White v. State

Decision Date06 May 1987
Docket NumberNo. 56849,56849
Citation507 So.2d 98
PartiesWillie Lee WHITE, Jr. v. STATE of Mississippi.
CourtMississippi Supreme Court

Charles Douglas Evans, Grenada, for appellant.

Edwin Lloyd Pittman, Atty. Gen. by Billy L. Gore, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.

Before ROY NOBLE LEE, P.J., and SULLIVAN and DAN M. LEE, JJ.

ROY NOBLE LEE, Presiding Justice, for the Court:

Willie Lee White, Jr. was convicted in the Circuit Court of Grenada County on a charge of armed robbery and was sentenced to thirty-five (35) years, without benefit of parole, in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. He has appealed to this Court and assigns three (3) errors in the trial below.

Dorris Goss testified that on December 18, 1984, at approximately 10:30 p.m., she was the attendant at Neely's Cab Stand in Grenada, Mississippi, when two black males entered, and, at gunpoint, ordered her to lie face down in the washroom; that she started toward the washroom and then suddenly ran for the door, her escape hastened by two gunshots toward her; and that she returned to the cab stand a short while later and discovered all the money missing. She identified appellant as one of the robbery participants.

I.

THE LOWER COURT COMMITTED REVERSIBLE ERROR WHEN IT REFUSED TO SUSTAIN THE MOTION OF APPELLANT TO EXCLUDE IN-COURT AND OUT-OF-COURT IDENTIFICATION.

The lower court held a suppression hearing to determine whether or not the in-court and out-of-court identification of appellant should be suppressed. Immediately preceding the hearing, the lower court took judicial notice of its prior determination that appellant was illegally arrested on December 19, 1984, without probable cause, and that all physical evidence obtained by reason of that arrest was suppressed. However, it was shown in the suppression hearing that, upon being transported to the Grenada Police Department on December 19, 1984, pursuant to the illegal arrest, appellant was served with, and arrested on, an outstanding aggravated assault warrant dated October 19, 1984. On the day of the arrest, appellant was included in a lineup to be viewed by Dorris Goss, victim of the robbery. The appellant contends that the lineup was unduly suggestive.

At the suppression hearing, Officer Greg Harris testified that, since there were two suspects, he formed two separate lineups with one suspect in each. At the first lineup, Goss identified L.V. White as one of the men and stated that Ernest Potts "looked like the other one." Nine minutes later, a second lineup was presented and, without any direction from Officer Harris other than to take her time and be sure, Goss identified, without delay, Willie White as the second of the two individuals who robbed her.

According to Harris, the makeup of the lineups were black males in their mid-20s to early-40s with three of the five participants common to both lineups. One individual in the lineup had plaited hair, the appellant. According to Officer Harris and Goss, there was nothing suggestive about the lineup which would point out, or indicate to Goss, that the persons who committed the robbery were in the lineups. Their testimony was contradicted by appellant.

Goss testified that she was in appellant's presence for three to five minutes in the well-lighted cab stand; that with most of her attention directed at appellant, who had a gun, she noticed his hair was plaited and he wore a beard; and that she noticed something was tattooed on appellant's forehead. During the lineup, she was placed in an adjoining room from the lineup room, with a door separating them; that the door had a 12" x 12" window in it with 10" of the 12 inches in height covered with opaque paper; and that through the uncovered bottom two inches she looked at the lineup.

In York v. State, 413 So.2d 1372 (Miss.1982), this Court reviewed United States Supreme Court decisions addressing due process violations predicated on impermissibly suggestive lineups. The Court said:

An impermissibly suggestive pretrial identification does not preclude in-court identification by an eyewitness who viewed the suspect at the procedure, unless: (1) from the totality of the circumstances surrounding it (2) the identification was so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.

Even if testimony is proffered of the out-of-court identification itself, the same standard exists as to the above, with the omission of the word "irreparable."

In determining whether these standards are fulfilled, Neil v. Biggers states the following may be considered:

... the opportunity of the witness to view the criminal at the time of the crime, the witness' degree of attention, the accuracy of the witness' prior description of the criminal, the level of certainty demonstrated by the witness at the confrontation, and the length of time between the crime and the confrontation.

