United States v. Frazier
| Decision Date | 14 October 1969 |
| Docket Number | No. 12584.,12584. |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Charles Francis FRAZIER, Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Alan H. Murrell, Baltimore, Md., (Court-appointed counsel) and Phillip M. Sutley, Baltimore, Md., for appellant.
Stephen D. Shawe, Asst. U. S. Atty., (Stephen H. Sachs, U. S. Atty., on brief), for appellee.
Before SOBELOFF, BOREMAN and WINTER, Circuit Judges.
Charles Francis Frazier appeals from his conviction on two counts of interstate transportation of forged securities (18 U.S.C. § 2314) and two counts of conspiracy to do the same. We conclude that his arguments are without merit.
Appellant's major complaint is against the admission in evidence of an eye witness courtroom identification, said to be tainted by a jailhouse confrontation violative of due process. Declining to rely on his finding that the jailhouse view was fair, the District Judge was satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the in-court identification was not the product of the earlier confrontation and therefore was untainted. The witness testified that she was not positive that Frazier was the man until she saw him at trial. The District Judge noted that this was quite plausible since when she first saw the man she later identified as Frazier he had long hair and moustache, while later, at the jail Frazier was clean shaven and shorn. When the witness saw him again, at the trial, the defendant had a full growth of hair, both on his head and upper lip. On the whole, there was ample support in the record for the finding of the trial judge, and we cannot say that it was clearly erroneous.
Appellant argues also that he was prejudiced by the failure to sequester the FBI agent in charge of the case during parts of the trial relating to the jailhouse confrontation. Since the ruling of the District Judge was based not on the fairness of the show-up, but on the independent origin of the later identification, the agent's testimony was not of great moment in the resolution of the issue.
This is not to say that when witnesses are sequestered from the courtroom, an FBI agent is automatically exempt from the order. The matter should not be decided routinely but in a genuine exercise of discretion, according to the attendant circumstances. Where the agent is the one in charge of the case and his presence is necessary, the court may permit him to remain although other witnesses...
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