United States Vs Wade Involves a Defendant in the Robbery of a Federally Insured Bank essays

United States Vs Wade Involves a Defendant in the Robbery of a Federally Insured Bank essays UNITED STATES v. WADE, 388 U.S. 218 (1967) involves a defendant in the robbery of a federally insured bank who was placed in a lineup several weeks after he had been indicted. The lineup was conducted without notice to and in the absence of his counsel. He was identified by two witnesses as being the robber at the lineup and the trial and was subsequently convicted of the crime. The defendant argues that the lineup violated his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and his Sixth Amendment The question in the case was whether courtroom identifications of an accused at trial are to be excluded from evidence because the accused was exhibited to the witnesses before trial at a post-indictment lineup conducted for identification purposes without notice to and in the absence of counsel. The court held that the lineup did not violate the Fifth Amendment, but did find that the Sixth Amendment guarantees an accused the right to counsel at any critical confrontation by the prosecution at pretrial proceedings where the results might well determine his fate and where the absence of counsel might impede the right to a fair trial. Identification procedures, which had theretofore been treated as a purely factual matter left largely for lay jurors to handle, for the first time took on constitutional dimensions and created a new per se rule of constitution law for identification procedures. The catalyst was the determination that a police lineup was deemed to be a "critical stage," thereby entitling an accused who was forced to stand in a lineup to the Sixth Amendment right to the assistance of counsel. The rule applies to any identification technique and a fortiori to a face-to-face encounter between ...