¶ … Manson v. Brathwaite, the government prosecuted respondent and he was convicted of possession and sale of heroin. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the dismissal of respondent's petition for habeas corpus relief, with orders to issue the writ unless the government gave notice to retry respondent and the new trial took place within a reasonable time. The government sought certiorari review.
Respondent, on a claim for habeas relief, proposed a per se rule of barring that he claimed was dictated by the demands of the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of due process. The Court used the entirety of the conditions test and concluded that the criteria appropriate in determining the acceptability of evidence offered by the prosecution in relation to identification were suitably met and complied with in respondent's case. The Court reasoned that the factors that had to be measured included the occasion of the witness to see respondent at the time of the crime, the witness' level...
Against these factors was weighed the corrupting result of the suggestive identification itself. The Court determined that it could not say that, under all the conditions of respondent's case, there was very considerable probability of irreparable misidentification. The judgment reversing the denial of respondent's motion for habeas corpus relief was reversed.
After the purchase of narcotics by an undercover police officer, the officer, who throughout the sale had directly witnessed the narcotics vendor at close range, gave an account of the vendor to another police officer, who, in turn, got a photograph of the defendant and left it at the undercover officer's office. The undercover officer recognized the person in the photograph as being the narcotics vendor. The defendant was convicted of narcotics charges in a Connecticut…
