Court Opinion

ID: 9454413
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:45:57.093462+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:06.596814
License: Public Domain

DANAHER, Circuit Judge
(concurring) :
Of course I agree that Russell’s conviction must be affirmed, indeed to take any other view would be sheer travesty in my judgment.
About 4:30 A.M. on June 28, 1967,1 one McCann heard a radio playing outside in the street and then the crash of breaking glass.
Investigating, he saw the radio in operation on the sidewalk outside a business establishment in a well lighted area.
He saw Russell come out of the shop.
Immediately McCann reported to the police what he had heard and seen, and an officer broadcast by radio the description of Russell as supplied by Mc-Cann who was then brought right back to the store.
Officers in a police cruiser in the neighborhood picked up the broadcast and shortly thereafter saw Russell.
The latter, carrying a radio, darted into the hallway of a nearby apartment where he was presently arrested and was found to be carrying a hatful of *1286nickels, dimes and quarters and several packages of cigarettes.2
Following Russell’s arrest, the officers brought him back to the shop, and Russell was there positively identified by McCann as the man he had seen leaving the burglarized shop. McCann so testified at trial.
At trial Russell testified that a half block ahead of him he had seen a man drop a paper bag which upon examination by Russell was found to contain the nickels, dimes and quarters and the cigarettes which Russell said he placed in his own hat.
He explained that the gloves he was wearing that June morning were used for boxing but agreed that they were not boxing gloves.
He testified that a screwdriver found in his possession was used by him to fix bicycles for little boys, but he had no special reason for carrying the screwdriver at 4:30 A.M. that day.
He entered the apartment hallway, he said, to talk over business with a man named “Tom” whose address he did not know and with whom he had been acquainted for a week.
Even to suggest that the confrontation3 described might require the presence of a lawyer or that a lineup be conducted seems to me an exercise in stultification. I have no slightest doubt that there is no basis for an intimation that there had been a denial of due process.
Apart from any other consideration I point to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968,4 Title II, section 3502 of which provides:
The testimony of a witness that he saw the accused commit or participate in the commission of the crime for which the accused is being tried shall be admissible in evidence in a criminal prosecution in any trial court ordained and established under article III of the Constitution of the United States.
In support of the section thus quoted, Senate Report No. 1097 5 explains:
Admissibility of Eye-witness Testimony
The use of eyewitness testimony in the trial of criminal cases is an essential prosecutorial tool. The recent case of United States v. Wade, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 388 U.S. 218 [18 L.Ed.2d 1149] (1967), struck a harmful blow at the nationwide effort to control crime. The Court held that an in-court identification of the suspect by an eyewitness is inadmissible unless the prosecution can show that the identification is independent of any prior identification by the witness while the suspect was in custody, and while his court appointed láwyer was neither notified nor present. It is incredible that a victim is not permitted to identify his assailant in court. The same is true of eyewitnesses who saw the victim assailed or murdered. The fact that eyewitness might on some occasion prior to trial have identified the accused, without a lawyer for the accused being present, cannot in reason, law, or commonsense justify such a disastrous rule of evidence. Nothing in the Constitution warrants it. To counter this harmful effect, the committee adopted that portion of title II providing that eyewitness testimony is admissible in criminal prosecutions brough in the Federal courts * * *.6
In light of the record and the treatment I have hereinbefore submitted, it may be gathered that I perceive no issue of constitutional dimension. I think this case like many others which are brought here nowadays, should have been disposed of summarily as utterly frivolous.

. And so, post-United States v. Wade, Gilbert v. California and Stovall v. Denno.

. In the business establishment which had been burglarized a coin-operated juke box and a vending machine had been rifled.

. The thoroughly experienced trial Judge Youngdahl characterized the circumstances as the strongest case of identification he had observed in 16 years on the trial bench.

. P.L. 91-351, 82 Stat. 197 (1968).

. 2 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News, 1968, p. 2112.

. Id. at 2139.