Immediately after being assaulted and robbed at gunpoint, the
victim notified the police and gave them a full description of her
assailant. Several days later, respondent, who matched the
suspect's description, was seen by the police around the scene of
the crime. After an attempt to photograph him proved unsuccessful,
respondent was taken into custody, ostensibly as a suspected truant
from school, and was detained at police headquarters, where he was
briefly questioned, photographed, and then released. Thereafter,
the victim identified respondent's photograph as that of her
assailant. Respondent was again taken into custody and at a
court-ordered lineup was identified by the victim. Respondent was
then indicted for armed robbery and other offenses. On respondent's
pretrial motion to suppress all identification testimony, the trial
court found that respondent's initial detention at the police
station constituted an arrest without probable cause, and
accordingly ruled that the products of that arrest -- the
photographic and lineup identifications -- could not be introduced
at trial, but further held that the victim's ability to identify
respondent in court was based upon independent recollection
untainted by the intervening identifications, and that therefore
such testimony was admissible. At trial, the victim once more
identified respondent as her assailant, and respondent was
convicted of armed robbery. The District of Columbia Court of
Appeals reversed, holding that the in court identification
testimony should have been excluded as a product of the violation
of respondent's Fourth Amendment rights.
Held: The judgment is reversed. Pp.
445 U. S.
470-477;
445 U. S. 477;
445 U. S.
477-479.
389
A.2d 277, reversed.
MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court with
respect to Parts I, II-A, II-B, and II-C, concluding that:
The in-court identification need not be suppressed as the fruit
of respondent's concededly unlawful arrest, but is admissible
because the police's knowledge of respondent's identity and the
victim's independent recollections of him both antedated the
unlawful arrest, and were thus untainted by the constitutional
violation. Pp.
445 U. S.
470-474,
445 U. S.
477.
Page 445 U. S. 464
(a) The victim's presence in the courtroom at respondent's trial
was not the product of any police misconduct. Her identity was
known long before there was any official misconduct, and her
presence in court was thus not traceable to any Fourth Amendment
violation. Pp.
445 U. S.
471-472.
(b) Nor did the illegal arrest infect the victim's ability to
give accurate identification testimony. At trial, she merely
retrieved her mnemonic representation of the assailant formed at
the time of the crime, compared it to the figure of respondent in
the courtroom, and positively identified him as the robber. Pp.
445 U. S.
472-473.
(c) 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.
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. P.
445 U. S.
474.
MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, joined by MR. JUSTICE STEWART and MR.
JUSTICE STEVENS, concluded in Part II-D that the Court need not
decide whether respondent's person should be considered evidence,
and therefore a possible "fruit" of police misconduct, since the
Fourth Amendment violation in question yielded nothing of
evidentiary value that the police did not already have.
Respondent's unlawful arrest served merely to link together two
extant ingredients in his identification. While 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.
Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U. S. 721,
distinguished. Pp.
445 U. S.
474-477.
BRENNAN, J., announced the Court's judgment and delivered the
opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II-A, II-B, and II-C,
in which STEWART, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ., joined, and
an opinion with respect to Part II-D, in which STEWART and STEVENS,
JJ., joined. POWELL, J., filed an opinion concurring in part, in
which BLACKMUN, J., joined,
post, p.
445 U. S. 477.
WHITE, J., filed an opinion concurring in the result, in which
BURGER, C.J., and REHNQUIST, J., joined,
post, p.
445 U. S. 477.
MARSHALL, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the
case.
Page 445 U. S. 465
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 10 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
Page 445 U. S. 466
robber given to the police by these women matched that given by
the first victim: all three described their assailant as a young
black male, 15-18 years old, approximately 5'5" to 5'8" tall,
slender in build, with a very dark complexion and smooth skin.
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. [
Footnote 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."
[
Footnote 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 photograph
Page 445 U. S. 467
of respondent, but the inclement weather conditions frustrated
his several efforts to produce a picture suitable for display to
the robbery victims. Respondent was therefore taken into custody,
ostensibly because he was a suspected truant. He was then
transported to Park Police headquarters, where the police briefly
questioned him, obtained the desired photograph, telephoned his
school, and released him. Respondent was never formally arrested or
charged with any offense, and his detention at the station lasted
no more than an hour.
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. [
Footnote 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. [
Footnote 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
constituted
Page 445 U. S. 468
an arrest without probable cause. [
Footnote 5] Accordingly, the court ruled that the products
of that arrest -- the photographic and lineup identifications --
could not be introduced at trial. But the judge concluded that the
victims' ability to identify respondent in court was based upon
independent recollection untainted by the intervening
identifications, and therefore held such testimony admissible. At
trial, all three victims identified respondent as their assailant.
On April 23, the jury convicted him of armed robbery of the first
victim, but returned verdicts of not guilty on all other charges.
