UNITED STATES v. CREWS
No. 78-777
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 31, 1979—Decided March 25, 1980
445 U.S. 463
Deputy Solicitor General Frey argued the cause for the United States. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General McCree, Assistant Attorney General Heymann, Richard A. Allen, and Frank J. Marine.
MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part II-D.
We are called upon to decide whether in the circumstances of this case an in-court identification of the accused by the victim of a crime should be suppressed as the fruit of the defendant‘s unlawful arrest.
I
On the morning of January 3, 1974, a woman was accosted and robbed at gunpoint by a young man in the women‘s restroom on the grounds of the Washington Monument. Her assailant, peering at her through a 4-inch crack between the wall and the door of the stall she occupied, asked for $10 and demanded that he be let into the stall. When the woman refused, the robber pointed a pistol over the top of the door and repeated his ultimatum. The victim then surrendered the money, but the youth demanded an additional $10. When the woman opened her purse and showed her assailant that she had no more cash, he gained entry to her stall and made sexual advances upon her. She tried to resist and pleaded with him to leave. He eventually did, warning his victim that he would shoot her if she did not wait at least 20 minutes before following him out of the restroom. The woman complied, and upon leaving the restroom 20 minutes later, immediately reported the incident to the police.
On January 6, two other women were assaulted and robbed in a similar episode in the same restroom. A young man threatened the women with a broken bottle, forced them to hand over $20, and then departed, again cautioning his victims not to leave for 20 minutes. The description of the
Three days later, on January 9, Officer David Rayfield of the United States Park Police observed respondent in the area of the Washington Monument concession stand and restrooms. Aware of the robberies of the previous week and noting respondent‘s resemblance to the police “lookout” that described the perpetrator, the officer and his partner approached respondent.1 Respondent gave the officers his name and said that he was 16 years old. When asked why he was not in school, respondent replied that he had just “walked away from school.”2 The officers informed respondent of his likeness to the suspect‘s description, but there was no further questioning about those events. Respondent was allowed to leave, and the officers watched as he entered the nearby restrooms.
While respondent was still inside, Officer Rayfield saw and spoke to James Dickens, a tour guide who had previously reported having seen a young man hanging around the area of the Monument on the day of the January 3d robbery. In response to the officer‘s request to observe respondent as he left the restroom, Dickens tentatively identified him as the individual he had seen on the day of the robbery.
On the basis of this additional information, the officers again approached respondent and detained him. Detective Earl Ore, the investigator assigned to the robberies, was immediately summoned. Upon his arrival some 10 or 15 minutes later, Detective Ore attempted to take a Polaroid photo
On the following day, January 10, the police showed the victim of the first robbery an array of eight photographs, including one of respondent. Although she had previously viewed over 100 pictures of possible suspects without identifying any of them as her assailant, she immediately selected respondent‘s photograph as that of the man who had robbed her. On January 13, one of the other victims made a similar identification.3 Respondent was again taken into custody, and at a court-ordered lineup held on January 21, he was positively identified by the two women who had made the photographic identifications.
The grand jury returned an indictment against respondent on February 22, 1974, charging him with two counts of armed robbery, two counts of robbery, one count of attempted armed robbery, and three counts of assault with a dangerous weapon.4 Respondent filed a pretrial motion to suppress all identification testimony, contending that his detention on the truancy charges had been merely a pretext to allow the police to obtain evidence for the robbery investigation. After hearing extensive testimony from the three victims, the police officers, and respondent, the trial court found that the respondent‘s detention at Park Police headquarters on January 9 consti
II
Wong Sun, supra, articulated the guiding principle for determining whether evidence derivatively obtained from a violation of the Fourth Amendment is admissible against the accused at trial: “The exclusionary prohibition extends as well to the indirect as the direct products of such invasions.” 371 U. S., at 484. See Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, supra; Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383 (1914). As subsequent cases have confirmed, the exclusionary sanction applies to any “fruits” of a constitutional violation—whether such evidence be tangible, physical material actually seized in an illegal search,12 items observed or words overheard in the course of the unlawful activity,13 or confessions or statements of the accused obtained during an illegal arrest and detention.14
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.
