State v. Parker

500 A.2d 551, 197 Conn. 595, 1985 Conn. LEXIS 936
Supreme Court of Connecticut·Decided November 19, 1985·No. 11531·Published·Cited by 48 cases

Opinion

Santaniello, J.

After trial by jury the defendant, William Parker, Jr., was convicted of murder in violation of General Statutes § 53a-54a (a). On appeal, he claims that the trial court erred: (1) in admitting an in-court identification of the defendant that was derived from an unnecessarily suggestive photographic array; and (2) in excluding from evidence certain newspaper clippings which were offered to show the bias of the state’s chief witness, the defendant’s father. We find no error.

The jury could reasonably have found that sometime between March and November, 1979, the defendant killed Vercina Ann Dennis to prevent her from implicating him in another murder. The defendant admitted to his father, William Parker, Sr., that he had com[597] mitted both murders. The father, who feared that his son might kill again, cooperated with the police and helped them locate Vercina Ann Dennis’ body. The defendant’s description to his father of how he killed the girl was corroborated by physical evidence found near the body. Vercina Ann Dennis had been missing since March, 1979.

I

The defendant first claims that the trial court erred in admitting an in-court identification of the defendant by Versie Mae Dennis, the victim’s mother. Dennis was called by the state as a witness and testified that in March, 1979, the defendant twice came into the store where she worked and inquired as to her daughter’s whereabouts. Before trial in January, 1980, Dennis told two state police officers that the defendant had been looking for her daughter. To verify the identification, the officers gave her three photographs to look at: one was of a man Dennis knew well, Henry Horton; one was of a man named John Crawford; and one was of the defendant. The defendant’s picture was the only one dated and inscribed with the words “Connecticut State Police.” From those three photos, Dennis picked out the defendant as the person who had been looking for her daughter. She stated to the officers that she was certain the defendant was the person in the store. The defendant moved to suppress the introduction of Dennis’ in-court identification on the grounds that the earlier out-of-court identification was unreliable and was based on an unnecessarily suggestive procedure. The trial court denied the defendant’s motion and allowed Dennis’ testimony.

The defendant argues that the police procedures used to obtain the earlier identification were unnecessarily suggestive and that the later in-court identification was unreliable. Specifically, he claims that the photographs [598] used in the array were themselves “suggestive” and that the police may have induced Dennis to pick out the defendant’s picture by notifying her beforehand that they suspected the defendant to be her daughter’s murderer.

We have repeatedly held that a conviction based on an in-court identification which follows an out-of-court photographic identification will be set aside only “if the photographic identification procedure was so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.” State v. Fullwood, 193 Conn. 238, 243-44, 476 A.2d 550 (1984), quoting Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 384, 88 S. Ct. 967, 19 L. Ed. 2d 1247 (1968); State v. Vass, 191 Conn. 604, 609, 469 A.2d 767 (1983); State v. Doolittle, 189 Conn. 183, 190, 455 A.2d 843 (1983). “ ‘A defendant who moves to suppress identification evidence bears the initial burden of proving that the identification resulted from an unconstitutional procedure.’ ” State v. Hinton, 196 Conn. 289, 293, 493 A.2d 836 (1985); State v. Fullwood, supra, 244. The determination whether an identification procedure has violated a defendant’s due process rights must be made on an ad hoc basis. The inquiry is two-pronged: “ ‘[F]irst, it must be determined whether the identification procedure was unnecessarily suggestive; and second, if it is found to have been so, it must be determined whether the identification was nevertheless reliable based on examination of the “totality of the circumstances.” ’ ” State v. Hinton, supra, 292-93, quoting State v. Theriault, 182 Conn. 366, 371-72, 438 A.2d 432 (1980); State v. Austin, 195 Conn. 496, 499, 488 A.2d 1250 (1985).

Reviewing the record in light of these principles, we cannot say that the identification procedures employed by the state police were so impermissibly suggestive as to render the identification unreliable. The defend[599] ant claims that the police told Dennis that they suspected him and thus suggested to her that he was the person looking for her daughter. We recognize that if the police had actually told Dennis that they had arrested William Parker, Jr., before she volunteered the information about his coming into the store, then the subsequent identification might have been suggestive. See State v. Austin, supra, 500-501. From the evidence adduced, however, the court as the trier of fact could reasonably have found that it was Dennis who first raised the defendant’s name in connection with the man who was looking for her daughter. Originally Dennis did not know who the defendant was when he came into the store, but she testified that, at a later point in time, one of the defendant’s cousins informed her that it was William Parker. Officer Andrew Ocif, one of the state policemen who was present when Dennis identified the defendant from the photo array, also testified that Dennis mentioned the defendant by name when describing the person who had been asking for her daughter.

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State v. Parker, 500 A.2d 551, 197 Conn. 595, 1985 Conn. LEXIS 936 (Colo. 1985).

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