[
Footnote 6] Respondent was
sentenced to four years' probation under the Federal Youth
Corrections Act, 18 U.S.C. § 5010(a).
On appeal, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, sitting en
banc, reversed respondent's conviction and ordered the suppression
of the first robbery victim's in court identification. [
Footnote 7]
Page 445 U. S. 469
389
A.2d 277 (1978). The court viewed its decision to be a wholly
conventional application of the familiar "fruit of the poisonous
tree" doctrine.
See Wong Sun v. United States,
371 U. S. 471
(1963);
Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States,
251 U. S. 385
(1920). After upholding the trial court's finding that respondent
was detained without probable cause -- a determination that is not
challenged in this Court, [
Footnote
8] the Court of Appeals turned to consideration of what
evidentiary consequences ought to flow from that Fourth Amendment
violation. In deciding whether the in-court identification should
have been suppressed, the court observed that the analysis must
focus on whether the evidence was obtained by official
"exploitation" of the "primary illegality" within the meaning of
Wong Sun, supra, [
Footnote
9] and that the principal issue was whether the unlawful police
behavior bore a causal relationship to the acquisition of the
challenged testimony. The court answered that question in the
affirmative, reasoning that, but for respondent's unlawful arrest,
the police would not have obtained the photograph that led to his
subsequent identification by the complaining witnesses and,
ultimately, prosecution of the case. [
Footnote 10] Satisfied that the
Page 445 U. S. 470
in-court identification was thus at least indirectly the product
of official misconduct, the court then considered whether any of
three commonly advanced exceptions to the exclusionary rule -- the
"independent source," "inevitable discovery," or "attenuation"
doctrines [
Footnote 11] --
nonetheless justified its admission. Finding these exceptions
inapplicable, the Court of Appeals concluded that the in-court
identification testimony should have been excluded as a product of
the violation of respondent's Fourth Amendment rights. We granted
certiorari. 440 U.S. 907 (1979). We reverse.
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
371 U. S. 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, [
Footnote 12] items observed or words overheard in the
course of the unlawful activity, [
Footnote 13] or confessions or statements of the accused
obtained during an illegal arrest and detention. [
Footnote 14]
Page 445 U. S. 471
In the typical "fruit of the poisonous tree" case, however, the
challenged evidence was acquired by the police after some initial
Fourth Amendment violation, and the question before the court is
whether the chain of causation proceeding from the unlawful conduct
has become so attenuated or has been interrupted by some
intervening circumstance so as to remove the "taint" imposed upon
that evidence by the original illegality. Thus, most cases begin
with the premise that the challenged evidence is in some sense the
product of illegal governmental activity. It is the Court of
Appeals' application of that premise to the facts of this case that
we find erroneous.
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
371 U. S.
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
Page 445 U. S. 472
search or arrest of the accused. [
Footnote 15] Here, the victim's identity was known long
before there was any official misconduct, and her presence in court
is thus not traceable to any Fourth Amendment violation.
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. [
Footnote 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,
392 U. S. 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, [
Footnote 17] just
Page 445 U. S. 473
the opposite may be true. But in the present case, the trial
court expressly found that the witness' courtroom identification
rested on an independent recollection of her initial encounter with
the assailant, uninfluenced by the pretrial identifications, and
this determination finds ample support in the record. [
Footnote 18] In short, the victim's
capacity to identify her assailant in court neither resulted from
nor was biased by the unlawful police conduct committed long after
she had developed that capacity. [
Footnote 19]
Page 445 U. S. 474
C
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,
420 U. S. 119
(1975);
Frisbie v. Collins, 342 U.
S. 519 (1952);
Ker v. Illinois, 119 U.
S. 436 (1886). [
Footnote 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 evidentiary value, much like a
photograph showing respondent at the scene of the
Page 445 U. S. 475
crime. [
Footnote 21] And,
as with the introduction of such a photograph, he contends that the
crucial inquiry for Fourth Amendment purposes is whether that
evidence has become available only as a result of official
misconduct. We read the Court of Appeals' opinion as essentially
adopting this analysis to support its suppression order.
See 389 A.2d at 285-287.
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. [
Footnote 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
Page 445 U. S. 476
fruits of an unlawful detention. A woman had been raped in her
home, and during the next 10 days, the local police rounded up
scores of black youths, randomly stopping, interrogating, and
fingerprinting them. Davis' prints were discovered to match a set
found at the scene of the crime, and on that basis he was arrested
and convicted. Had it not been for Davis' illegal detention,
however, his prints would not have been obtained and he would never
have become a suspect. Here, in contrast, the robbery investigation
had already focused on respondent, and the police had independent
reasonable grounds to suspect his culpability.
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
394 U. S. 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
394 U. S.
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).