A
In this case, the robbery victim‘s presence in the courtroom at respondent‘s trial was surely not the product of any police misconduct. She had notified the authorities immediately after the attack and had given them a full description of her assailant. The very next day, she went to the police station to view photographs of possible suspects, and she voluntarily assisted the police in their investigation at all times. Thus this is not a case in which the witness’ identity was discovered or her cooperation secured only as a result of an unlawful
B
Nor did the illegal arrest infect the victim‘s ability to give accurate identification testimony. Based upon her observations at the time of the robbery, the victim constructed a mental image of her assailant. At trial, she retrieved this mnemonic representation, compared it to the figure of the defendant, and positively identified him as the robber.16 No part of this process was affected by respondent‘s illegal arrest. In the language of the “time-worn metaphor” of the poisonous tree, Harrison v. United States, 392 U. S. 219, 222 (1968), the toxin in this case was injected only after the evidentiary bud had blossomed; the fruit served at trial was not poisoned.
This is not to say that the intervening photographic and lineup identifications—both of which are conceded to be suppressible fruits of the Fourth Amendment violation—could not under some circumstances affect the reliability of the in-court identification and render it inadmissible as well. Indeed, given the vagaries of human memory and the inherent suggestibility of many identification procedures,17 just
Insofar as respondent challenges his own presence at trial, he cannot claim immunity from prosecution simply because his appearance in court was precipitated by an unlawful arrest. An illegal arrest, without more, has never been viewed as a bar to subsequent prosecution, nor as a defense to a valid conviction. Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U. S. 103, 119 (1975); Frisbie v. Collins, 342 U. S. 519 (1952); Ker v. Illinois, 119 U. S. 436 (1886).20 The exclusionary principle of Wong Sun and Silverthorne Lumber Co. delimits what proof the Government may offer against the accused at trial, closing the courtroom door to evidence secured by official lawlessness. Respondent is not himself a suppressible “fruit,” and the illegality of his detention cannot deprive the Government of the opportunity to prove his guilt through the introduction of evidence wholly untainted by the police misconduct.
D*
Respondent argues, however, that in one respect his corpus is itself a species of “evidence.” When the victim singles out respondent and declares, “That‘s the man who robbed me,” his physiognomy becomes something of evidentary value, much like a photograph showing respondent at the scene of the
We need not decide whether respondent‘s person should be considered evidence, and therefore a possible “fruit” of police misconduct. For in this case the record plainly discloses that prior to his illegal arrest, the police both knew respondent‘s identity and had some basis to suspect his involvement in the very crimes with which he was charged. Moreover, before they approached respondent, the police had already obtained access to the “evidence” that implicated him in the robberies, i. e., the mnemonic representations of the criminal retained by the victims and related to the police in the form of their agreement upon his description. In short, the Fourth Amendment violation in this case yielded nothing of evidentiary value that the police did not already have in their grasp.22 Rather, respondent‘s unlawful arrest served merely to link together two extant ingredients in his identification. The exclusionary rule enjoins the Government from benefiting from evidence it has unlawfully obtained; it does not reach backward to taint information that was in official hands prior to any illegality.
Accordingly, this case is very different from one like Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U. S. 721 (1969), in which the defendant‘s identity and connection to the illicit activity were only first discovered through an illegal arrest or search. In that case, the defendant‘s fingerprints were ordered suppressed as the
We find Bynum v. United States, 104 U. S. App. D. C. 368, 262 F. 2d 465 (1958), cited with approval in Davis, supra, at 724, helpful in our analysis as well. In Bynum, the defendant voluntarily came down to the police station to look for his brother, who had been arrested earlier that day while driving an auto sought in connection with a robbery. After telling one of the officers that he owned the car, Bynum was arrested and fingerprinted. Those prints were later found to match a set at the scene of the robbery, and Bynum was convicted based in part on that evidence. The Court of Appeals held that the police lacked probable cause at the time of Bynum‘s arrest, and it ordered the prints suppressed as “something of evidentiary value which the public authorities have caused an arrested person to yield to them during illegal detention.” 104 U. S. App. D. C., at 370, 262 F. 2d, at 467. As this Court noted in Davis, however, 394 U. S., at 725-726, n. 4, Bynum was subsequently reindicted for the same offense, and the Government on retrial introduced an older set of his fingerprints, taken from an FBI file, that were in no way connected with his unlawful arrest. The Court of Appeals affirmed that conviction, holding that the fingerprint identification made on the basis of information already in the FBI‘s possession was not tainted by the subsequent illegality and was therefore admissible. Bynum v. United States, 107 U. S. App. D. C. 109, 274 F. 2d 767 (1960).
