Justice Steven Barrett
Prosecutors sought a ruling on admissibility of photographic evidence made by two witnesses. The court granted the application, permitting prosecutors to introduce as direct evidence both the testimony of the witnesses and the pictures. At a Wade hearing prosecutors presented testimony of a detective assigned to investigate the fatal shooting of Tongue. Witness Barnes testified he observed "XL" shoot Tongue, accessed his MySpace account and printed out a photo of defendant, identifying him as the person he saw shoot Tongue. Landrum was interviewed and stated he recognized the shooter from Truman High School. The detective showed Landrum a 2007 yearbook from the school in which all the young men were the same age, wearing black tuxedos, white shirts and red bow ties, thus defendant could not be prejudiced by the admission. Landrum identified defendant as the person who ran past him with a gun on the subject evening. The court found evidence of the identification of defendant's MySpace picture by Barnes was admissible as it was Barnes who initiated the identification procedure. It also found none of the other identification procedures could be considered suggestive, ruling Barnes' and Landrum's photographic identifications admissible at trial.
