Trimble v. State, 4871
| Decision Date | 20 May 1957 |
| Docket Number | No. 4871,4871 |
| Parties | Warren 'Son' TRIMBLE and Bobby Dale Williams, Appellants, v. STATE of Arkansas, Appellee. |
| Court | Arkansas Supreme Court |
Charles L. Carpenter, No. Little Rock, and Terral & Rawlings, Little Rock, for appellants.
Bruce Bennett, Atty. Gen., Russell Morton, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
The appellants, Warren 'Son' Trimble and Bobby Dale Williams, were convicted of the crime of robbery by forcibly taking and stealing an automobile from K. C. Parker on March 3, 1956.
At the trial K. C. Parker testified he was asleep in his car which was parked at a cafe about 1:30 A.M. when appellants attacked him, demanded his money and drove his car to the airport where he escaped and notified the police. He also testified that, acting upon information he gave the police, appellants were arrested about three days later and placed in the county jail where he identified them as the parties who robbed him.
The only other witness for the State was a deputy sheriff who was permitted to testify, over appellants' objections and exceptions, that he was present when K. C. Parker came to the county jail and made a 'line-up' identification of the appellants as the parties who had robbed him. The sole issue is the admissibility of this testimony.
The authorities are divided as to the competency of evidence of so-called 'extrajudicial identification' in a trial where the accused's identity as the guilty party is in dispute. Most courts subscribe to the proposition that the prior consistent statements of a witness who has not been impeached are not admissible in evidence for the purpose of corroborating or bolstering his testimony. We are committed to the view that evidence of extradjudicial identification is incompetent as either substantive or corroborative evidence if there has been no impeachment of the prosecuting witness or his testimony.
In Gill v. State, 194 Ark. 521, 108 S.W.2d 785, 786, we said: 'This character of evidence is referred to in the law books as extrajudicial identification and, according to the weight of authority, is not admissible even though the identifying witness or witnesses had been impeached by any method known for impeaching witnesses. Burks v. State, 78 Ark. 271, 93 S.W. 983, 8 Ann.Cas. 476. There is no authority whatever for admitting an extrajudicial identification as original evidence of guilt. This court said in the case of Warren v. State, 103 Ark. 165, 146 S.W....
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Sims v. State
...might be addressed to the question of admissibility, that could not be permitted in eliciting direct evidence. See Trimble & Williams v. State, 227 Ark. 867, 302 S.W.2d 83; Spivey & Payne v. State, 247 Ark. 752, 447 S.W.2d 846. It is extremely difficult to determine the question of admissib......
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...1974 University of Illinois Law Forum 675 (1974).For a decision upholding the classical view of inadmissibility, see Trimble v. State, Ark., 302 S.W.2d 83 (1957). For a thoughtful decision permitting such identification testimoy under limited conditions to be admissible as exception to the ......
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...held that identity cannot ordinarily be established by evidence of an extrajudicial identification as original evidence. Trimble v. State, 227 Ark. 867, 302 S.W.2d 83. To determine whether such an error had occurred we view the totality of the circumstances. Simmons v. U.S., supra; Foster v......
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...witness identified the accused on an earlier occasion, if there has been no impeachment of the prosecuting witness. Trimble v. State, 227 Ark. 867, 302 S.W.2d 83 (1957). We reviewed our cases in detail in Spivey v. State, 247 Ark. 752, 447 S.W.2d 846 (1969), and declared our adherence to th......