Court Opinion

ID: 9458846
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:03:05.42252+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:54.737573
License: Public Domain

HUFSTEDLER, Circuit Judge
(concurring and dissenting).
I concur in the majority opinion except those portions that relate to Dearinger’s claim that the in-court identification testimony was tainted by impermissibly suggestive pretrial procedures.
I first dispose of the question whether the issue is foreclosed because Dearinger did not raise it at his second trial or upon his second appeal.1 His failure to raise the issue cannot be deemed a waiver because the outlines of the constitutional claim did not emerge until Simmons v. United States (1968) 390 U.S. 377, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247, a case that came down almost a year after his second appeal was concluded.
Simmons held that “convictions based on eyewitness identification at trial following a pretrial identification by photograph will be set aside on that ground only if the photographic identification procedure was so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentifieation.” (390 U.S. at 384, 88 S.Ct. at 971.) When the Simmons standard is met, the use of such tainted pretrial identification procedure is a denial of due process of law. (Foster v. California (1969) 394 U.S. 440, 442, 89 S.Ct. 1127, 22 L.Ed.2d 402. See also Stovall v. Denno (1967) 388 U.S. 293, 302, 87 S.Ct. 1967.)
Dearinger is not precluded from first raising the Simmons issue on collateral attack unless the decision on that point is not retroactive. (Cf. Williams v. United States (1971) 401 U.S. 646, 651-655, 91 S.Ct. 1148, 28 L.Ed.2d 388.) There is no basis for limiting retroactivity. If the pretrial identification procedure was “so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification,” it necessarily follows that the use of the evidence “substantially impairs its [the criminal trial’s] truth-finding function and so raises serious questions about the accuracy of guilty verdicts in past trials.” (Williams v. United States, supra, 401 U.S. at 653, 91 S.Ct. at 1152.) In such circumstances, “the new rule has been given complete retroactive effect.” (Id.)
The determination whether the pretrial photographic identification procedures met the Simmons mark is judged by the “totality of circumstances.” (Simmons v. United States, supra, 390 U.S. at 395, 88 S.Ct. 967; cf. Stovall v. Denno, supra, 388 U.S. at 301-302, 87 S.Ct. 1967.) Because I do not think that the majority opinion fully reveals the totality of circumstances in this case, I review the record in detail.
The identity of two of the robbers, Shannon, who entered the bank, and Weinreich, who drove the Chevrolet getaway car, was established. All three men who participated in robbing the bank on November 21, 1962, were disguised with false mustaches, eyeglasses, padding in the mouth, and makeup suggesting heavy brows and sideburns. The two men who entered the bank wore topcoats, hats, and gloves. Shannon stood guard in the lobby as the second man (sometimes identified as Dearinger) went in the back of the tellers’ cages and at gunpoint took $13,662 cash from the drawers. The two men were in the bank not more than five minutes. A customer who was entering the bank saw the holdup in progress, immediately found Mr. Durham, a deputy sheriff, next door to the bank, and reported the robbery. Mr. Durham saw the two rob*1038bers headed toward the parking lot. When they failed to halt upon his command, he opened fire. Shannon ran toward the Chevrolet and jumped in. Mr. Durham fired a shot through the rear window. The Chevrolet stopped. Shannon got out of the car and fled, with Mr. Durham in pursuit. Shannon escaped during the chase. While Mr. Durham was engaged with Shannon and the Chevrolet, the second robber ran around the corner of the bank and into the woods. Weinreich and the Chevrolet had disappeared by the time Mr. Durham abandoned his pursuit of Shannon. The bag containing the proceeds of the robbery was dropped by one of the robbers during the flight, and it was recovered from a field the day of the robbery.
On June 14, 1963, Dearinger was arrested and charged with the bank robbery. Shannon and Weinreich were also in custody. On June 15, 1963, mugshots of all three men were published on the front page of Pierce County’s leading newspaper under banner headlines. The caption under the photographs was: “BANK ROBBERY SUSPECTS — These three young men have been charged as the robbers who held up the University Place branch of the National Bank of Washington last November 21. They left the bank with $13,662 but discarded their loot in making their escape.” The photographs were accompanied by a lead story that recapitulated the circumstances of the robbery and that included the following passages:
“ ‘This matter has received continuous investigation since the robbery,’ said Elgin Olrogg, senior resident agent for the FBI in Tacoma, who filed the charge. The charge was drawn by Assistant U. S. Attorney Charles W. Billinghurst.
“At a hearing before U. S. Commissioner Robert E. Cooper yesterday, a bond of $15,000 was set for Shannon. Bond for Dearinger will be set at a hearing today.
“All three men have extensive records, Olrogg said. . . . ”1a
Dearinger participated in lineups conducted June 17 and June 18 or June 19, 1963 2 No lawyer was present, although Dearinger asked for one. The four witnesses who identified Dearinger at trial also identified him as one of the robbers at the lineup. All four witnesses had seen the newspaper pictures and story before they attended the lineups.
Dearinger was identified as the man who went behind the tellers’ cages by three witnesses at the trial, Mattila, Johnson, and Colegate, who were eyewitnesses to the robbery. The fourth identification witness, Langlow, did not see the robbery. He saw a man whom he identified as Dearinger a few blocks from the bank, some 10 to 15 minutes after the robbery. The government called three other eyewitnesses to the *1039robbery. None of them was able to identify Dearinger as one of the robbers from photographs shown to them shortly after the robbery, or at the lineups, or at trial.
Mr. Mattila first saw the robber, whom he identified as Dearinger, when the robber pointed a gun at him and demanded the cash. He was “real scared.” He had an opportunity to observe the robber not more than two minutes. When he was questioned immediately after the robbery about the robber’s description, the details eluded him; for example, he said that the robber did not wear glasses. Later, law enforcement officers showed him cast-off garments and glasses that they indicated had been worn during the robbery and Mattila then recalled that his assailant wore eyeglasses. Two days after the robbery Mattila was shown a series of 25 photographs. He selected four of them which he said were similar to the robber who held a gun upon him. The photographs were of four different men. He did not pick out Dearinger’s picture. Mattila saw the photographs and newspaper account and discussed them with his fellow witness Johnson before they attended the lineups. Mr. Mattila at the lineups positively identified Dearinger as his assailant. By the June 1965 trial, he was able to give a detailed description of the robber, although he could not give a similarly detailed description of the men other than Dearinger and Shannon in the lineup.
