Criminal Procedure — due process — eyewitness identifications

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U.S. Supreme Court

Criminal

Criminal Procedure — due process — eyewitness identifications

The Due Process Clause does not require a preliminary judicial inquiry into the reliability of an eyewitness identification when the identification was not procured under unnecessarily suggestive circumstances arranged by law enforcement.

In urging a broadly applicable rule, Perry maintains that eyewitness identifications are uniquely unreliable. The fallibility of eyewitness evidence does not, without the taint of improper state conduct, warrant a due process rule requiring a trial court to screen the evidence for reliability before allowing the jury to assess its creditworthiness. The Court’s unwillingness to adopt such a rule rests, in large part, on its recognition that the jury, not the judge, traditionally determines the reliability of evidence. It also takes account of other safeguards built into the adversary system that caution juries against placing undue weight on eyewitness testimony of questionable reliability. These protections include the defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights to counsel and to confront and cross-examine the eyewitness, eyewitness-specific instructions warning juries to take care in appraising identification evidence, and state and federal rules of evidence permitting trial judges to exclude relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially outweighed by its prejudicial impact or potential for misleading the jury. Many of these safeguards were availed of by Perry’s defense. Given the safeguards generally applicable in criminal trials, the introduction of Blandon’s eyewitness testimony, without a preliminary judicial assessment of its reliability, did not render Perry’s trial fundamentally unfair.

Affirmed.

10-8974 Perry v. New Hampshire

Ginsburg, J.; Thomas, J., concurring; Sotomayor, J., dissenting