People of Michigan v. Dorian Willie Walker, 327733

Victim David Windon was shot multiple times in a Family Dollar parking lot after his shift; defendant Dorian Willie Walker was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder and felony-firearm and sentenced to life without parole plus two years consecutive.
Physical and circumstantial evidence placed defendant near the scene: cell-tower data tied a phone attributed to defendant to the area around the time of the shooting, and defendant’s car was found nearby.
Eyewitness Andrea Jackson, leaving the lot during the shooting, identified defendant in a corporeal lineup after asking participants to mimic the perpetrator’s posture (head down, eyes closed, hands in pockets); she had failed to identify anyone in an earlier photo array and initial lineup.
Defendant argued on appeal that Jackson’s pretrial and in-court identifications were unduly suggestive and that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to the identification, failing to retain a cell-tower expert, and failing to call a potential alibi witness (Tanisha Shipp).
The Court of Appeals reviewed the unpreserved due-process identification claim for plain error and the ineffective-assistance claim for errors apparent on the record, and affirmed the convictions.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Admissibility of corporeal lineup identification	Identification reliable; procedure reflected witness’s memory and did not suggest a particular suspect	Lineup was unduly suggestive (witness knew defendant previously; participants were asked to mimic posture)	Not unduly suggestive; identification admissible (no substantial likelihood of misidentification)
Admissibility of in-court identification	In-court ID is valid because pretrial ID was proper	In-court ID tainted by suggestive pretrial procedure	In-court ID stands because pretrial procedure was valid; no independent-basis requirement needed here
Ineffective assistance — failure to move to suppress ID	Counsel was effective; no meritorious suppression motion existed	Counsel should have moved to suppress the lineup identification	No deficiency — suppression motion would have been meritless; counsel not ineffective
Ineffective assistance — expert and witness strategy	Counsel effectively cross-examined cell-tower expert; tactical choices re: expert/witness binding were reasonable	Counsel failed to retain phone-location expert and failed to call Shipp, who would show defendant lacked phone that day	No ineffective assistance shown: defendant offered no record proof an expert would have helped; counsel thoroughly cross-examined expert; Shipp’s unfiled affidavit not in record and testimony would likely have been discredited; no prejudice shown

Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293 (1967) (due-process framework for evaluating suggestive identification procedures)
Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188 (1972) (factors for assessing likelihood of misidentification)
People v. Kurylczyk, 443 Mich. 289 (1993) (Michigan standard for unduly suggestive lineups; totality-of-circumstances analysis)
People v. Gray, 457 Mich. 107 (1998) (relation of pretrial and in-court identifications)
People v. Carines, 460 Mich. 750 (1999) (plain-error review standard for unpreserved constitutional claims)