Graham v. State

422 S.W.2d 922, 1968 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1010
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedJanuary 17, 1968
Docket40903
StatusPublished
Cited by68 cases

This text of 422 S.W.2d 922 (Graham v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Graham v. State, 422 S.W.2d 922, 1968 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1010 (Tex. 1968).

Opinion

OPINION

ONION, Judge.

The offense is Robbery by Assault with Firearms; the punishment, ninety-nine (99) years confinement in the Texas Department of Corrections.

The police lineup procedure used in the identification of the appellant after the alleged robbery and his apprehension is urged as error on the ground that it vio *924 lated the due process rights of the appellant under the Fourteenth Amendment, United States Constitution.

The trial commenced on December 5, 1966, and sentence was pronounced March 13, 1967.

The State’s brief cites United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149, and Gilbert v. State of California, 388 U.S. 263, 87 S.Ct. 1951, 18 L.Ed.2d 1178, and calls our attention to the fact that such decisions have no application to confrontations, lineups, or showups conducted prior to June 12, 1967, as were the ones in the case at bar. See Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199. This is true but it is simply no answer to the contention advanced by appellant.

Appellant’s claim of due process violation is independent of the exclusionary rules announced in Wade and Gilbert, which were fashioned to deter law enforcement authorities from exhibiting an accused to witnesses prior to trial for identification purposes without notice to and in the absence of counsel absent an intelligent waiver by the accused.

Demonstrating the independence of appellant’s contention, it is observed that appellant’s learned counsel, in presenting this ground of error, does not even cite Gilbert and Wade.

In Stovall v. Denno, supra, the Court said:

"But the certainty and frequency with which we can say in the confrontation cases that no injustice occurred differs greatly enough from the cases involving absence of counsel at trial or on appeal to justify treating the situations as different in kind for the purpose of retroactive application, especially in light of the strong countervailing interests outlined below, and because it remains open to all persons to allege and prove, as Stovall attempts to do in this case, that the confrontation resulted in such unfairness that it infringed his right to due process of law. See Palmer v. Peyton, 359 F.2d 199 (CA 4th Cir.1966)” (Emphasis Supplied)
"We turn now to the question whether petitioner, although not entitled to the application of Wade and Gilbert to his case, is entitled to relief on his claim that in any event the confrontation conducted in this case was so unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable mistaken identification that he was denied due process of law. This is a recognized ground of attack upon a conviction independent of any right to counsel claim. Palmer v. Peyton, 359 F.2d 199 (CA 4th Cir.1966)”

In speaking of the test to be applied in such cases, the Supreme Court in Stovall v. Denno, supra, said: “ * * * a claimed violation of due process of law in the conduct of a confrontation depends on the totality of the circumstances surrounding it * * * See also Crume v. Beto (CA 5th Cir.), 383 F.2d 36.

It is by this rule that we must pass upon appellant’s ground of error.

State’s witnesses, Judith Lynn Sharp, Larry Smith, and Carroll Slavens, all of whom were present during the robbery, made no in court identification of the appellant. Of these, only Judith Lynn Sharp, who was shot during the robbery, related that she had viewed a lineup and had not identified anyone. There was no showing that appellant appeared in such lineup.

State witnesses Bobby Stovall, Larry Howard, and Gilbert J. Orsak, all of whom had adequate opportunity to observe the appellant during the robbery, who apparently unlike the other two participants in the robbery, was hatless and not masked, made in court identification of the appellant. On cross-examination it was revealed that each of these witnesses had viewed several lineups prior to trial (December 5, *925 1966) and that at one of such lineups each had selected appellant from a lineup of four or five men as one of the participants in the robbery at the Tom Thumb Supermarket No. 28 on May 9, 1966, in Dallas County, Texas. There is no showing that appellant was present in any lineup in which any witness did not identify anyone who participated in the robbery. Further, there is no showing that the law enforcement authorities took any action to suggest to any witness that the appellant in their minds was the guilty party. In fact, Bobby Stovall expressly denied that the police had given him any names or had told him who would appear in the lineups. The record does not reflect that any witness was shown a photograph of appellant or that he was exhibited singly to any witness.

It is true that the witnesses Howard and Orsak were unsure of exactly at which one of the three or four lineups they viewed that they had identified appellant. Further, none of the three witnesses could recall appellant’s position among the four or five men exhibited to them in the lineup or lineups at which he was identified by each of the witnesses, nor whether at the time he wore a hat. These witnesses further evidenced some difficulty in recalling the races or nationalities of the other men who were present in the lineups. This is somewhat similar to the situation in Stovall v. Denno, supra, where none of the witnesses could recall the words used when the accused had been asked to speak at his confrontation with the victim of the crime.

Appellant lays great stress upon the fact that the jury, during their deliberations on guilt or innocence, sent a note to the court asking for information as to procedure used in a police lineup, which the trial court properly refused to answer.

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Bluebook (online)
422 S.W.2d 922, 1968 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1010, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/graham-v-state-texcrimapp-1968.