Court Opinion

ID: 9463521
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:09:24.84996+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:09.541323
License: Public Domain

ENGEL, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
The observations of Judge Celebrezze in his dissent have considerable persuasive force when the facts here are compared with those which yielded a different result in Hastings v. Cardwell, Holland v. Perini, and Heltzel v. Collins, cited in the dissent. On the other hand, the factual context of United States v. Russell, supra, tends by comparison to support the result which we reach in the instant case. As we continue to measure an ever growing variety of factual circumstances against the basic principles of Stovall v. Denno and subsequent decisions, we will run into the dilemma which Dean Griswold discussed in the 1974 Roscoe Pound Lectures with respect to search and seizure cases:
In dealing with search and seizure cases, the Court is in fact confronted with a massive dilemma. On the one hand, the eases are fundamental and of great public importance. In some ways they go to the heart of our system of justice, and it is comforting to think that the Supreme Court is ultimately available to deal with questions of this sort. But, on the other hand, the number of eases is great, and is increasing. And each of these cases is a world in itself. Any case in the search and seizure area will be different from every other case. There is only limited precedential value in the decisions, and experience shows that language used in one case in the search and seizure field often has to be qualified or explained away when a different case arises with slightly different facts. The result is an inherent amount of uncertainty, and this uncertainty extends to the lower courts, which have to try to apply the decisions of the Supreme Court.
Erwin N. Griswold: “Search & Seizure — A Dilemma of the Supreme Court”, delivered at the University of Nebraska College of Law; March 18-19, 1974.
My primary reason for concurrence is that an examination of the record in the state court shows that the one-on-one identification of appellant was totally suggestive. Webb was under arrest. The witnesses were in effect told whom they were to expect and were then shown the suspect. It is difficult to find a more suggestive procedure than that employed in this case. There is also no credible finding by the state trial court, which I might otherwise be obliged to honor, that the identification by the witnesses had an independent and untainted basis.
Accordingly, I concur in Judge McCree’s decision. At the same time, because we need not rely on it here, I would refrain from any expression of preference for the “strict” rule over the approach expressed by the Seventh Circuit in United States ex rel Kirby v. Sturges, 510 F.2d 397 (7th Cir. 1975).