Perry v. New Hampshire

132 S. Ct. 716, 181 L. Ed. 2d 694, 565 U.S. 228, 2012 U.S. LEXIS 579
Supreme Court of the United States·Decided January 11, 2012·No. 10-8974·Published·Cited by 4 cases

Opinions

Justice Ginsburg

delivered the opinion of the Court.

In our system of justice, fair trial for persons charged with criminal offenses is secured by the Sixth Amendment, which [232]*232guarantees to defendants the right to counsel, compulsory-process to obtain defense witnesses, and the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses for the prosecution. Those safeguards apart, admission of evidence in state trials is ordinarily governed by state law, and the reliability of relevant testimony typically falls within the province of the jury to determine. This Court has recognized, in addition, a due process check on the admission of eyewitness identification, applicable when the police have arranged suggestive circumstances leading the witness to identify a particular person as the perpetrator of a crime.

An identification infected by improper police influence, our case law holds, is not automatically excluded. Instead, the trial judge must screen the evidence for reliability pretrial. If there is “a very substantial likelihood of irreparable mis-identification,” Simmons v. United States, 390 U. S. 377, 384 (1968), the judge must disallow presentation of the evidence at trial. But if the indicia of reliability are strong enough to outweigh the corrupting effect of the police-arranged suggestive circumstances, the identification evidence ordinarily will be admitted, and the jury will ultimately determine its worth.

We have not extended pretrial screening for reliability to cases in which the suggestive circumstances were not arranged by law enforcement officers. Petitioner requests that we do so because of the grave risk that mistaken identification will yield a miscarriage of justice.1 Our decisions, [233]*233however, turn on the presence of state action and aim to deter police from rigging identification procedures, for example, at a lineup, showup, or photograph array. When no improper law enforcement activity is involved, we hold, it suffices to test reliability through the rights and opportunities generally designed for that purpose, notably, the presence of counsel at postindictment lineups, vigorous cross-examination, protective rules of evidence, and jury instructions on both the fallibility of eyewitness identification and the requirement that guilt be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

I

A

Around 3 a.m. on August 15, 2008, Joffre Ullon called the Nashua, New Hampshire, Police Department and reported that an African-American male was trying to break into cars parked in the lot of Ullon’s apartment building. Officer Nicole Clay responded to the call. Upon arriving at the parking lot, Clay heard what “sounded like a metal bat hitting the ground.” App. 37a-38a. She then saw petitioner Ba-rion Perry standing between two cars. Perry walked toward Clay, holding two car-stereo amplifiers in his hands. A metal bat lay on the ground behind him. Clay asked Perry where the amplifiers came from. “[I] found them on the ground,” Perry responded. Id., at 39a.

Meanwhile, Ullon’s wife, Nubia Blandón, woke her neighbor, Alex Clavijo, and told him she had just seen someone break into his car. Clavijo immediately went downstairs to the parking lot to inspect the car. He first observed that one of the rear windows had been shattered. On further inspection, he discovered that the speakers and amplifiers from his car stereo were missing, as were his bat and [234]*234wrench. Clavijo then approached Clay and told her about Blandon’s alert and his own subsequent observations.

By this time, another officer had arrived at the scene. Clay asked Perry to stay in the parking lot with that officer, while she and Clavijo went to talk to Blandón. Clay and Clavijo then entered the apartment building and took the stairs to the fourth floor, where Blandon’s and Clavijo’s apartments were located. They met Blandón in the hallway just outside the open door to her apartment.

Asked to describe what she had seen, Blandón stated that, around 2:30 a.m., she saw from her kitchen window a tall, African-American man roaming the parking lot and looking into cars. Eventually, the man circled Clavijo’s car, opened the trunk, and removed a large box.2

Clay asked Blandón for a more specific description of the man. Blandón pointed to her kitchen window and said the person she saw breaking into Clavijo’s car was standing in the parking lot, next to the police officer. Perry’s arrest followed this identification.

About a month later, the police showed Blandón a photographic array that included a picture of Perry and asked her to point out the man who had broken into Clavijo’s ear. Blandón was unable to identify Perry.

B

Perry was charged in New Hampshire state court with one count of theft by unauthorized taking and one count of criminal mischief.3 Before trial, he moved to suppress Blandon’s identification on the ground that admitting it at trial would violate due process. Blandón witnessed what [235]*235amounted to a one-person showup in the parking lot, Perry asserted, which all but guaranteed that she would identify him as the culprit. Id., at 15a-16a.

The New Hampshire Superior Court denied the motion. Id., at 82a-88a. To determine whether due process prohibits the introduction of an out-of-court identification at trial, the Superior Court said, this Court’s decisions instruct a two-step inquiry. First, the trial court must decide whether the police used an unnecessarily suggestive identification procedure. Id., at 85a. If they did, the court must next consider whether the improper identification procedure so tainted the resulting identification as to render it unreliable and therefore inadmissible. Ibid, (citing Neil v. Biggers, 409 U. S. 188 (1972), and Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U. S. 98 (1977)).

Perry’s challenge, the Superior Court concluded, failed at step one: Blandon’s identification of Perry on the night of the crime did not result from an unnecessarily suggestive procedure “manufaeture[d] ... by the police.” App. 86a-87a. Blandón pointed to Perry “spontaneously,” the court noted, “without any inducement from the police.” Id., at 85a-86a. Clay did not ask Blandón whether the man standing in the parking lot was the man Blandón had seen breaking into Clavijo’s car. Ibid. Nor did Clay ask Blandón to move to the window from which she had observed the break-in. Id., at 86a.

The Superior Court recognized that there were reasons to question the accuracy of Blandon’s identification: The parking lot was dark in some locations; Perry was standing next to a police officer; Perry was the only African-American man in the vicinity; and Blandón was unable, later, to pick Perry out of a photographic array. Id., at 86a-87a. But “[because the police procedures were not unnecessarily suggestive,” the court ruled that the reliability of Blandon’s testimony was for the jury to consider. Id., at 87a.

[236]*236At the ensuing trial, Blandón and Clay testified to Bland-on’s out-of-court identification.

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Perry v. New Hampshire, 132 S. Ct. 716, 181 L. Ed. 2d 694, 565 U.S. 228, 2012 U.S. LEXIS 579 (U.S. 2012).

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