The Court of Appeals, in a fill-fledged opinion by Judge Abdus-Salaam, determined all of the line-up identifications of the defendant should have been suppressed. The suppression court found that defendant’s dreadlocks constituted a “distinctive feature.” Defendant was the only person in the line-up identifications with dreadlocks. Two of the victims mentioned dreadlocks in their statements to the police, and two did not. The suppression court suppressed only the two line-up identifications made by the victims who mentioned dreadlocks:
We by no means propose that a lineup is unduly suggestive, as a matter of law, merely because a defendant has a different hairstyle than some or all of the fillers. We further decline to categorically state what features may be considered so “distinct” as to render a lineup unduly suggestive. But here, the courts below concluded that defendant’s dreadlocks were distinctive — so much so that they rendered the lineup unduly suggestive as to the two victims … who had mentioned the perpetrator’s hairstyle in their initial description to the police. This conclusion is supported by the lineup photographs introduced into evidence at the hearing, which clearly depict defendant as the only person with long, visible dreadlocks. … The lower courts’ conclusion that this same distinctive feature was not unduly suggestive for [the other two victims] was premised solely on their having not included dreadlocks as part of their descriptions. No other findings of fact were made that would distinguish the outcomes from one another. Since our holding here clarifies that a witness’s failure to mention a distinctive feature in his or her initial description is not necessarily the determinative factor in assessing a lineup’s suggestivity, here, we must conclude that there was no record support for the lower courts’ denial of suppression for [two of the four] lineups … . People v Perkins, 2016 NY Slip Op 08483, CtApp 12-20-16
CRIMINAL LAW (NO RECORD SUPPORT FOR LOWER COURT’S DENIAL OF SUPPRESSION OF LINE-UPS WHERE DEFENDANT WAS THE ONLY PERSON WITH DREADLOCKS)/EVIDENCE (CRIMINAL LAW, LINE-UPS, NO RECORD SUPPORT FOR LOWER COURT’S DENIAL OF SUPPRESSION OF LINE-UPS WHERE DEFENDANT WAS THE ONLY PERSON WITH DREADLOCKS)/SUPPRESSION (LINE-UPS, NO RECORD SUPPORT FOR LOWER COURT’S DENIAL OF SUPPRESSION OF LINE-UPS WHERE DEFENDANT WAS THE ONLY PERSON WITH DREADLOCKS)/LINE-UPS (NO RECORD SUPPORT FOR LOWER COURT’S DENIAL OF SUPPRESSION OF LINE-UPS WHERE DEFENDANT WAS THE ONLY PERSON WITH DREADLOCKS)/IDENTIFICATION (CRIMINAL LAW, NO RECORD SUPPORT FOR LOWER COURT’S DENIAL OF SUPPRESSION OF LINE-UPS WHERE DEFENDANT WAS THE ONLY PERSON WITH DREADLOCKS)