Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

22 N.Y.2d 453

People v. Rivera

New York Court of Appeals

Decided July 2, 1968

New York Court of Appeals · decided 1968-07-02

Relies on United States v. Wade · Stovall v. Denno

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1968-07-02

How this case has been cited

Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently June 1987

9 federal appellate · 6 state decisions

90196819701980decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Bergan, J.

¶1At the trial of defendant for the hold-up of a grocery store, two witnesses, the store clerk and a customer, unqualifiedly identified him. The witnesses had defendant under observation from a distance of one to five feet in a well-lighted store (“two big fluorescent lights ”) for at least three minutes.

¶2No objection was made by the defendant to the testimony of identification by the witnesses. On cross-examination defendant adduced proof that one of the witnesses, Vargas, the customer *455who had been shot in the hold-up, identified defendant at a hospital where he was under treatment.

¶3The other witness, Vega, the clerk, came to the hospital at the same time and there separately identified defendant. No motion was made by defendant after this proof was adduced, to strike out any of the testimony of identification.

¶4Vargas had been seriously wounded in the hold-up. The police did not know whether he would or would not recover. It was entirely reasonable for them to bring defendant to the hospital immediately after arrest to see if the victims identified him. This was neither time nor place for a line-up.

¶5There is here no such uncertainty of identification or lack of physical visual opportunity to see and to remember, as to render the hospital identification “ grossly and unnecessarily suggestive ” (People v. Ballott, 20 N Y 2d 600, 607; People v. Brown, 20 N Y 2d 238).

¶6Here, as in Brown, there was ample opportunity to observe defendant during the commission of the crime, and it is equally manifest here, as it was in Brown, that the witnesses’ testimony was not based on or tainted by potentially misleading circumstances in the earlier identification.

¶7Nor is it clear that any useful purpose would now be served on a new hearing addressed to the question of the possible effect of the hospital identification on the certainty of the trial testimony where all the facts — the certain trial identification and the nature of the hospital identification — have alike been fully explored. The need for and the useful role of a hearing necessarily depend on the facts of each case. (Cf. United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218.)

¶8It may be held here, as it was in Stovall v. Denno (388 U. S. 293), that viewing the “ totality of the circumstance ” and the need for the hospital confrontation (p. 302) no violation of defendant’s constitutional rights has been demonstrated.

¶9The judgment should be affirmed.

/22/ny2d/453 · .json · Public domain