OPEN & GROSS LEWNDESS: IDENTIFICATION SUPPRESSED

An identified civilian witness called 911. She called to report that she was driving home when her vehicle was cut off and blocked in by another vehicle. She claimed that the male operator in the vehicle pulled out his penis and motioned for her to follow him. She claimed that the male operator turned on the interior light, thrust his hips upward, opened his pants, exposed his penis, and proceeded to masturbate. She provided police with the make, model, and license plate of the vehicle. She provided police with a physical description of the suspect as being: a white male, in his late 30s / early 40s, with a long strawberry colored beard, and heavy up top. Police conducted an RMV query of the vehicle, which was registered to the Defendant. The Defendant’s RMV photograph matched the witness’s description in that the Defendant’s picture showed that he had a long strawberry colored beard. The police presented a photo array of potential suspects to the victim. She identified the Defendant’s photograph and stated that she was 100% certain that the Defendant was the suspect. Attorney Patrick J. Noonan challenged the procedure by which the police conducted the photo array. Attorney Noonan pointed out that the Defendant’s photo “stood out” from the other photos. First, there were substantial disparities in the age of the suspects. The victim described the suspect as being in his late 30s / early 40s. The Defendant was 34 years old. The majority of the photos were of males that were in their early to mid-twenties. Second, several of the suspects had skinny builds unlike the Defendant’s build, which was heavier. Third, the most striking point of suggestion was that only two of the eight suspects had long facial hair. Fourth, the photos that were presented to the victim were in black and white, not in color. In addition to the Defendant’s photo standing out, Attorney Patrick J. Noonan challenged the procedure by which the police presented the photos to the victim. Originally, police generated an 8-person photo array. However, when the police presented the photos to the victim, they mistakenly left out two photos, and the photo array only consisted of 6 photos. The victim went through the six photos and stated that the suspect was not in the 6 photos. Police realized that they mistakenly left the two missing photos at the police station. Police generated the same 8 person photo array and conducted a second showing to the victim. Contrary to standard photo array practice, police re-used the same 6 filler photos, which were already shown to the victim. Contrary to standard practice, the police did not shuffle the photos and presented them in the same order as they did the first time. The victim breezed through the first 6 photos because she had already looked at these same six photos in the first presentation. The suspects in the first six photos did not have facial hair. When the victim got to the seventh photo, she identified the Defendant, as his picture showed that he had long facial hair. Contrary to standard photo array practice, police did not show the victim the eighth and final photo. The last photo showed a suspect with a long beard. Other than the Defendant’s photo, the suspect pictured in the last photo had a long beard, and this photo should have been shown to the victim.

Result: At the conclusion of the hearing, Attorney Patrick J. Noonan convinced the judge that the photo array procedure used by police was so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification and therefore violated the Defendant’s constitutional rights. As a result, the judge suppressed the out of court identification from evidence and precluded the Commonwealth from presenting the victim’s positive identification of the Defendant at trial.