Whitfield v. State

652 S.W.2d 42, 8 Ark. App. 329, 1983 Ark. App. LEXIS 834
CourtCourt of Appeals of Arkansas
DecidedJune 8, 1983
DocketCA CR 83-13
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 652 S.W.2d 42 (Whitfield v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Whitfield v. State, 652 S.W.2d 42, 8 Ark. App. 329, 1983 Ark. App. LEXIS 834 (Ark. Ct. App. 1983).

Opinion

Tom Glaze, Judge.

The defendant was charged by information on September 17, 1982, with aggravated robbery in violation of Ark. Stat. Ann. § 41-2102 (Supp. 1981). The State alleged that on August 5, 1982, the defendant, armed with a knife and in the commission of a theft, threatened Dave Cullum, owner of the High Street Discount Store. Before trial, defendant properly moved to suppress all identifications made of him by the two witnesses, arguing essentially the same points to the trial court that he argues on appeal. Defendant was tried by the court on October 19, found guilty as charged, and sentenced to thirty years in the Arkansas Department of Correction. On appeal, defendant alleges two errors in connection with the in-court identifications made by the two witnesses. Defendant contends the identifications were inadmissible: (1) as the product of an illegal search of defendant’s automobile, and (2) as a result of overly suggestive pre-trial procedures. After a careful consideration of defendant’s contentions, we affirm.

The two witnesses were working in their store on August 5, 1982, when a man entered and began selecting men’s and women’s clothing. One owner, Dave Cullum, assisted the man for fifteen to twenty minutes. Cullum’s sister and co-owner of the store, Ms. Taylor, observed the man from the office of the store, where she was working at the time. In addition, she observed him when he pulled a knife, scuffled with her brother and ordered her to give him money and to sack up the merchandise he had selected. After the man left the store and the owners notified the police that the robbery had occurred, Ms. Taylor took her brother to the hospital for treatment of a knife wound he had received to his hand.

About two hours after the robbery, Bob Spurgers called the police to report that a car was parked in an employee space on a lot between his and the robbery victims’ stores. The police entered the unlocked car and found defendant’s driver’s license in a tape case. Spurgers phoned Cullum’s home and requested that he and Ms. Taylor return to the store to view the picture on the driver’s license. From the driver’s license photo, both Cullum and Taylor identified the defendant as the man who had robbed them earlier that afternoon. On August 26, the two witnesses viewed a line-up of five or six men, from which each selected the defendant as the robber. The final identification was made October 19 at trial, when both Cullum and Taylor again identified the defendant as the robber.

The defendant’s first argument on appeal focuses on the police entry into his parked car on the afternoon of the robbery. The defendant claims that his car was parked on that lot because he had car trouble, so he left his car and walked to a relative’s house, where he spent the rest of the afternoon and night. Two witnesses testified for the defense in support of that alibi. Defendant claims that he never would have been connected with the crime had his car not been parked on the lot and had the police not entered it illegally and obtained his driver’s license. He argues that in entering his car without a warrant and with neither exigent circumstances nor probable cause to enter and search without a warrant, the police violated his Fourth Amendment rights to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. He argues that because the initial entry into his parked car was illegal, all fruits obtained from the entry, i.e., the driver’s license and all subsequent identifications of him which resulted, were inadmissible under the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine. Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963).

When the defendant moved before trial to suppress all products of the allegedly illegal search of his car, the trial court granted that motion, pointing out that the question was “moot” because the State did not intend to introduce into evidence anything that was seized from the car. Defendant contends, however, that the infringement of his constitutional rights occurred in permitting the State to use the “fruits” of the illegal search to further the identification of him. He maintains that the initial identification and each subsequent identification were tainted fruits of the illegal search. We find, as did the trial court, that United States v. Crews, 445 U.S. 463 (1980), is dispositive of this issue.

In Crews, the police picked up a suspected robber on a pretext in order to obtain a photograph of him to show to robbery victims. The photo was included in a photo array, from which each victim identified the defendant as her assailant. Next, each victim identified the defendant in a court-ordered line-up. Last, each victim identified the defendant at trial. The defendant was convicted. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals reversed the conviction, finding that the in-court identification testimony should have been excluded as a product of a violation of the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights. The United States Supreme Court reversed and held that the victims’ in-court identifications of the defendant were admissible because both (1) the police’s knowledge of defendant’s identity, and (2) the victims’ independent recollections of him antedated the admittedly unlawful arrest and were therefore untainted by the constitutional violation.

The Court in Crews used the following analysis in determining the admissibility of the in-court identification in light of the illegality of defendant’s arrest which resulted in the police’s obtaining a photo of defendant to show to victims:

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. In the present case, it is our conclusion that none of these three elements “has been come at by exploitation” of the violation of the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights. Wong Sun, supra, at 488, 9 L.Ed. 441, 83 S. Ct. 407.

Id. at 471.

We have applied the above three elements to the facts here to determine whether the in-court identifications made by the two witnesses must be stricken under the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine of Wong Sun.

First, the robbery victims were present at trial to testify and to identify the defendant. No police action was alleged in securing their presence. The identity of the victims was known prior to any police misconduct; their presence in court is not alleged to be the result of any Fourth Amendment violation.

Second, the victims had the ability to identify the defendant at trial based upon their independent recollections of the events which occurred on the day of the robbery.

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697 S.W.2d 126 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 1985)

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Bluebook (online)
652 S.W.2d 42, 8 Ark. App. 329, 1983 Ark. App. LEXIS 834, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/whitfield-v-state-arkctapp-1983.