Yokely

INTRODUCTION

Shon Ramone Yokely (defendant) was convicted of murder in 1992. A federal district court granted defendant a writ of habeas corpus based on its findings that defendant’s constitutional rights had been violated because his attorney was not present at a live lineup at which two eyewitnesses identified defendant as the murderer, and because his attorneys had failed to object to admission of the lineup and in-court identifications by those witnesses at defendant’s trial. At defendant’s retrial, the trial court independently determined that the testimony of those two witnesses had origins independent of the tainted lineup, and admitted their identification testimony. Defendant again was convicted of murder.

We hold that the findings of the federal district court did not preclude the trial court from determining independently the admissibility of the in-court identification testimony of the two witnesses, and that there is substantial evidence to support the trial court’s conclusion that the identification testimony of both witnesses had an origin independent of the illegal live lineup. We reject defendant’s other claims of trial error, and we correct certain…