Court Opinion

ID: 9751047
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:01:08.879753+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:33.782818
License: Public Domain

McEWEN, Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the result. It is certainly clearly established that counsel must be present at any identification procedure after an arrest so as to ensure the elimination of suggestiveness from such procedures; and, it is just as clearly established that there must be exceptions to the rule, as, for example, when the confrontation is prompt and on-the-scene. The majority opinion of our distinguished colleague, Judge J. Sydney Hoffman, provides a fine exposition of the *61issues attendant to this question. It seems, however, that while the majority opinion observes that “our courts ... have been fairly expansive in construing ‘on-the-scene’ ” {See p. 59), the majority opines that a prompt on-the-scene identification procedure is the only exception to the rule that counsel must be present for any confrontation procedure. It is that specific holding that causes me to be hesitant to join in the majority opinion since, while the courts seem to employ the term “prompt on-the-scene confrontation” to define the exception, the decisions construing that exception have not, as the foregoing excerpt from the majority opinion notes, been so narrowly restrictive. I simply am hesitant to apply so limited a label to the exception. The fact remains, however, that the facts of this case do not present such circumstances as to invoke the exception and, therefore, I concur in the result.