Mr. Johnson, a bank clerk, identified Dearinger at trial. On the date of the robbery, however, he could not give any positive description of the robbers. He said he thought he could identify them, “but not in regard to any ... a lot of definite physical features.” He, too, was shown the series of photographs two days after the robbery, and he was unable to identify Dearinger or anyone else as one of the participants. At the lineup, Johnson said he was sure that Shannon was one of them, but he could not be sure about Dearinger because he did not get a good look at the man who went behind the tellers’ cages.
Miss Colegate, a teller, at trial said that she had a very good look at the man who went behind the cages, and she positively identified Dearinger as that man. However, she had been unable to pick out the pictures of any robbers from the series of photographs displayed to her two days after the robbery. After she saw the newspaper photographs and the story, she went to the lineups.3 At the lineup, she identified Shannon as the man who took the money from the tills (the one she had been particularly careful to study) and Dearinger as the confederate in the lobby of the bank.
Langlow was never in the bank during the robbery. He testified that he was driving his car near the bank the day of the robbery. As he approached the bank, he noticed “a great deal of hubbub.” “The sheriff’s deputy came around the corner with a gun in his hand.” Mr. Langlow parked his car and talked to a friend for 10 or 15 minutes. He then drove about two and a half blocks from the bank, driving about 20 miles per hour, at which point he saw a man “in pants and a pink shirt, stained knees, come to the side of the road and looking both directions father furtively.” He drove about 150 feet farther, made a U-turn, parked his car, and watched the man making “a half-dog trot” as he disappeared behind some buildings, a period of “half a minute.” (There was evidence that one of the robbers wore a pink shirt.) About a month after the robbery, Langlow was shown 12 photographs. He selected a picture as that of the man he had seen in the pink shirt. The officer told him that the photograph was of Dearinger. At the lineup, Lang-*1040low identified Dearinger as the man he had seen. He too had read the press publicity before he attended the lineup.
The only evidence that linked Dearinger to the robbery, other than the testimony of these four witnesses, was the testimony of a young morphine addict, Pierson, who said that he had seen Dearinger on the day of the bank, robbery and that Dearinger had told him that he had dropped the money and that people had shot at him. He also said that Dearinger was wearing a pink shirt. Pierson was seriously impeached, not only by his admitted narcotic addiction and by his prior felony record, but also by his demonstrated failure to remember when he had seen Dearinger in relationship to the robbery. He testified, for example, that he had heard about the bank robbery on the radio on the morning of November 21, 1962, the same day he talked to Dearinger. The robbery occurred at 3:00 p. m. on that day.4
There are multiple factors that were conducive to misidentification. None of the identifying witnesses had more than two minutes within which to observe the man who they later said was Dearinger. Observations of the robbers were made during a period of high excitement, and, in the case of the bank employees, under the stress of fear. The robbers wore disguises. The eyewitnesses were unable to give detailed descriptions of the robbers when they were questioned on or near the day of the robbery. Half of those witnesses never identified Dearinger as one of the robbers. None of the eyewitnesses to the crime was able to identify Dearinger from photographs shown to them before the newspaper account was published. The lineups themselves were conducted under suspect circumstances, entirely apart from the antecedent publicity.
The eyewitnesses’ identification followed a strikingly similar pattern: At or near the date of the robbery, the witnesses gave confused and uncertain descriptions of the robbers. None was able to pick out Dearinger from the photographic displays. After seeing the newspaper photographs, the witnesses were convinced that they could identify the robbers, and they picked Shannon and Dearinger out of the lineups. Cole-gate’s identification at the lineup was unhesitating, but she mistook Shannon for Dearinger. Johnson was sure about Shannon, but not about Dearinger. By the time of the second trial, all of the witnesses were positive of their identification and were able to give vivid details of Dearinger’s features as of the time of the robbery over two years earlier.
Of all of the factors that contributed to a substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification, none was as crucial as the publication, before the lineups, of the photographs and the story carrying implications of guilt. “[W]here a photograph has been identified as that of the guilty party, any subsequent corporeal identification of that person may be based not upon the witness’s recollection of the features of the guilty party, but upon his recollection of the photograph. [No matter how honest the witness is, he may have great difficulty in shutting out from his mind the features of the individual he had seen in the photograph.] The witness’s inability to do so is not at all surprising, since the corporeal identification is always closer (and often much closer) in time to the photographic identification than it is to the crime, and since the witness usually studies the photographs far more carefully and for a longer period *1041of time than he was able to study the features of the perpetrator of the crime.” (P. Wall, Eye-Witness Identification in Criminal Cases 68 (1965).) The fact that none of the eyewitnesses to the crime recognized Dearinger from photographs until they saw the newspaper story is potent evidence that the basis of their lineup identifications was memory of the newspaper photographs and not memory of their observations of the robbers at the time of the crime.5 The inference is irresistible that law enforcement agencies released the mugshots to the newspaper. There was no legitimate law enforcement purpose served by releasing the photographs for publication. All of the persons pictured had been charged with bank robbery and were in custody. No lineups had been-conducted. Law enforcement officers knew that prior identification procedures conducted with the eyewitnesses had been unsuccessful. Had the officers personally handed these photographs to the eyewitnesses and made the statements to them that were quoted in the paper the procedure would have been in gross violation of Simmons v. United States (1968) 390 U.S. 377, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247. (Cf. Foster v. California (1969) 394 U.S. 440, 89 S.Ct. 1127, 22 L.Ed.2d 402.) The violation is no less stark and no less prejudicial when the medium by which the photographs are displayed to the witnesses is the newspaper.
Error in the admission of the tainted in-court eyewitness identification was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. The impact on the jury of multiple eyewitness identifications of Dearinger can scarcely be overestimated. “A conviction which rests on a mistaken identification is a gross miscarriage of justice.” (Stovall v. Denno, supra, 388 U.S. at 297, 87 S.Ct. at 1970.)
I would reverse and remand with instructions to grant relief as prayed.

