Court Opinion

ID: 9677551
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:55:04.27708+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:22:25.399663
License: Public Domain

TATE, Justice
(concurring).
The-writer concurs in the result reached by the majority.
With regard to Bill of Exception No. 12, the writer feels that the testimony of another armed robbery occurring five and one-half months after the date of the present crime could not have been admissible, if introduced in the presence of the jury; however, as introduced here (see Tr. 40), outside the presence of the jury, Tr. 40, (in connection with testimony as to the admissibility of results of an interrogation), the admission of such testimony did not constitute error. I thus subscribe to Justice Dixon’s concurring opinion as to this issue.
The writer has more serious reservations as to the majority’s disposition of Bills Nos. 4 and 5. These were taken to the trial court’s refusal to have other black men sit with the accused at the counsel table, or else to permit the accused to sit in another part of the courtroom.
The reason for this request was the previously shaky identification of Chapman, the only eyewitness. Counsel notes that the identification procedures were impermissibly suggestive, for the witness Chapman was asked to identify the robber, where the accused was the only black man sitting with counsel at the place at which defendants in criminal proceedings are customarily found.
The majority correctly points out that the trial court is empowered, under certain circumstances, to permit such relief as''here *1017requested, which might be regarded as reasonable under the particular facts of the case. The trial court, in denying this request, gave no practical reason except that it might tend to confuse the jury and not the identifying witness. I agree with the majority, that, on the record before us, no abuse of discretion is shown; but I also feel a close question is presented as to whether the identification procedure here utilized might have been impermissibly suggestive, as giving rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparably mistaken designation of the accused as the perpetrator of the crime.
The writer respectfully concurs.