Can In-Court Idendification by the Victim Be Supressed As the Fruit of the Defendant's Unlawful Arrest ?

In United States v. Crews, 445 U.S. 463, 63 L. Ed. 2d 537, 100 S. Ct. 1244 (1980), the Court addressed the question of whether an "in-court identification of the accused by the victim of a crime should be suppressed as the fruit of the defendant's unlawful arrest." Id. at 465. In holding that the in-court identification was not the product of the alleged Fourth Amendment violation, the majority opinion refused to answer the question of whether the defendant's "corpus" or "person" could be considered a "species of evidence" and therefore a "possible fruit of police misconduct." That portion of the majority opinion authored by Justice Brennan, however, was joined by only two others, Justices Stewart and Stevens. The remaining five Justices, led by Justice White, thought it appropriate to address the question, and in so doing ostensibly rejected the claim that a defendant's "face can be suppressible as a fruit of an unlawful arrest." Analysis of Justice White's opinion, however, reveals an affirmation of the Frisbie rule of personal jurisdiction echoed in Lopez-Mendoza, rather than a complete rejection of identity as a "species" of evidence.