Perry v. New Hampshire

The Court is very concerned with the enormous influence the government has in the pretrial eyewitness identification process. A principle of due process is that trial courts screen these events to ensure that the government has provided a fair method of establishing the identity of the offender. However, the Court noted that “[W]e have not extended pretrial screening for reliability to cases in which the suggestive circumstances were not arranged by law enforcement officers.” This is because all prior decisions have aimed “to deter police from rigging identification procedures, for example, at a lineup, show-up, or photograph array.”

There were reasons to question the accuracy of the eyewitness’ identification in this case: the parking lot was dark; the defendant was standing next to a police officer; he was the only African-American male in the vicinity; and the witness was later unable to pick the defendant out of a photographic array. However, because the government’s procedures were not unnecessarily suggestive, the reliability of this testimony was for the jury to consider, not the trial court to suppress. “Only where the police employ suggestive identification techniques…does the Due Process Clause require a trial court to assess the reliability of identification evidence before permitting a jury to consider it.”