Page 445 U. S. 477
The parallels between
Bynum and this case are apparent:
the pretrial identification obtained through use of the photograph
taken during respondent's illegal detention cannot be introduced;
but the in-court identification is admissible, even if respondent's
argument be accepted, because the police's knowledge of
respondent's identity and the victim's independent recollections of
him both antedated the unlawful arrest, and were thus untainted by
the constitutional violation. The judgment of the Court of Appeals
is accordingly
Reversed.
MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL took no part in the consideration or
decision of this case.
* This part is joined only by MR. JUSTICE STEWART and MR.
JUSTICE STEVENS.
[
Footnote 1]
Officer Rayfield testified that his suspicions were further
aroused both by respondent's presence on the almost deserted park
grounds and by his apparently aimless meanderings around the
restroom and concessions area.
[
Footnote 2]
Tr. 52. References are to the transcript of the suppression
hearing and trial held on April 22 and 23, 1974, in the Superior
Court of the District of Columbia.
[
Footnote 3]
The third victim did not review the photographic array, nor did
she attend the subsequent lineup.
[
Footnote 4]
See D.C.Code §§ 22-502, 22-2901, and 22-3202
(1973).
[
Footnote 5]
The suppression hearing produced conflicting testimony as to the
reasons for the attempt to photograph respondent. Officer Rayfield
asserted that respondent was processed as a routine juvenile
truant, a procedure that involves photographing the suspect and
then calling his school and home to determine whether he is in fact
truant. Tr. 53-54. Rayfield did acknowledge, however, that he had
some suspicion that respondent was the robber described in the
police description.
Id. at 55, 57. Similarly, Detective
Ore, while maintaining that respondent was apprehended and taken
down to Park Police headquarters as a suspected truant,
id. at 61, 63, admitted that his intent in trying to
photograph him was to obtain a picture that could be shown to the
complaining witnesses.
Id. at 59.
The Government does not now attempt to justify respondent's
detention on the truancy charge, nor did it raise that argument in
the court below. The Court of Appeals found that the procedures
followed in respondent's case did not conform to the typical
truancy practices described by the police, and that the officers
never even superficially pursued the truancy matter. By the same
token, the court expressly disavowed the existence of a "sham" or
"pretext" arrest, and it analyzed respondent's apprehension as a
traditional arrest for armed robbery and assault without probable
cause.
389
A.2d 277, 299-300, n. 32 (DC 1978).
[
Footnote 6]
Because respondent was acquitted of all charges in connection
with the robberies of January 6, the only issue raised on his
appeal was the admissibility of the first robbery victim's in court
identification.
[
Footnote 7]
On February 16, 1977, a division of the Court of Appeals
originally affirmed respondent's conviction,
369
A.2d 1063. Three months later, however, the full court granted
respondent's motion for rehearing and vacated its earlier judgment.
Record 356.
[
Footnote 8]
See Brief for United States 5, n. 4.
[
Footnote 9]
"We need not hold that all evidence is 'fruit of the poisonous
tree' simply because it would not have come to light but for the
illegal actions of the police. Rather, the more apt question in
such a case is"
"whether, granting establishment of the primary illegality, the
evidence to which instant objection is made has been come at by
exploitation of that illegality, or instead by means sufficiently
distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint."
"Maguire, Evidence of Guilt, 221 (1959)."
Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. at
371 U. S.
487-488.
[
Footnote 10]
"[T]he unlawful arrest produced photographs which were shown to
the complaining witnesses who, as a result, identified
[respondent]; this resulted in his reapprehension, which yielded a
court-ordered lineup identification and, eventually, in-court
identification testimony during prosecution of the case."
389 A.2d at 289.
[
Footnote 11]
See Nardone v. United States, 308 U.
S. 338,
308 U. S. 341
(1939) (attenuation);
Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United
States, 251 U. S. 385,
251 U. S. 392
(1920) (independent source);
United States ex rel. Owens v.
Twomey, 508 F.2d 858, 865 (CA7 1974) (inevitable
discovery).
[
Footnote 12]
E.g., Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U.
S. 560 (1971);
Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S.
40 (1968);
Beck v. Ohio, 379 U. S.
89 (1964).
[
Footnote 13]
E.g., United States v. Giordano, 416 U.
S. 505 (1974);
see Silverman v. United States,
365 U. S. 505
(1961);
McGinnis v. United States, 227 F.2d 598 (CA1
1955).
[
Footnote 14]
E.g., Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.
S. 200 (1979);
Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.
S. 590 (1975).
[
Footnote 15]
See generally Ruffin, Out on a Limb of the Poisonous
Tree: The Tainted Witness, 15 UCLA L.Rev. 32 (1967).
