Court Opinion

ID: 9457457
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:22:23.602649+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:21.469973
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Chief Judge
(dissenting):
Judge Robinson’s careful opinion for the court seems to me so substantially correct that it is with great reluctance that I dissent.
As an initial matter, let me add a slightly different perspective to the court’s discussion of the different interests which underlay our decision in Russell. The court says:
Once the time factor * * * enhances the trustworthiness of a near-the-scene identification, two other interests also come to the fore. These are the combined needs for fast and effective police action in apprehending criminals, and the avoidance of unnecessary inconvenience and embarrassment to innocent citizens incidental thereto. * * *
We do not, however, in summarizing the interplay of the two last-mentioned interests, intimate that apart from the freshness of an identification they are constitutional justifications for confrontations which omit the procedure prescribed by Wade. The foundation of our Russell decision was an early confrontation aiding fairness by improving the reliability of the identification. The “expeditious release of innocent suspects” then became an additional reason for dispensing with the necessity for counsel upon an identification quite independently deemed reliable because it was fresh.1
If the needs for “fast and effective police action in apprehending criminals” and the “expeditious release of innocent suspects” are viewed as additional reasons for the Russell rule, it is vital to recognize, as I am sure the court does, that these reasons are strictly dependent upon the reliability of the identification. Police action, in the long run, is not made more efficient if the police are likely to be misled into thinking that they have apprehended the criminal when in fact they have not; similarly, innocent suspects are not protected if *1039there is a strong likelihood that they will be misidentified as criminals.2 In short, the additional interests allegedly served by the Russell rule are served only to the extent that we are confident that prompt near-the-scene identifications are reliable.
I set forth this reminder of the importance of the reliability of the identification because it seems to me that the court may have lost sight of that importance in Part IV of its opinion, where it turns to applying Russell to this case. Part IV summarizes the circumstances of the identification at issue here and then states:
We recount these unfolding events because for us they reveal a societally indispensable endeavor — to capture two criminals at large — which from the beginning to end occupied but a relatively brief time span. They reveal, too, efforts in that direction— by police and victim alike — pressed with as much diligence as can reasonably be expected, followed quickly by an effort to ascertain the accuracy of the results. * * * With the chances of intercepting two robbers on foot dwindling rapidly as time passed, the need to know whether the suspects were the culprits was urgent. * * * 3
I am as delighted as any citizen to learn that the police have been diligent, and I am sympathetic to the cry of urgent need. What troubles me is that diligence and urgency may both continue for many hours after a crime, so I cannot say that these are the critical considerations in applying or extending the Russell rule. The court goes on to say:
We realize, of course, that the interest in reliable-beeause-fresh identifications was not assisted in this case quite as well as it was by the 30-min-utes-later identification confrontation in Russell. Yet we cannot believe that so small a time difference — a half hour to an hour — could seriously depreciate Cook’s at-home identification in terms of freshness, the value of which Russell extolled.4
Here, then, is the crux of the difference between us: the court thinks that an identification made an hour to an hour and a half after the crime is roughly as reliable as one made 30 minutes after, while I cannot be so confident. We deal here in a misty area of intuitive psychological judgments. If the Government had brought to our attention psychological studies showing that mental images of the sort at issue do not fade for several hours, I might feel compelled to push the Russell exception farther. But since they have not, I feel bound to be exceedingly careful about extending an exception which threatens to undermine the principles of fair identification procedures set down by the Supreme Court in Wade.5
Caution about extending Russell requires careful attention to factors which contribute to the reliability of the identification. In United States v. Cunningham6 I concurred in affirming a *1040conviction involving an on-the-seene identification 45 minutes after the offense, but there all that was being identified were clothes and appellant’s general appearance. The court’s opinion in this case suggests other factors that will be relevant: “the quality of the witness’ opportunity to observe when the offense was committed, and the caliber of the description of the perpetrator he furnished the police.” 7 I am not convinced that the caliber of the description is a useful guide to reliability since, as we said in Russell:
[T]he 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.8
But what particularly troubles me about Part IV of the court's opinion is the inadequacy of its focus on the factors it admits are relevant to credibility. Granted that Cook, the victim, described the clothes and general appearance of his assailants to the police, his identification was not, as in Cunningham, so limited. More important, I cannot believe that the court is particularly impressed by Cook’s opportunity to observe. Of the two robbers, appellant is said to be the one who grabbed Cook from behind and held him on the ground while the other went through Cook’s pockets. Cook testified that he was able to observe appellant’s face “during and after” the robbery. But he admitted that the entire incident took no longer than one or two minutes, and from his description of the events, it could well have taken considerably less than that. We are left with the very real possibility that he got no more than a fleeting look at his assailant.9
I conclude that this identification was not an unusually reliable one. Given the length of time between the crime and the identification, therefore, I cannot agree that this case falls within the Russell rule as it has been applied. Since, in addition, the court has not persuaded me that we should expand the Russell rule, I respectfully dissent.

. Pp. 1033-1034 supra, footnotes omitted.

. It is perhaps worth noting, as I have before, that “the argument from reducing unnecessary detention of innocent suspects is very weak. First, I believe that an innocent man, were he as aware of the dangers of misidentification as lawyers and judges are, would generally prefer to have the necessary time taken for a fairly conducted line-up. The logic of protecting the innocent forces one to the position that the supposedly innocent man should have some voice in the decision to return to the complaining witness. ‘Protecting the innocent’ by giving them no choice at all has a very hollow ring to me.
“Second, it seems to me that innocent men are adequately protected by the requirement that the police have probable cause before they arrest a suspect. * * * ” United States v. Evans, 141 U.S.App.D.C. 321, 331, 438 F.2d 162, 172 (1971) (Baze-lon, C. J., dissenting). Police effectiveness, therefore, is the critical “countervailing policy consideration” underlying the Russell rule.

. P. 1036 supra, footnotes omitted.

. P. 1036 supra, footnote omitted.

 See Note, Right to Counsel at Scene-oftlxe-Crime Identifications, 117 P.Pa.L. Rev. 916, 921 (1969).

. 141 U.S.App.D.C. 177, 436 F.2d 907 (1970).

. P. 1032, n. 35 supra. ,

. Russell v. United States, 133 U.S.App.D.C. 77, 81, 408 F.2d 1280, 1284 (1969).

. Cook testified that on his way to the grocery, just before the crime, he noticed appellant standing on the corner nearby, in a small group. While this evidence may be appropriate for the jury to consider, I do not find that it materially strengthens the reliability of Cook’s identification for the purposes of Russell. In the first place, a glance at a stranger on the street is not so likely to make a vivid impression on one’s mind as we have assumed that a criminal assault is. In the second place, we have no independent evidence tending to confirm that the man Cook saw on the street corner was the man who assaulted him.