Facts of the Case
An undercover police officer bought drugs from a narcotics vendor. The officer saw the vendor up close for several minutes. The officer described the vendor to another officer who obtained a photograph of Nowell A. Brathwaite and gave it to the first officer. The officer identified the Brathwaite as the narcotics vendor. At trial, the photograph was admitted as evidence and the officer again identified Brathwaite as the vendor. A jury convicted Brathwaite of possession and sale of heroin. The Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed. Brathwaite then filed a petition for a writ of habeus corpus in district court. The district court dismissed the petition, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed, holding that the officer’s identification was unreliable and the method of identification from a single photograph was unnecessarily suggestive.
Questions
Did the court of appeals err in allowing the police officer to identify Brathwaite from a single photograph?
Conclusions
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No. Justice Harry A. Blackmun, writing for a 7-2 majority, reversed the court of appeals. The Supreme Court held that a suggestive identification procedure does not automatically require excluding the evidence if the identification is reliable, considering the totality of the circumstances. With the circumstances in this case, the identification was reliable. Justice John Paul Stevens concurred, writing that rules to protect against convictions based on unreliable identifications are better developed by the legislative process.
Justice Thurgood Marshall dissented, arguing for a per se exclusionary rule for unnecessarily suggestive identification procedures. Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. joined in the dissent.
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