Smith's Criminal Case Compendium
Table of Contents
State v. Boozer, 210 N.C. App. 371 (Mar. 15, 2011)
(1) The trial court properly denied the defendant’s motion to suppress asserting that an eyewitness’s pretrial identification was unduly suggestive. The eyewitness had the opportunity to view the defendant at close range for an extended period of time and was focused on and paying attention to the defendant for at least fifteen minutes. Additionally, the eyewitness described the defendant by name as someone he knew and had interacted with previously, and immediately identified a photograph of him, indicating high levels of accuracy and confidence in the eyewitness’s description and identification. Although, the eyewitness stated that he recognized but could not name all of the suspects on the night of the attack, he named the defendant and identified a photograph of him the next day. (2) No violation of G.S. 15A-284.52 (eyewitness identification procedures) occurred. The eyewitness told the detective that he had seen one of the perpetrators in a weekly newspaper called the The Slammer, but did not recall his name. The detective allowed the eyewitness to look through pages of photographs in The Slammer, and from this process the eyewitness identified one of the defendants. The detective did not know who the eyewitness was looking for and thus could not have pressured him to select one of the defendants, nor does any evidence suggest that this occurred.