Simmons v. United States

In Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377 (1968), the defendant moved to suppress from evidence a suitcase containing incriminating items. The defendant testified he owned these items. The court denied the motion. The defendant's testimony at the suppression hearing was admitted at trial. On appeal, he argued it was reversible error to admit his testimony from the motion hearing at trial because that testimony established his ownership of the suitcase, connecting him to the crime. The lower court reasoned that the defendant's testimony was voluntary and he had waived his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in order to establish standing to invoke his Fourth Amendment right to be free from illegal searches and seizures. The Supreme Court rejected this reasoning because it assumed the defendant had a choice--refuse to testify at the suppression hearing and forego the benefit, i.e., the constitutional protection from illegal searches and seizures. 390 U.S. at 393-94. The Court found "it intolerable that one constitutional right should have to be surrendered in order to assert another." 390 U.S. at 394. It held a defendant's testimony in support of a motion to suppress evidence cannot be admitted against the defendant at trial regarding guilt unless no objection is made. 390 U.S. at 394. The Court noted that the danger of misidentification is increased through a single photo identification procedure. Id. at 383. In Simmons, however, the court permitted the use of a suggestive photo identification procedure because "a serious felony had been committed" and "the perpetrators were still at large." Id. at 384. The court found it was necessary for the police to swiftly "determine whether they were on the right track." Id. at 385. In Simmons v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court laid out the governing test to determine whether a defendant's due process rights have been violated where a witness makes an in-court identification stemming from previous exposure to a suggestive photographic array: "We hold that each case must be considered on its own facts, and that convictions based on eyewitness identification at trial following a pretrial identification by photograph will be set aside on that ground only if the photographic identification procedure was so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification."