Court Opinion

ID: 9477750
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:30:08.979791+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:01.504452
License: Public Domain

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Although I concur in the judgment and in much of the court’s opinion, I disagree with the suggestion that the district court abused its discretion in overruling defendant McCoy’s objection to the admission into evidence of the photographs taken at the lineup where Mr. McCoy was identified (as he was by witnesses named Busby and Rodenberg) as the man who committed the bank robbery at Middletown on November 7,1986, and as the man who committed the Forest Park robbery on December 22,1986.
It was Mrs. Rodenberg who identified defendant McCoy as the man who committed the December robbery in Forest Park, and Mrs. Rodenberg’s identification was unquestionably a crucial element of the case on which Mr. McCoy was convicted. Mr. McCoy may not have challenged the fairness of the lineup, but he certainly challenged the accuracy of Mrs. Rodenberg’s identification. In assessing that challenge and in evaluating Mrs. Rodenberg’s identification evidence, it seems to me, the jury might very well have been aided by photographs depicting what Mrs. Rodenberg saw at the lineup. Her testimony in this connection was as follows:
“Q. Now Mrs. Rodenberg, did you have an opportunity to see a lineup in connection with this case?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. And did anyone tell you which individual you should select at the lineup?
A. No.
Q. Was there anything about the lineup which suggested to you who you should pick?
A. No.
Q. Now, did you recognize anyone at the lineup?
A. Yes.
Q. Who did you recognize?
A. I recognized the man at my window here.
Q. That’s the robber?
A. That’s the robber.
Q. Now, how quickly did you recognize him at the lineup?
A. As soon as he came in I knew it was him.
Q. How did you feel when you saw him at the lineup?
A. I felt sick to my stomach.
THE COURT: I’m sorry?
A. Sick to my stomach.
Q. At this time, I would ask the clerk to hand the witness exhibits 11, 11A, and 11B. Now, could you tell us what exhibit 11 is?
A. It’s the picture of a lineup.
Q. And which man did you select?
A. Number three.
Q. Now, would you recognize this man if you saw him again?
A. Yes, I would.
Q. Would you please look around the courtroom and tell us if he is here today?
A. Yes, he’s sitting right over there.”
The extent to which the lineup photographs may have supported (or, for that matter, detracted from) Mrs. Rodenberg’s testimony that there was nothing about the lineup that suggested whom she ought to pick was something that the jury could determine only from the photographs themselves. Clearly, it seems to me, the photographs constituted “relevant evidence” within the meaning of Rule 401, Fed.R.Evid. (“ ‘Relevant evidence’ means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.”)
*748The district court evidently thought that the probative value of the evidence in question was not “substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice,” as those words are used in Rule 403, and I see no basis for concluding that the district court abused its discretion in its weighing of probative value, on the one hand, against any danger of unfair prejudice on the other.
The danger of unfair prejudice seems minimal at best. When I examined the photographs of the lineup I could not tell, from the expressions on their faces, whether the participants were actual prisoners, or mere detainees, or off-duty policemen pressed into service when they wanted to be elsewhere, or assistant prosecutors whom victory had eluded, or unemployed actors trying to absorb the flavor of a real police station. Their facial expressions no more indicated to me that all of the participants were in durance vile than did the fact that a sign in the background confirmed that the lineup took place where the jury would doubtless have assumed it took place even if witness Busby had not explicitly testified — as she did testify — that the lineup was conducted “over at the Justice Center down here in Cincinnati.”
Even if there was some slight potential for “unfair” prejudice, and even if it outweighed the probative value of the photographs, I could not say that the district court abused its discretion in concluding that the danger of unfair prejudice did not outweigh the probative value of the evidence “substantially.” And “substantially,” it will be recalled, is what Rule 403 requires.
I agree, finally, that there may be something to be said for a limiting instruction explaining why the photographs were being offered, explaining why all of the individuals depicted were wearing the same type of smock, and cautioning the jurors not to infer from the photographs that the defendant had a criminal record. Such an instruction, however, should only be given on request; I think it would have been improper for the court to caution the jury along these lines without having been asked to do so by the defendant. It is far from obvious that the question of a criminal record would even occur to a jury, without the court’s mentioning it, and the risk entailed in such an instruction is not something with which the defendant ought to be saddled unless his attorney requests it. The attorney made no such request in this case.