409 U.S. at 199, 93 S.Ct. at 382.

In the final analysis, under Manson v. Brathwaite, "reliability is the linchpin in determining the admissibility...."

York, 413 So.2d at 1383. See Foster v. State, 493 So.2d 1304 (Miss.1986) (Foster was the only member of the lineup wearing a distinctive fishing hat, and the Court rejected Foster's contention that the lineup was impermissibly suggestive); Jones v. State, 504 So.2d 1196 (Miss.1987), (Jones was the only person in a photograph display wearing a cap similar to the one worn by the rapist, and the display was not so suggestive as to be impermissible).

The United States Supreme Court decision in Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188, 93 S.Ct. 375, 34 L.Ed.2d 401 (1972), cited in York, supra, sets out five factors to be considered in determining whether a lineup is impermissibly suggestive. They follow with a reference to portions of the State's evidence at the suppression hearing:

(1) The opportunity of the witness to view the criminal at the time of the crime: Goss was not only a witness, but the victim who testified that in a well-lighted area for the duration of three to five minutes, she was in appellant's presence with all her energies focused upon him because he wielded a pistol.

(2) The witness's degree of attention: This appears satisfied by the above statement.

(3) The accuracy of the witness's prior description of the criminal: Goss described the two perpetrators as testified by Officer McCaulla as black males approximately 5'9" with one wearing a red shirt, blue jeans, and a beard, and the other wearing blue jeans; however, she failed to mention in any respect the tattoo on appellant's forehead. Considering that Goss gave her description on the same night only a short time after the robbery and subsequent gunfire and that she was asked to view the lineup the very next day, giving her only a short time for reflecting on her description, her failure to mention the tattoo, while of greatest distinguishing quality, does not sufficiently discredit her identification of appellant.

(4) The level of certainty demonstrated by the witness at the confrontation: During the first lineup, Goss stated that Ernest Potts "looks like the other one;" however, when viewing the second lineup, which also included Potts, Goss emphatically, and without hesitation, identified appellant. Furthermore, Goss positively identified appellant at trial based upon his features and his tattoo, which she testified to remembering as only India ink on his face.

(5) Length of time between the crime and the confrontation: There was only a single day lapse between the robbery and the lineup. However, 7 months elapsed between the robbery and the trial. The former statement gives validity to Goss's pretrial identification.

Appellant next contends under this assigned error that, but for his illegal arrest, the pretrial and in-court identification would not have occurred. In Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 487-88, 83 S.Ct. 407, 417, 9 L.Ed.2d 441, 445 (1963), the United States Supreme Court said:

"We need not hold that all evidence is 'fruit of the poisonous tree' simply because it would not have come to light but for the illegal actions of the police. Rather, the more apt question in such a case is 'whether, granting establishment of the primary illegality, the evidence to which instant objection is made has been come at by exploitation of that illegality or instead by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.' Maguire, Evidence of Guilt, 221 (1959)."

See Yates v. State, 467 So.2d 884, 887 (Miss.1984), and Poole v. State, 216 So.2d 425, 426-27 (Miss.1968).

In United States v. Crews, 445 U.S. 463, 100 S.Ct. 1244, 63 L.Ed.2d 537 (1980), the

question was presented as to whether a victim's in-court identification should be suppressed as fruit of appellant's unlawful arrest. The Court stated three elements which the witness must possess without attributing any of the three to exploitation of the appellant's Fourth Amendment rights.

A victim's in-court identification of the accused has three distinct elements. First, the victim is present at trial to testify as to what transpired between her and the offender, and to identify the defendant as the culprit. Second, the victim possesses knowledge of and the ability to reconstruct the prior criminal occurrence and to identify the defendant from her observations of him at the time of the crime. And third, the defendant is also physically present in the courtroom, so that the victim can observe him and compare his appearance to that of the offender.

Crews, 445 U.S. at 471, 100 S.Ct. at 1250, 63...

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