Court Opinion

ID: 9458626
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:57:13.164517+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:50.032290
License: Public Domain

FRIENDLY, Chief Judge
(dissenting) :
If this appeal had been decided before Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U.S. 682, 92 S.Ct. 1877, 32 L.Ed.2d 411 (1972), I could have accepted the result reached by the majority. However, that case1 disapproved the dicta in United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967), and Gilbert v. California, 388 U.S. 263, 87 S.Ct. 1951, 18 L.Ed.2d 1178 (1967), with respect to a right to counsel at a lineup before the criminal prosecution had begun.2 Recognizing that the Sixth Amendment guarantee of the right to counsel attaches only when a “criminal prosecution” has commenced, the Court elucidated when that stage had been reached. It said, with unmistakable clarity, “that a person’s Sixth and Fourteenth Amend*1030ment right to counsel attaches only at or after the time that adversary judicial proceedings have been initiated against him,” 406 U.S. at 688, 92 S.Ct. at 1881 (emphasis supplied). After citing the leading right to counsel decisions, the Court said again that all of them “have involved points of time at or after the initiation of adversary judicial criminal proceedings — whether by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information, or arraignment.” 406 U.S. at 689, 92 S.Ct. at 1882. None of the steps mentioned by the Court had occurred to Saltys with respect to the crime here at issue, and therefore his right to counsel had thus not attached with respect to this crime.
The majority endeavors to escape the clear direction of Kirby by saying that because Saltys was awaiting arraignment on another robbery charge and had either retained or been assigned counsel to that end, “it is arguable that Wade and Gilbert still would require counsel at the viewings here, even with the limitations of Kirby, especially in the light of this circuit’s own cases such as United States v. Roth, 430 F.2d 1137, 1140 (2d Cir. 1970), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 1021, 91 S.Ct. 583, 27 L.Ed.2d 633 (1971) . ” While Roth held that a pretrial corporeal identification which is something less than a formal lineup can violate the Wade-Gilbert principle, that decision’s bearing on the issue here escapes me since the viewing there was long after the indictment. On the question of whether custody on one charge triggers the right to counsel for every other charge, it is necessary to distinguish, as Mr. Justice Stewart did in Kirby, between problems arising under the self-incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment and the assistance of counsel clause of the Sixth. When a person is in custody on one charge, Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), would rule out admissions with respect to another, in the absence of the appropriate warnings, because of the effect of custody of any sort on the will of the suspect. See Mathis v. United States, 391 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1503, 20 L.Ed.2d 381 (1968). But the Sixth Amendment guarantee of counsel is to assist in defending against the crime charged, not against some other not yet charged. See United States v. Davis, 399 F.2d 948, 952 (2 Cir.), cert. denied, 393 U.S. 987, 89 S.Ct. 465, 21 L.Ed.2d 449 (1968). To be sure, the fact that Saltys had a lawyer on the other robbery charge would have made it easy to have the attorney present at the walkthrough. But the narrowing of Wade and Gilbert by Kirby did not rest on the difficulty in getting a lawyer at all pre-prosecution lineups3 but rather on an interpretation of the language of the Sixth Amendment. Beyond this, the record does not inform us whether the arrest that had placed Saltys in the bullpen had advanced to any such point of time as Mr. Justice Stewart described; we know only that he was awaiting an arraignment that had not yet occurred. Thus, in light of Kirby, I see little basis for thinking that a Wade and Gilbert challenge to the bullpen identification testimony would today be suspectible of successful argument, and no basis for condemning counsel for not arguing it.
The inapplicability of Wade and Gilbert still leaves the question whether the identification of Saltys was “so imper-missibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.” Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 384, 88 S.Ct. 967, 971, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968). The majority conveys the impression that it was, without ever explaining exactly why. There is no indication that the array of photographs displayed to Polowitz and O’Brien, was unfair in any way. The fact that the witnesses were “aware that the police suspected a particular person” is utterly lacking in significance; a victim almost always knows this when he is asked to inspect a group of photographs. Neither do I see any*1031thing impermissibly suggestive in the police following this up by having Polowitz and O’Brien view the 30 men in the bullpen; this was a greater safeguard than in Simmons where the witnesses proceeded directly from photographic to in-court identification. If the group contained so few whites as to enhance the likelihood of identification of Saltys, as he asserts but the police and the witnesses deny, see fn. 3 to the majority opinion, this had to be developed by testimony or cross-examination. I see no indication that counsel failed to do this; the chance that, absent the Wade and Gilbert dicta, the court would, after a pretrial hearing, have suppressed the identifications on due process grounds is altogether too remote to support a finding of incompetency of counsel. Absent a violation of procedural rights accorded to Saltys by the Constitution, “the reliability of properly admitted eyewitness identification, like the credibility of the other parts of the prosecutor’s case is a matter for the jury.” Foster v. California, 394 U.S. 440, 442 n. 2, 89 S.Ct. 1127, 1128, 22 L.Ed.2d 411 (1969).
The case is unusual in that if counsel had objected to testimony concerning the bullpen identification, he would quite probably have been sustained on the basis of what was then thought to be the law, see Justice Brennan’s dissenting opinion in Kirby, 406 U.S. at 704 n. 14, 92 S.Ct. 1877, 32 L.Ed.2d 411, although, as we now know, wrongly so. I cannot escape the impression that this is what underlies the decision here. But the statutory provision on Federal habeas corpus for state prisoners, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a), authorizes us to direct Saltys’ release only if “he is in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.” Under the Court’s most recent pronouncement he is not. The contrary position of the majority, with the frequent citation of the Wade and Gilbert dicta, fails to recognize the force of Kirby v. Illinois.4 For that reason I must dissent; I would affirm the order dismissing the petition without reaching the effect of the failure to make objection.

. Although the majority opinion here, like the dissent in Kirby, refers to Mr. Justice Stewart’s opinion, in which Chief Justice Burger, Justice Blackmun, and Justice Behnquist joined, as a “plurality opinion,” which is technically correct, the negative inference apparently sought to be drawn from that phrase seems unwarranted, at least as applied to this case. I read Mr. Justice Powell’s statement that he “would not extend the Wade-Gilbert per se exclusionary rule” as indicating a desire to keep open the issue of per se exclusion of testimony concerning lineups without counsel after the beginning of the criminal prosecution, and not at all as favoring such exclusion in the case of such lineups before the prosecution commenced.

. In Wade the lineup was conducted 49 days after the indictment had been filed and 15 days after counsel was appointed. In Gilbert the lineup was held 16 days after the indictment and appointment of counsel.

. Difficulty did indeed exist in some such situations, notably night-time arrests shortly after the crime, but by no means in all.

. This case is a peculiarly inappropriate one for creating confusion as to a possible continuing vitality of the Wade and Gilbert dicta in regard to pre-prosecution lineups since Saltys served over three years of his four to seven year sentence and is currently free on parole.