Reversed.
MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
MR. JUSTICE POWELL, with whom MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN joins, concurring in part.
I join the Court‘s opinion except for Part II-D. I would reject explicitly, rather than appear to leave open, the claim that a defendant‘s face can be a suppressible fruit of an illegal arrest. I agree with MR. JUSTICE WHITE‘S view, post, at 477-478, that this claim is foreclosed by the rationale of Frisbie v. Collins, 342 U. S. 519 (1952), and Ker v. Illinois, 119 U. S. 436 (1886). Those cases establish that a defendant properly may be brought into court for trial even though he was arrested illegally. Thus, the only evidence at issue in this case is the robbery victims’ identification testimony. I agree with the Court that the victims’ testimony is not tainted.
MR. JUSTICE WHITE, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST join, concurring in the result.
The Court today holds that an in-court identification of the accused by the victim of a crime should not be suppressed as the fruit of the defendant‘s unlawful arrest. Although we are unanimous in reaching this result, MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN‘S opinion reserves the question whether a defendant‘s face can ever be considered evidence suppressible as the “fruit” of an
Respondent Crews was convicted after an in-court identification by the victim whose own presence at trial, recollection, and identification the Court holds were untainted by prior illegal conduct by the police. Under these circumstances the manner in which the defendant‘s presence at trial was obtained is irrelevant to the admissibility of the in-court identification. We held in Frisbie v. Collins, supra, at 522, “that the power of a court to try a person for crime is not impaired by the fact that he had been brought within the court‘s jurisdiction” unlawfully. A holding that a defendant‘s face can be considered evidence suppressible for no reason other than that the defendant‘s presence in the courtroom is the fruit of an illegal arrest would be tantamount to holding that an illegal arrest effectively insulates one from conviction for any crime where an in-court identification is essential. Such a holding would be inconsistent with the underlying rationale of Frisbie from which we have not retreated. Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 485 (1976); Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U. S. 103, 119 (1975).
Although the presence of Crews in the courtroom would not have occurred but for his arrest without probable cause, the in-court identification is held admissible. As I understand Part II-D of MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN‘s opinion, however, the in-court identification might have been inadmissible had there not been some reason to suspect Crews of the offense at the time of his illegal arrest. Such a rule excluding an otherwise untainted, in-court identification is wholly unsupported by our previous decisions. Nor do I perceive a constitutional basis for dispensing with probable cause but requiring reasonable suspicion.
Assume that a person is arrested for crime X and that answers to questions put to him without Miranda warnings implicate him in crime Y for which he is later tried. The
I agree that this case is very different from Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U. S. 721 (1969), but not for the reason given in my Brother BRENNAN‘s opinion. In Davis we held that fingerprints obtained from a defendant during an illegal detention had to be suppressed because they were the direct product of the unlawful arrest. Here, however, the evidence ordered suppressed was eyewitness testimony of the victim which was not the product of respondent‘s arrest. The fact that respondent was present at trial and therefore capable of being identified by the victim is merely the inevitable result of the trial being held, which is permissible under Frisbie, despite respondent‘s unlawful arrest. Suppression would be required in the Davis situation, but not here, regardless of whether the respective arrests were made without any reasonable suspicion or with something just short of probable cause.
Because MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN leaves open the question whether a defendant‘s face can be considered a suppressible fruit of an illegal arrest, a question I think has already been sufficiently answered in Frisbie, I cannot join his opinion, although I concur in the result.* I note that a majority of the Court agrees that the rationale of Frisbie forecloses the claim that respondent‘s face can be suppressible as a fruit of the unlawful arrest.