United States v. Sanders

Lamar Sanders (defendant) and Ralph Scott kidnapped Timicka Nobles’s daughter, RE, and extorted Nobles to empty the safe at her mother’s currency-exchange business. Nobles was able to tip off police, and police arrested Scott at the drop-off location, but Sanders escaped. Inside the car that Scott drove to the scene, police found Sanders’s license and photographs of Sanders. At the drop-off location, officers showed Nobles one or two of the photos, and Nobles identified Sanders in at least one photograph as the man who escaped. Nobles’s description of that man was five inches and 60 pounds off from Sanders’s height and weight. About two hours later, Nobles and RE were separately shown formal photo arrays at the police department that included Sanders and five other similar-looking men. Nobles and RE both identified Sanders. Sanders turned himself in shortly after. Before trial, Sanders moved to suppress Nobles’s identifications as a violation of his due-process rights, arguing that showing Nobles the photographs from the car was unduly suggestive, that the formal photo array was tainted because he was the only person who appeared in both the initial photographs and the photo array, and that Nobles’s in-court identification of him would likewise be tainted. The district court denied Sanders’s motion, and the jury convicted Sanders of kidnapping and extortion. Sanders appealed.