This page of Baker's Legal Pages contains casenotes from recent decisions of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. This information is made available as a free public service for your personal, non-commercial use. While every effort has been made to provide accurate material at this site, it is provided "as is" and no representations are made that it is free of mistakes or inaccuracies. If you inform me of any mistake or inaccuracy that you find here, I will make every effort to determine what corrections are required and to make those changes.

Below are casenotes from recent opinions of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, supplementing Baker's Texas Criminal Evidence Handbook. Each casenote is linked to the text of the opinion from which it was derived.

For links to other casesnote pages supplementing Baker's Texas Criminal Evidence Handbook, see the Criminal Evidence Handbook Casenotes Listing.

For links to casesnote pages for other handbooks, see the Main Casenotes Listing.

If you already know the name of a particular recent case of interest, you may go directly to that opinion from the Table of Recent Opinions.

independent origin - pretrial photo display (Identification Testimony)

• It was not error to admit in-court identification even though some of pretrial procedures were suggestive (suggesting that suspect was in photo lineup), where record showed no substantial risk of irreparable misidentification. [Circs of ID: Twenty-seven days following the instant offense, witness was shown a photographic line-up. After pointing to def’s picture and stating that he “looked familiar,” witness tentatively identified another individual. Witness was then shown two Polaroid photographs of def looking downward; witness and two other witnesses had described the suspect as assuming this position when they saw him. Officer did not specifically indicate to witness that def was the man arrested for the offense, but did tell him that he was in the photo line-up. After viewing the Polaroids, witness pointed to def’s picture as depicting the man he had seen the day of the offense. About seven weeks later, witness was shown a live line-up in which he identified def. At the pre-trial hearing, witness testified that the photo line-up did not influence his decision in the live line-up, and further stated that he could identify def in court and at the live line-up because he independently remembered him from the day of the offense. Factors: (1) Witness was a reserve police officer at the time of the instant offense and had one to two minutes in which to view def. He was dropping his wife off at work when they saw the primer-red Camaro and a man walking towards them from the direction of the victim’s house. They felt the situation was unusual, so witness waited with his wife until another employee arrived before she got out of their vehicle to open up the business. His experience as a trained police officer and his concern for his wife could have heightened his ability to take in detail despite the fact that their infant son was screaming in the car. (2) His description of the suspect matched that of the other two witnesses who saw the suspect that morning, and matched def’s general appearance. (3) His first confrontation with def was at the photo line-up, twenty-seven days following the crime; he indicated def looked familiar, but initially identified another individual -- whose picture looked very similar to appellant’s -- because, he stated, of how the man was holding his eyes. Witness never changed his description of the suspect at any time. At both the live line-up and in court, he positively identified def and testified that the identification was based on what he observed the morning of the offense and not on any intervening photographs he may have viewed.] Ibarra v State, 11 S.W.3d 189 (Oct. 20, 1999)

not error to admit evidence of pretrial identification (Identification Testimony)

• It was not error to deny motion to suppress out-of-court photo identification, over objection that photo lineup appeared to be made up of individuals of "different races," where race of suspects in lineup was not stated in record; court reviewed photo lineup, and all suspects appeared to be similarly-complected; all had short dark hair, slight facial hair, dark eyes, and were all about the same age; all suspects were shown from the neck up; officer testified that he was able to modify the photos by computer so that they all appeared similar in size, position, and background; none of suspects stood out as apparently of a different race from the other suspects. Murphy v State (June 25, 2003, No. 74,145)

• It was not abuse of discretion and did not violate due process to admit evid of out-of-court identification over claim pretrial photo spread was unduly suggestive and caused misidentification because def's photo was only one showing booking numbers, where four of the other photographs showed other parts of the police department booking card, and in the sixth photograph, the person was depicted standing against a height indicator. Therefore, a witness could make the same assumptions about all six of the persons depicted. Furthermore, all of the pictures in the photo spread depict men with similar features and characteristics. Finally, although some of the witnesses claimed to have observed def at the scene for only several seconds, all of the witnesses testified at the suppression hearing that the suspect they identified in the photo spread was undoubtedly the person they had seen running from the scene of the crime. Conner v State (September 12, 2001, No. 73,591)