. See n. 8 of the majority opinion.

. In fact, Dearinger had no prior criminal record. He had had some juvenile proceedings against him, none of the details of which are in the record, other than the fact that the conduct did not amount to a felony.

. A complete record of the lineups is not available. We cannot determine with certainty which of the identification witnesses attended which lineup. There is in the record photographs of one lineup of six men, including Shannon and Dearinger. In seeking 2255 relief, Dearinger filed an affidavit challenging the fairness of the lineup. Among other things, he said that the lineup members were obliged to state their names, addresses, criminal records, and charges against them. The police chief of Tacoma filed a counteraffidavit in which he admitted that that procedure was used in “morning lineups” of new prisoners conducted for the benefit of law enforcement officers. He also said that police records showed that Dearinger appeared in a lineup oh June 17, 1963, “presumably a morning lineup.” There was, he said, no record of the identity of the officer who conducted that lineup. The police chief also said that police records showed that a lineup was conducted on June 18, 1963, at 1:50 p. m. attended by several bank employees. No evidentiary hearing was held to resolve the conflicts in the affidavits.

. She testified that the pictures in the paper confused her, and “one wasn’t the defendant.” In fact, the newspaper photographs were of Dearinger, Shannon, and Weinreich.

. Shannon testified at the first trial implicating Dearinger. At that time Shannon had pleaded guilty and was awaiting sentencing. After Dearinger’s conviction, Shannon was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment with immediate eligibility for parole. By the time of the second trial, Shannon was again in prison on a narcotics conviction. He was not called to testify at the second trial.
Weinreich was called to testify. He denied any participation in the robbery.

. “Of all the danger signals, surely the most ominous, the one most clearly indicating that a mistake may have been made, is that which exists when a witness who identifies the defendant at the trial is found to have previously failed to identify him.” P. Wall, op. cit. supra at 113.