Sometimes we can’t believe our own eyes. So why should a jury trust them? That’s what the “Telfaire instruction” is about.
Police responded to a ShotSpotter alert. They arrived to hear gunshots and see people running. One officer encountered a man holding a gun but not wearing a shirt. The man had tattoos. The officer ordered him to drop the gun. The man declined. He shot at the officer instead. The officer shot back. The man ran.
But he couldn’t “outrun the radio.” A second officer heard the first officer’s general description of the shooter over the radio and about a minute later encountered a suspect matching the description. No shirt. Tattoos. With a fresh gunshot wound to his hand. The officer detained him.
Other officers found a pistol nearby. There was blood on the firearm and DNA testing matched it to the shirtless man with the gunshot wound. A forensic examination matched the gun to the casings from the shootout between the shirtless man and the first officer.
Sounds open-and-shut, right? The shirtless tattooed man who shot at the first officer was the same shirtless tattooed man with a gunshot wound detained by the second officer a minute later. No surprise when the first officer identified the defendant at trial (the person detained by the second officer and subsequently identified as Aaron Hall) as the same man who shot at him.
But Hall’s defense attorney asked the first officer if he ever provided a detailed description of Hall before trial. After all, the description he put out over the radio was general; maybe he was mistaken.
(I’ve written before about the difficult but important job defense attorneys do: https://lnkd.in/g3XUkHNc.)
The officer said he’d seen Hall’s booking photo at some time before trial. The attorney used that statement to call into question the officer’s in-court identification of Hall. Perhaps the officer only thought it was Hall who shot at him, his fragile memory prejudiced by the booking photo he subsequently saw. (I wrote a Sesame Street-themed post about similar susceptibility issues with photo arrays: https://lnkd.in/gY7R_QWW.)
Hall was convicted and appealed. Hall argued the court should have given the jury a “Telfaire instruction.” He hadn’t asked for it at trial, so in his appeal he argued the court should have given it on its own (or “sua sponte” in lawyer speak). And because it wasn’t raised at trial, appellate review was limited to ‘plain error.’
A Telfaire instruction cautions a jury to consider eyewitness testimony carefully, taking into account factors that might affect the accuracy of an identification, such as a witness’s proximity to the event, environmental conditions, time between observation and reporting, the witness’s certainty, and potentially influencing information (like seeing a booking photo).
The appellate court found no plain error in not providing a Telfaire instruction. The officer’s identification was fine. He was sure.
Read the opinion here: https://lnkd.in/ghF3pRnU.
(That image is, of course, of “The Dude” from the movie, The Big Lebowski.)