State v. McLaurin

Citations

• 352 Conn. 500

Syllabus

The defendant appealed, on the granting of certification, from the judgment of the Appellate Court, which had affirmed his conviction of numerous crimes, including first degree robbery, in connection with his role in an armed robbery of a restaurant. The perpetrators of the robbery had fled the restaurant, but the police apprehended the defendant shortly thereafter and detained him in a nearby parking lot. An officer then transported B, a restaurant employee who had witnessed the robbery, to the parking lot, where she identified the defendant as one of the perpetrators. The trial court denied the defendant's motion to suppress B's identification of the defendant, reasoning that the one-on-one showup identification procedure the police used to obtain the identification was not unnecessarily suggestive and that, even if it was, B's identification was nevertheless reliable under the totality of the circumstances. On appeal to this court, the defendant claimed, inter alia, that the Appellate Court, in upholding the trial court's denial of the defendant's motion to suppress, incorrectly had concluded that the showup procedure the police used to obtain the identification was not unnecessarily suggestive. Held: Even if this court assumed that the challenged showup procedure was unnecessarily suggestive, the trial court correctly concluded that B's identifi- This case originally was argued before a panel of this court consisting of former Chief Justice Robinson and Justices McDonald, D'Auria, Mullins, Ecker, Alexander and Dannehy. Thereafter, former Chief Justice Robinson and Justice Alexander were removed from the panel, and the case was reargued before a panel consisting of Chief Justice Mullins, Justices McDon- ald, D'Auria, Ecker and Dannehy, and Judges Clark and Westbrook. 352 Conn. 500 JULY, 2025 501 State v. McLaurin cation of the defendant was reliable under all of the relevant circumstances, and, accordingly, the Appellate Court properly upheld the trial court's de