Court Opinion

ID: 9452143
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:31:19.690102+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:05.200211
License: Public Domain

*513PRETTYMAN, Senior Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
The Per Curiam initially released by the court does not indicate the point actually involved in the controversy. The “fuller statement” defines the question and discusses it. I disagree with the decision and also with the opinion. I first discuss the former.
This affair should be painted with broad strokes and primary colors. Guilt was clear beyond a scintilla of doubt. The action occurred in broad daylight on a traveled street in the city. It was observed by an intelligent and totally disinterested witness. The controversy revolves about maneuvers of counsel at the trial.
The facts are plain and simple. On a mid-August afternoon a Mrs. Strube, housewife, resident on Juniper Street near 14th, heard a car stop in front of her house. She looked out to see if she had a visitor. She saw a man go up the steps of the house across the street. Knowing these neighbors to be away she watched. Presently two men came out of the house carrying a sofa. They put the sofa in their car. Mrs. Strube, evidently a lady of spirit and spunk, went out into the street and made inquiry of one of the men. He swung a fist at her face. She blocked the blow with her elbow, and he jumped into the ear and drove off. Her twelve-year-old son, seeing the assault, noted the license number of the car and called it to his mother, who jotted it down. A neighbor called the police, and two uniformed officers arrived in a few minutes. Mrs. Strube gave them a verbal description of the man whom she had addressed. A few minutes thereafter two detectives arrived on the scene, and they showed Mrs. Strube a picture of an automobile, a picture of a man standing, and two pictures on a single mat, one a full-face and one a profile. Mrs. Strube identified the picture of the car as the one involved in the incident and all three of the other photographs as being of the man who had struck at her.
When the trial was called, but before it began, the judge raised a question as to the photographs. The application for the warrant had recited that the witness had identified the suspect from a photograph. The judge said he had frequently had the problem and wished he might get a case which would take it to the appellate court and get it settled. The prosecutor said, “I am not going into that,” but defense counsel said the judge would get his wish in the pending case: “You are going to get it in this case.” Thus the stage was set; all the actors were aware of the probable course of the drama.
Mrs. Strube was called as a witness. She testified to the events concerning the sofa and the assault. She identified at counsel table the man who carried one end of the sofa and who had struck at her. Her testimony was simple, direct and graphic. She identified the photograph of the automobile and said it had been shown her “outside of my house.” She did not say who showed her the picture. She said she gave the police a description of the man she saw walking up the steps across the street. She pointed out appellant Barnes as the man. With her statement that a neighbor called the police her direct examination ended. She had made no mention of any photographs of Barnes. Pictures of the man were no part of the prosecutor’s case.
On cross-examination counsel for the defense (that is, for Barnes), after a bit of immaterial trivia (some twenty pages of transcript), asked for a bench conference and told the judge that unless ordered otherwise he was going to develop all the conversations between Mrs. Strube and the police officers, including “what, if anything, they did to assist her in identification.” The judge said the witness would tell about the pictures. Defense counsel said “Yes.” The court said counsel would have to complete his examination “whatever way you want to do it; then we will see what happens.” Counsel then asked Mrs. Strube whether she was asked any questions by the police *514which assisted her in her identification of the suspect. She said, “No, they didn’t ask me any such questions.” Counsel asked whether she was given any information by the police designed to assist her in her identification. She said, “They did not give me any verbal information.” Counsel persisted: “Did they give you any information of any nature whatsoever?” The witness evidently hesitated, as the record shows the court said “You may answer that.” Mrs. Strube then said, “They showed me a picture of a man, and I said that that was him.” In answer to further questions by defense counsel, Mrs. Strube said there were three pictures of the same man, that the detectives arrived about five minutes after the uniformed officers and the detectives had the pictures in their car.
Thus at this point in the trial it had been established by the defense that the detectives who arrived on the scene a few minutes after the report of the affair had with them photographs of appellant Barnes. The eyewitness Strube described the suspect to the uniformed officers and, still on scene, identified his pictures to the detectives. The maneuver by the defense was a well-known and not improper one. Counsel wanted to establish that Mrs. Strube’s precise and vivid identification was not original with her but was instigated by the police by means of photographs. As I see it, he succeeded in establishing that his client, Barnes, was known to and wanted by the police to such a degree that they carried with them on duty photographs of him.
Defense counsel released the witness. He left the prosecutor with a choice; he could introduce the photographs, or he could run the risk of a defense argument to the jury to the effect that the pictures were not really photographs of the accused, Barnes, but of somebody else; if they had been of Barnes, why did the prosecutor not show them to the jury? He took the former choice. I think he had a clear right to do so. I need not belabor my reasons for so thinking. They appear clearly enough in my above-given description of the case. The case does not involve indigency or illiteracy or appointed counsel. The operation had all the earmarks of a professional one. The conduct of the defense at trial was unusually skillful. The accused did not merely “open the door” to the introduction of the pictures; he persisted until he practically forced them into the record. I think he cannot successfully maintain reversible error on that account.
Two of the disputed photographs were a full-face and a profile on the same sheet. Heavy tape had been placed across the lower portion; no numbers or other striking notations were to be seen. There are some state cases upholding the admission of such pictures thus treated,1 and there is more authority for their admission where their probative value outweighs their possible prejudicial effect.2 In the ease at bar the possible prejudicial effect of the photographs, presented after the testimony elicited by the defense, was nil. But I do not rely upon those propositions.
The precision and graphic quality of Mrs. Strube’s testimony is well illustrated by the passage which occurred when she was handed the pictures while on the witness stand. She was asked two or three preliminary questions and then: “And whom did you recognize the subject depicted in Government’s Exhibits 2 and 3 for identification to be ?” Her reply was “The man who hit me and took the sofa from the house across the street. * * * He’s sitting over here at the end of the table.”
Referring now to the opinion of the court, I make two comments. (1) The *515court says: “And in due course the prosecution, pursuant to its indication before the trial began, introduced police photographs * * *.” In so far as that statement intimates that the prosecutor indicated an intention to introduce the photographs, it is contrary to the record as I read it. And in so far as it intimates that the prosecutor introduced the photographs as part of his prosecution, it is contrary to the record. The prosecutor said flatly before trial that he was not going into the matter of identification by photographs, and, to my way of thinking, the conclusive proof of what he intended is the fact of what he did; he did not present the pictures in his case. Moreover he specifically refused to say in advance what he intended to do, and the court specifically declined to require him to do so. He presented the photographs in rebuttal after the defense had established that the witness had identified Barnes from photographs which the police had with them when they arrived at the scene of the robbery a few minutes after its occurrence.
(2) The court says the “mug shots” revealed the existence of a criminal record on the part of Barnes. In a sense this is true, but to the lay public these “shots” show a man wanted by the police, not necessarily one convicted. The defense in this case proved that Barnes was wanted by showing that the officers carried pictures of him with them in their car. The actual photographs added nothing to that proof. As the court so aptly says, the pictures give rise to the inference that the person involved has been in trouble with the police. I submit the fact the police carried pictures of Barnes with them while on duty conclusively gives rise to that inference. I think there is no additional prejudice in the pictures themselves.
I would affirm.

. See Scott, Photographic Evidence § 658 at 558 (1942).

. E. g., Gill v. United States, 285 F.2d 711 (5th Cir. 1961).