Oregon Appellate Court 03-07-12
by: Abassos • March 7, 2012 • no comments
Read the full article for details about the following new cases:
- Eyewitness Identification - Suggestive Procedures
- Civil Commitment - Danger to Self - Suicidality
Eyewitness Identification - Suggestive Procedures
Giving a witness only one suspect to either identify or not is a quintessentially suggestive identification. It creates an unavoidable inference that the police think the suspect is the correct person. A preemptive warning does little to diminish such a powerful inference. Here, the witness was given a voice recording to identify. The state was not able to establish that the identification was otherwise reliable because, despite the witness's certainty about the identification, the voice on the recording (i.e., defendant) was not consistent with the description of the perpetrator's voice the witness gave to the police. Thus, the identification should have been excluded.
A photographic throwdown was also suggestive because "defendant was the only individual with short, dark hair, had any discernible facial hair, and appeared to be Hispanic." The identification was not otherwise reliable since the witness only said at the time that the photo "resembled" the person.
Reversed and Remanded. State v Delatorre-Vargas
Civil Commitment - Danger to Self - Suicidality
The state established that it was highly probable that AMIP would attempt suicide in the near future where, as a result of his criminal troubles, he said that his life was over, acquired the means to commit suicide and was about to go through with his plan when the police arrived. Moreover, there was not only scant evidence that client improved during his week in the hospital, there was evidence that the stressors would be even greater upon his release. State v R.E.
