Summary
The North Carolina Supreme Court reviews the admission of eyewitness identification testimony in Brandon Malone’s convictions for first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury. The court holds that the identification procedures were impermissibly suggestive but concludes that Cindy Alvarez’s identification was independently derived from her observations at the shooting and did not violate statutory or due process rights. The court affirms in part and reverses in part the decision of the Court of Appeals.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the February 2016 identification procedures involving photographs, a videotaped police interview, and observation of Malone in custody were impermissibly suggestive under due process principles.
- Whether Alvarez's in-court identification had an origin independent of the impermissibly suggestive pretrial procedures.
- Whether any error in admitting Lopez's in-court identification was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
- Whether the Eyewitness Identification Reform Act applies to identification procedures conducted by a district attorney's office legal assistant rather than a law enforcement officer.
Holdings
- The identification procedures used by the district attorney's office, including showing the witnesses photographs and a videotaped interview of Malone shortly before trial, were impermissibly suggestive.
- Alvarez's in-court identification of Malone had an origin independent of the impermissibly suggestive pretrial procedures and was sufficiently reliable for admission.
- Even assuming Lopez's identification should have been suppressed because it lacked an independent origin, any error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
- The court did not decide whether the Eyewitness Identification Reform Act applies to identification procedures conducted by a district attorney's office employee.
Key quotations
“The initial inquiry in which a reviewing court is required to engage in conducting such a due process inquiry is “whether the identification procedure was so suggestive as to create a substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.”” (17)
“The facts as found by the trial court in this case lead inescapably to the legal conclusion that the procedures employed by the District Attorney’s office on 29 February 2016 were impermissibly suggestive.” (22)
“This fact, in conjunction with the factors discussed above, convinces us that the trial court correctly concluded that Ms. Alvarez’s in-court identification had an origin that was independent of the impermissibly suggestive identification procedure conducted by the State.” (27)
Factual background
Brandon Malone was convicted of murdering Anthony Kevette Jones and assaulting Micah White during a shooting on a Burlington porch. Two eyewitnesses, Claudia Lopez and Cindy Alvarez, observed the shooting but did not positively identify Malone in police photo arrays conducted two days afterward. One or two weeks after the shooting, Alvarez identified Malone from a Facebook photograph, and approximately three and a half years later, shortly before trial, a district attorney's office legal assistant showed the witnesses photographs and portions of Malone's police interview while Malone was also observed in handcuffs and jail clothing. The trial court admitted the in-court identifications after finding them independently based on the witnesses' observations at the crime.
Procedural history
Malone was convicted in Alamance County Superior Court of first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury and received concurrent sentences of life without parole and 83 to 112 months. The Court of Appeals majority reversed and ordered a new trial, concluding that the identification procedures were impermissibly suggestive, that the in-court identifications lacked independent origin, and that the error was prejudicial. The State appealed based on the dissent and obtained discretionary review of the statutory issue.