State v. Williams

• Citation: 257 S.C. 257,185 S.E.2d 529
• Decision Date: 02 December 1971
• Docket Number: No. 19330,19330
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of South Carolina
• Parties: The STATE, Respondent, v. Willie WILLIAMS, Appellant.

Page 529

185 S.E.2d 529

257 S.C. 257

The STATE, Respondent, v. Willie WILLIAMS, Appellant.

No. 19330.

Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Dec. 2, 1971.

Matthew J. Perry, of Jenkins, Perry & Pride, Columbia, for appellant.

Solicitor Phillip K. Wingard, Lexington, for respondent.

LEWIS, Justice:

Appellant was convicted of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature and received a sentence of eight years. His appeal challenges the admissibility of an in-court identification of him by the prosecutrix and the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the conviction.

Prosecutrix was an industrial nurse employed at Riegel Textile Mill, Johnston, South Carolina. She had left her work about 4:45 P.M. on March 11, 1970, and was on her way home, driving her automobile, when she heard a horn blow, looked in her rear-view mirror and saw the emergency signal lights flashing on a following vehicle and the driver waving his hand. She interpreted the signals as requesting her to stop. She stated that she thought an emergency had probably developed at the mill and that her return was being sought. She accordingly drove to the side of the road, rolled the car window down, and stopped, with the motor running. She saw that the following vehicle had parked behind her and immediately appellant, whom she had never seen before, appeared at her car window. Upon asking him what he wanted, he replied 'I want you,' and reached both hands through her car window. She then 'threw the car in gear and left' and, as she was leaving, appellant's hand rubbed the back of her neck.

As the prosecutrix was driving from the scene, she observed appellant running to his vehicle. He followed her down the highway, bumper to bumper, for about one-half mile. She stopped at a filling station and appellant drove on by. Although she thought at first that the vehicle being driven by appellant was an automobile, she noticed, before he left, that it was a Ranchero pickup truck with the name 'Bland Furniture Co.' marked on the side.

After appellant had left, the prosecutrix reported the incident to a Deputy Sheriff, Mr. Parker. She gave him a description of the pickup truck, the license number of the vehicle, and a description of the person who allegedly assaulted her.

She described her assailant as 'of medium build, fairly small, young, and that his eyes had a strange expression or a strange color, and that he had a lot of hair or, I didn't know what to describe it, but more or less for a young man.'

The deputy checked the license number given to him and found that the truck was owned by Bland Furniture Company, the name reported as appearing on the vehicle. Further investigation revealed that appellant was driving the truck on the afternoon of the alleged attack. On the morning of March 12th, the day following the alleged assault, the prosecutrix identified appellant, from a group of six pictures, as her assailant. A warrant was then issued on March 12th, charging appellant with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature, upon which he was arrested on the same day.

Appellant was brought to trial on October 27th, 1970. On the trial, the prosecutrix identified him as her assailant, and she and the deputy sheriff testified, over objection, as to the pre-trial identification of appellant by the prosecutrix from the six pictures exhibited to her on March 12th. Timely motions by appellant for a directed verdict of acquittal were denied, and the jury found him guilty of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature.

The appeal presents two questions:

(1) Was prosecutrix's in-court identification of appellant rendered inadmissible because of her prior identification of him from the photographs?

(2) Was the evidence sufficient to sustain the conviction?

The first question to be determined is whether the in-court identification of appellant by the prosecutrix was rendered inadmissible by her prior identification of him from a photograph. Appellant contends that the in-court identification should have been excluded because (1) in the circumstances it was impermissibly affected by the pre-trial viewing of appellant's photograph by the prosecutrix; and (2) he was not represented by counsel at the time of the pre-trial photographic identification.

The United States Supreme Court, in Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247, held that, in determining the effect of pre-trial photographic identification upon the admissibility of subsequent eyewitness identification at the trial, 'each case must be considered on its own facts, and that convictions based on eyewitness identification at trial following a pretrial identification by photograph will be set aside on that ground only if the photographic identification procedure was so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.'

The circumstances surrounding the identification in this case do not violate the foregoing standard. A full hearing was held, in the absence of a jury, to determine the admissibility of the testimony relating to the pre-trial photographic identification. While there is some conflict in the testimony, the following facts clearly and convincingly appear from the record. The alleged crime took place in the daytime when visibility was clear. Shortly thereafter, the prosecutrix gave to the officer a description of her assailant and the license number and description of the truck he was driving. Further...