmed.