Ward v. State

474 S.W.2d 471, 1971 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1531
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedNovember 23, 1971
Docket44142
StatusPublished
Cited by83 cases

This text of 474 S.W.2d 471 (Ward 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
Ward v. State, 474 S.W.2d 471, 1971 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1531 (Tex. 1971).

Opinion

OPINION

ODOM, Judge.

This appeal is from a conviction for the offense of robbery by firearms. The state did not seek the death penalty. Punishment was assessed by the jury at 101 years.

We affirm.

The record reflects that, shortly before 9:00 A.M. on July 9, 1969, two men en *474 tered the Texas Warrant Company in Austin, produced pistols, and announced a “holdup”. The two gunmen herded those present into a restroom in the rear of the office and proceeded to take some $4,000 in currency from the cash drawers, assisted involuntarily by a customer who entered the premises while the robbery was in progress. Eight persons testified that they saw the two during the ten to fifteen minutes they were on the premises.

Lieutenant Merle Wells, of the Austin Police Department, investigated the robbery. Based upon the general description of the men given to him, eight mug shots were obtained at around 9:30 A.M., and shown to the witnesses. Photographic identification of appellant was made by some of the witnesses and a “pick up” was put out over the police radio. Shortly thereafter, appellant was arrested in a barber shop by Officers Barrett and Chew.

At the police station, a glasses case was taken from the person of appellant. The case contained sunglasses which were similar to those identified by witnesses as having been worn by one of the men at the time of the robbery. Also found on appellant’s person was a receipt in appellant’s name for a $12.48 purchase made at Texas State Optical.

At approximately 2:00 P.M., a lineup was held. Appellant was again identified by at least three of the witnesses. After the completion of the lineup, the witnesses were shown the sunglasses. One witness, Bruce Haile, thought that these were the same glasses worn by appellant.

At his trial, appellant interposed the defense of alibi. He called several witnesses to give an account of his whereabouts on the morning in question and an employee of Texas State Optical who testified that the company’s records indicated that the sunglasses in question were purchased between the hours of 9:00 A.M. and 12:00 noon on July 9, 1969.

Prior to trial, appellant moved to suppress any mention of the pre-trial identifications and to suppress any in-court identification on the ground that such pre-trial procedure violated his right to due process of law. Also, he requested that he be permitted to sit in the audience until such time as the state’s witnesses were able to identify him in court or, in the alternative, that persons physically similar to him be allowed to sit with him at the defense table until the in-court identifications were made. On March 9, 1970, a pre-trial hearing was held. Such motions were overruled, the court stating:

“And the ruling of the Court is that the line-up is not admissible in court; however, the In-Court identification will be admissible, because it has not been tainted, either by the mug shots or the lineup, for the following reasons: That the witnesses, all of the witnesses, had prior opportunity to observe the criminal act from three to five minutes, and there is no discrepancy between the line-up description and the actual appearance of the accused; and there was no identification of any other person, other than the defendant in this case, prior to the line-up, and at all times the witnesses identified the defendant and no other person, and the lapse of time between the time of the occurrence and the time the pictures were shown to the witnesses was forty minutes. And between the time of the occurrence and the line-up was less than five hours, and it is the opinion of the Court that the In-Court identification which the Court held at the Pre-Trial Hearing, or the separate hearing out of the presence of the jury, was of independent origin, to which the defendant excepted.”

The court also overruled appellant’s motion relating to the procedure to be followed during the in-court identifications.

By his first four grounds of error, appellant contends that the trial court erred in overruling these pre-trial motions and reasserts his contention that the pre-trial identifications were so conducive to mis *475 taken recognition as to taint the later in-court identification.

Appellant first contends that the trial court erred in overruling his motion relating to the in-court identification procedures. Faced with an almost identical problem in Moore v. State, 424 S.W.2d 443, this court stated:

“We know of no law which prohibits a court from requiring that a defendant sit at the counsel table with his attorney during the trial. Nor do we know of any law which prohibits state’s counsel from pointing to a defendant in the courtroom and referring to his physical appearance in the presence of witnesses.”

We adhere to this court’s decision in Moore v. State, supra. See also Sertuche v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 453 S.W.2d 841. The first ground of error is overruled.

By his second ground of error, appellant claims that the trial court erred in failing to determine whether the mug shot display was unduly suggestive and presented a likelihood of misidentification. The trial court determined that in-court identification would be admissible “because it has not been tainted, either by the mug shots or the lineup * * *.” The second ground of error is overruled.

Appellant’s third and fourth grounds of error relate to his contention that pre-trial identification procedures utilized tainted the in-court identifications. 1

Photographic identification of an accused prior to trial does not automatically taint an in-court identification. The Supreme Court, in the case of Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247, stated that:

“ * * * convictions based on eyewitness identification at trial following a pretrial identification by photograph will be set aside on that ground only if the photographic identification procedure was so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.”

In order to violate the Simmons test, the photographic identification procedure utilized must in some way be so defective as to indicate or suggest the photograph which the witness is to identify. Green v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 467 S.W.2d 481; Powell v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 466 S.W.2d 776; Johnson v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 466 S.W.2d 735; Smith v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 459 S.W.2d 642; Sertuche v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 453 S.W.2d 841. Thus, the Simmons test has been held to have been violated in cases where the defendant’s photograph was the only non-mug shot in the grouping and was 2½ times larger than the other photographs in the array. United States v. Sutherland, 5 Cir., 428 F.2d 1152; United States v. King, D.C., 321 F.Supp. 614.

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Bluebook (online)
474 S.W.2d 471, 1971 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 1531, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ward-v-state-texcrimapp-1971.