Court Opinion

ID: 9661878
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:53:56.52386+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:34.804370
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. For the reasons stated in my opinion concurring in result in State v. Higgins, 592 S.W.2d 151 (Mo. banc 1979) and my dissenting opinion in State v. Taylor, 589 S.W.2d 305, 309-10 n.2 (Mo. banc 1979), I believe that eyewitness identification testimony presents grave hazards due to the inherent unreliability of human perception and memory,, and in the susceptibility of eyewitnesses to suggestive influences.. This is particularly true where, as here, the testimony of the single eyewitness was the only evidence linking defendant with the crime and where the identification was not made until nine days after the event.
Casting instructions (as done here) in terms of defendant’s presence at the scene directs the jury’s attention toward alibi— whether he was somewhere else at the time of the crime. That is not what the defense was. The instructions used in the case did not focus the jury’s attention on whether or not the eyewitness was correct in her identification of defendant as the guilty person. While the identification could not have been correct if defendant were in fact someplace else, if the eyewitness is mistaken in her identification, it is of no consequence where the defendant was. It is entirely possible that defendant could not recall or establish exactly where he was about eleven o’clock at night nine days earlier and yet not be the guilty man. Our present set of instructions does not afford defendant any means to require the jury to concentrate on identification, despite the acknowledged shortcomings and frailties of eyewitness identification. This is not being fair. Mistaken identification is a legitimate defense and this incompleteness in our instruction repertoire should no longer be permitted to exist. I believe that we should request our committee on pattern criminal instructions to draft recommended instructions on the subject.