photo array

In 1965, after a jury trial in a Tennessee court, respondent was convicted of rape and was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment. The State’s evidence consisted in part of testimony concerning a station-house identification of respondent by the victim. The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed. On certiorari, the judgment of the Tennessee Supreme Court was affirmed by an equally divided Court. Respondent then brought a federal habeas corpus action raising several claims. The District Court held that the claims were not barred and, after a hearing, held in an unreported opinion that the station-house identification procedure was so suggestive as to violate due process. The Court of Appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide whether an affirmance by an equally divided Court is an actual adjudication barring subsequent consideration on habeas corpus, and, if not, whether the identification procedure violated due process. On the evening of January 22, 1965, a youth with a butcher knife grabbed the victim in the doorway to her kitchen. When the victim screamed, her 12-year-old daughter came out of her bedroom and also began to scream. The assailant directed the victim to tell her daughter to shut up or he would kill them both. She did so, and was then walked at knifepoint about two blocks along a railroad track, taken into a woods, and raped there. The whole incident took between 15 minutes and half an hour under a full moon. The victim gave the police a description of the assailant as being fat and flabby with smooth skin, bushy hair, a youthful voice, between 16 and 18 years old, between five feet ten inches and six feet tall, weighing between 180 and 200 pounds, and having a dark brown complexion. Over the course of the next seven months, she viewed suspects in her home or at the police station, some in lineups and others in showups, and was shown between 30 and 40 photographs but identified none of the suspects. On August 17, the police called her to the station to view respondent, who was being detained on another charge. Finding no one fitting respondent’s unusual physical description, they conducted a showup instead consisting of two detectives walking respondent past the victim. At the victim’s request, the police directed respondent to say shut up or I’ll kill you. The victim testified that she had no doubt about her identification. At trial the victim testified that she could see the assailant because there was enough light from the bedroom shining through. At the habeas corpus hearing, she stated that when she first laid eyes on him at the identification, she knew it was the individual because there was something about his face she did not think she could ever forget.

On August 15, 2008, around 3 a.m., Joffre Ullon reported to the Nashua, New Hampshire, Police Department that an African-American male was attempting to break into cars in the parking lot of his apartment building. Officer Nicole Clay responded and observed petitioner Barion Perry standing between two cars holding two car-stereo amplifiers, with a metal bat on the ground nearby. Perry stated that he had found the amplifiers on the ground. Nubia Blandón, Ullon's wife, had woken her neighbor Alex Clavijo and informed him that she had seen someone break into his car. Clavijo inspected his vehicle and found a shattered rear window along with missing speakers, amplifiers, a bat, and a wrench. Blandón later described to Clay and Clavijo from her fourth-floor apartment hallway that she had seen from her kitchen window a tall African-American man roaming the parking lot, circling Clavijo's car, opening the trunk, and removing a large box. When asked for a more specific description, Blandón pointed out the window to Perry, who was standing in the parking lot next to a police officer. Perry's arrest followed this identification. Approximately one month later, police presented Blandón with a photographic array including Perry's picture, but she was unable to identify him. Perry was charged in New Hampshire state court with one count of theft by unauthorized taking and one count of criminal mischief. Before trial, he moved to suppress Blandón’s identification on the ground that admitting it at trial would violate due process. Blandón witnessed what amounted to a one-person showup in the parking lot, Perry asserted, which all but guaranteed that she would identify him as the culprit. The New Hampshire Superior Court denied the motion after finding that the identification did not stem from an unnecessarily suggestive procedure manufactured by the police, as Blandón pointed to Perry spontaneously without inducement. At trial, Blandón and Clay testified regarding the out-of-court identification, and the jury convicted Perry of theft while acquitting him of criminal mischief. On appeal, the New Hampshire Supreme Court affirmed the conviction, holding that the Due Process Clause requires a trial court to assess the reliability of identification evidence before permitting a jury to consider it only where the police employ suggestive identification techniques. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari. The question presented was whether the Due Process Clause requires a trial judge to conduct a preliminary assessment of the reliability of an eyewitness identification made under suggestive circumstances not arranged by the police.

On December 14, 1967, the victim of the offenses awoke in her Chicago apartment to find an intruder in her bedroom who choked her, forced her to commit oral sodomy, raped her, and stole a guitar and flute. The victim described her assailant to police and provided a notebook found next to her bed containing a letter. In the week after the attack, the victim selected petitioner's photograph from arrays shown by police, and investigation connected the letter to a woman with whom petitioner had stayed. Police arrested petitioner at his apartment on the evening of December 20, 1967, and held him overnight. The following morning, a policeman took the victim to the preliminary hearing in the Circuit Court of Cook County, where she signed a complaint naming petitioner as her assailant. At the hearing, petitioner was led before the bench without counsel, the judge informed him of the charges of rape and deviate sexual behavior, and the victim identified him after the prosecutor recited evidence linking him to the offenses. Petitioner was subsequently bound over to the grand jury and indicted on four counts. After counsel was appointed, the trial court denied a motion to suppress the identification testimony. At trial, the victim testified on direct examination that she had identified petitioner at the preliminary hearing. She also testified that the defendant on trial was the man who had raped her. The jury convicted petitioner on all counts, resulting in a sentence of 30 to 50 years in prison. The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the convictions. Following denial of certiorari by the Supreme Court, petitioner sought habeas corpus relief in federal district court. The district court denied the writ. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed that denial. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the case.

On the night of January 12, 1975, Providence taxicab driver John Mulvaney disappeared after being dispatched to pick up a customer. His body was discovered four days later buried in a shallow grave in Coventry, Rhode Island. He had died from a shotgun blast aimed at the back of his head. On January 17, 1975, shortly after midnight, taxicab driver Gerald Aubin reported to the Providence police that he had been robbed by a man wielding a sawed-off shotgun. He had dropped off his assailant near Rhode Island College in the Mount Pleasant section of Providence. While at the police station Aubin identified the respondent from a picture on a bulletin board. A photo array confirmed the identification and prompted a search of the area. At approximately 4:30 a.m. on January 17, Patrolman Lovell arrested the respondent in Mount Pleasant after he approached the patrol car. The respondent was advised of his Miranda rights by Lovell, Sergeant Sears, and Captain Leyden upon their successive arrivals. The respondent stated that he understood those rights and wanted to speak with a lawyer. He was placed in a caged wagon for transport to the central police station accompanied by Patrolmen Gleckman, Williams, and McKenna. Captain Leyden instructed the officers not to question, intimidate, or coerce him. While en route to the central station, Patrolman Gleckman initiated a conversation with Patrolman McKenna concerning the missing shotgun. He stated that he frequented the area and that there was a school for handicapped children nearby so that God forbid one of them might find the weapon and hurt themselves. McKenna concurred that it was a safety factor. Williams overheard the remarks about a little girl possibly picking up the gun. The respondent then interrupted the conversation, stating that the officers should turn the car around so he could show them where the gun was located. After radioing back, the vehicle returned to the scene where the respondent again received Miranda warnings and led the police to a nearby field, pointing out the shotgun under some rocks by the side of the road. On March 20, 1975, a grand jury returned an indictment charging the respondent with the kidnapping, robbery, and murder of John Mulvaney. Before trial the respondent moved to suppress the shotgun and the statements he had made to the police regarding it. After an evidentiary hearing the trial judge denied the motion and the evidence was introduced at trial, resulting in a jury verdict of guilty on all counts. On appeal the Rhode Island Supreme Court in a 3-2 decision set aside the conviction. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to address for the first time the meaning of interrogation under Miranda v. Arizona.