Court Opinion

ID: 9793744
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:52:16.143996+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:06:43.598941
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Justice:
(concurring).
I concur in the majority opinion, but because this is a troubling case, both on its facts and from a legal and jurisprudential point of view, I file a separate opinion to explain why I think the case should be remanded for a new trial.
When a victim or some other person is the only eyewitness to identify a defendant, and, as in this case, the accuracy of the identification itself is somewhat questionable and there is no corroborating evidence, cross-examination is not a very adequate means for assuring the reliability of a verdict. In a dissenting opinion in State v. Malmrose, 649 P.2d 56, 62 (Utah 1982), I addressed the problem of the unreliability of eyewitness identification and proposed that trial courts ought to be required to give a cautionary instruction that would help jurors to identify some factors that may affect the reliability of eyewitness identification. Recently, in State v. Long, 721 P.2d 483 (Utah 1986), the Court, in a scholarly opinion by Justice Zimmerman, reviewed recent studies in the area of the reliability of eyewitness identification and held that a cautionary instruction as to eyewitness identification must be given when eyewitness identification is a “central issue.” Id. at 492. Such an instruction should be designed to assist a jury in determining whether certain eyewitness identification is reliable, to the extent that that can be done. At least the jury should know that it should carefully assess the witness and all prior identifications he has made to determine what weight should be given the identification.
Eyewitness identifications are, of course, a frequent and important source of evidence, especially in criminal trials. Some persons do, in fact, perceive and recall faces accurately, and the particular factual context of an identification may assist some people in perceiving and recalling accurately, while other persons in the same *1382situation may have unreliable recall. There is no test for determining which identifications are in fact reliable. We must therefore rely upon the finders of fact to sort out the truth from error on the assumption that they are usually correct. Fortunately, there is usually corroborating evidence that can be relied on. In any event, unreliability in making identifications is usually not a product of prevarication.
I have little doubt that the victim in this case will make the same identification that he made at the prior trial, and there is no reason whatsoever to doubt his sincerity in the least; in fact, he may be accurate. But since error is often a matter of the manner in which the brain perceives, records, organizes, stores, and retrieves information, the victim may be entirely sincere and yet in error. Based on the studies with which I am familiar, the defendant’s image will likely become embedded more firmly in the victim’s mind as the person he saw who assaulted him on the night in question. Perhaps an eyewitness instruction will not make much difference to the jury, since juries typically tend to be highly impressed with eyewitness identifications, even when there is strong circumstantial evidence pointing in another direction. Nevertheless, the truth-finding function of the trial process should be buttressed when possible.
In this case, the victim’s memory appears to be in error on a critical point. He told the police officer who first came to his assistance that he had gotten out of his vehicle and moved to the back of it, where he encountered the defendant. Yet, at trial, his testimony was that he stopped with the victim in front of his vehicle and had his headlights shining on him. One might suppose that what he told the officer the night of the assault was more likely to be accurate than his recollection at trial. But one thing is clear: both versions cannot be true. I say this without intending in any way to impugn the veracity of the victim. That kind of inconsistency is often simply an example of the way that human beings tend to experience a change in memory because of the manner in which their brains tend to function neurologically and psychologically.
I come close to doubting whether it is possible for reasonable people to say that this defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, given the fraction of a moment in which the victim was able to view the defendant, the probability that the victim viewed the defendant in what was very dim light, and the inconsistency in the victim’s recollection as to where his assaulter was when the vehicle was stopped. Nevertheless, there are some factors that do support the reliability of the victim’s identification, and under those circumstances, the appropriate course is to remand the case for a new trial, as the Court has ordered.