LAMONT JEFFERY GEIGER v. STATE OF MARYLAND
Court of Special Appeals, Moylan, Dec. 5, 2017,
Identification – As long as the suspect is identified at trial, no evidence is required at trial regarding how the defendant’s identity was discovered.
Facts:
In 2015, a man walked into a tire store in Waldorf, MD and paid for apx. $1,000 in tires with a fraudulent credit card number.
The man gave employees at the tire store a fake North Carolina driver’s license. Employees at the store made a copy of the license.
When the purchase was rejected, police were called.
Detective Kelly was the primary on the case. He brought the fake NC driver’s license back to the station and had a clerk run a check on the license in North Carolina motor vehicle records.
No results came back, indicating that the license was fake.
Police used facial recognition software to identify the man whose face appeared on the fake license as Lamont Geiger.
Geiger was charged with the theft. At trial, store employees identified him as the man who paid for the tires using a fake ID and credit card.
Detective Kelly testified that he stood by and watched the clerk run a check of NC driver records and saw that there were no results.
A copy of Geiger’s Maryland driver’s license was also entered into evidence and compared with the photograph on the fake North Carolina license.
Geiger was convicted after a bench trial in the Circuit Court for Charles County.
Geiger appealed, arguing that the State failed to show how they identified him. He also argued that Detective Kelly should not have been able to testify about the absence of records in the NC system because he didn’t personally run the check.
Held:
Hearsay – Hearsay is an assertion, made outside of trial, that is offered at trial in order to prove that the assertion is true.
Hearsay – There are two reasons that hearsay is not usually admitted in a criminal trial: 1) it is not reliable and 2) the 6th Amendment requires that a defendant “be confronted with the witnesses against him”
Hearsay – Exceptions – Unless circumstances indicate a lack of trustworthiness, testimony that a diligent search was conducted and failed to find a public record is allowed.
Hearsay – It is not hearsay if a witness testifies that he watched someone else conduct a search of a database.
Identification – For trial purposes, it is not necessary to present evidence regarding how the identify of the suspect was uncovered.
From the Case: “Even if reading the entrails of birds is a questionable technique for identifying a suspect, a suspect thus identified most assuredly does not go free.”
Identification – Even an illegal arrest resulting in discovery of the defendant’s identity will not result in a positive identification being kept out of court.
Note: In general, hearsay and other inadmissible evidence will be skipped by merely testifying that “based on information received” the officer did something.
Investigation Evidence – Where testimony about a detective’s investigation introduces inadmissible evidence, it will not be allowed in court.
Note: For example, you could not generally testify in front of a jury about what your informant told you, that the defendant invoked his right to remain silent instead of telling you what happened, or that the defendant had been arrested thirty times before for unrelated crimes.