assuming suggestive show-up procedures but holding identification nonetheless reliable and admissible
How later courts described this case
- assuming suggestive show-up procedures but holding identification nonetheless reliable and admissible
- finding plain error, and reversing, because of the jury’s “likely improper consideration of the impeaching statement as substantive evidence”
- finding plain error in failure to give cautionary instruction where government impeached its own witness with a prior inconsistent statement
- failure to give sua sponte limiting instruction found to be reversible error under the circumstances
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
NEWMAN, Chief Judge,
concurring:
I join the opinion of Judge Harris except for Part III. Whether, on the one hand, one reads footnote 5 of Johnson v. United States, D.C.App., 387 A.2d 1084 (1978) (en banc), as reaffirming a per se reversal rule where the government impeaches its own witness with a prior inconsistent statement and the court fails to give a limiting instruction, sua sponte, or, on the other hand, as Judge Harris does, that such a failure must be evaluated under the plain error regime of Watts v. United States, D.C.App., 362 A.2d 706 (1976) (en banc), we are in agreement that this conviction must be reversed.
KELLY, J., concurs in the result only.