[
Footnote 16]
At oral argument, the Government compared the witness' mental
image to an undeveloped photograph of the robber that is given to
the police immediately after the crime, but which becomes visible
only at the trial. Tr. of Oral Arg. 11-12. Although this analogy
may not comport precisely with current psychological theories of
perception,
see, e.g., Buckout, Eyewitness Testimony,
Scientific American 23 (Dec.1974), it is apt for purposes of
analysis.
[
Footnote 17]
See, e.g., P. Wall, Eye-Witness Identification in
Criminal Cases 464 (1965); Note, Did Your Eyes Deceive You? Expert
Psychological Testimony on the Unreliability of Eyewitness
Identification, 29 Stan.L.Rev. 969, 974-989 (1977).
[
Footnote 18]
United States v. Wade, 388 U.
S. 218 (1967), enumerated several factors for
consideration in applying the "independent origins" test.
Id. at
388 U. S. 241.
Cf. Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U. S.
98 (1977);
Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.
S. 188 (1972). We attach particular significance to the
following circumstances which support the trial court's
determination in this case: the victim viewed her assailant at
close range for a period of 5-10 minutes under excellent lighting
conditions, and with no distractions, Tr. 4, 7, 111; respondent
closely matched the description given by the victim immediately
after the robbery,
id. at 52, 59; the victim failed to
identify anyone other than respondent,
id. at 8, but twice
selected respondent without hesitation in nonsuggestive pretrial
identification procedures,
id. at 9-11; and only a week
had passed between the victim's initial observation of respondent
and her first identification of him,
id. at 8-9.
Our reliance on the fact that the witness twice identified
respondent in out-of-court confrontations is not intended to assign
any independent evidentiary value to those identifications, for to
do so would undermine the exclusionary rule's objectives in denying
the Government the benefit of any evidence wrongfully obtained.
Rather, the accurate pretrial identifications assume significance
only to the extent that they indicate that the witness' ability to
identify respondent antedated any police misconduct, and hence that
her in-court identification had an "independent source."
[
Footnote 19]
Respondent contends that the "independent source" test of
United States v. Wade, supra, and
Stovall v.
Denno, 388 U. S. 293
(1967), although derived from an identical formulation in
Wong
Sun, see 388 U.S. at
388 U. S. 241,
seeks only to determine whether the in-court identification is
sufficiently reliable to satisfy due process, and is thus
inapplicable in the context of this Fourth Amendment violation. We
agree that a satisfactory resolution of the reliability issue does
not provide a complete answer to the considerations underlying
Wong Sun, but note only that, in the present case, both
concerns are met.
[
Footnote 20]
Cf. United States v. Blue, 384 U.
S. 251,
384 U. S. 255
(1966):
"Our numerous precedents ordering the exclusion of such
illegally obtained evidence assume implicitly that the remedy does
not extend to barring the prosecution altogether. So drastic a step
might advance marginally some of the ends served by exclusionary
rules, but it would also increase to an intolerable degree
interference with the public interest in having the guilty brought
to book."
In some cases, of course, prosecution may effectively be
foreclosed by the absence of the challenged evidence. But this
contemplated consequence is the product of the exclusion of
specific evidence tainted by the Fourth Amendment violation, and is
not the result of a complete bar to prosecution.
[
Footnote 21]
Cf. Stevenson v. Mathews, 529 F.2d 61, 63 (CA7
196).
[
Footnote 22]
Thus we are not called upon in this case to hypothesize about
whether routine investigatory procedures would eventually have led
the police to discover respondent's culpability. His involvement in
the robberies was already suspected, and no new evidence was
acquired through the violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.
MR. JUSTICE POWELL, with whom MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN joins,
concurring in part.
I join the Court's opinion except for
445 U.
S. 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
445 U. S.
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
Page 445 U. S. 478
illegal arrest. Because I consider this question to be
controlled by the rationale of
Frisbie v. Collins,
342 U. S. 519
(1952), I write separately.
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
342 U. S. 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,
428 U. S. 485
(1976);
Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.
S. 103,
420 U. S. 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
445 U.
S. JUSTICE BRENNAN's opinion, however, the in-court
identification might have been inadmissible had there not ben 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
Page 445 U. S. 479
victim of crime Y identifies him in the courtroom; the
identification has an independent, untainted basis. I would not
suppress such an identification on the grounds that the police had
no reason to suspect the defendant of crime Y prior to their
illegal questioning, and that it is only because of that
questioning that he is present in the courtroom for trial. I would
reach the same result whether or not his arrest for crime X was
without probable cause or reasonable suspicion.
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's 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.
* For the same reason, I cannot join the analysis at the
beginning of
445 U. S.
because it implies that a courtroom identification would be
inadmissible if the defendant's physical presence had resulted from
exploitation of a violation of the defendant's Fourth Amendment
rights.