United States v. Edwin R. Breaux

Appellant was convicted, following a jury trial, of violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113 (a) and (d) (armed bank robbery). We affirm.

The sole meritorious issue raised by this appeal involves the admission of evidence of eye witness identification. On the morning set for trial, defense counsel moved to suppress evidence of identification by certain eye witnesses on the ground that such identification was tainted by a line-up alleged to have been illegally conducted.

The very experienced trial judge thereupon conducted a full hearing outside of the presence of the jury. Each of the six witnesses participating in the line-up was thoroughly examined as to the basis of the proposed in-court identification (the hearing consumed some 230 pages of the reporter’s transcript). Four of the six witnesses testified that their present in-court identification was made wholly independent of the line-up. The court found, by what it termed “clear and convincing evidence”, that the identification of each of these four witnesses had an “independent origin” and was not tainted by the line-up. The other two witnesses were less positive in their testimony and the court excluded evidence of identification by…