Commonwealth v. Jones

We deal with the question of the admissibility of an in-court identification of the defendant that (a) was *100based on highly suggestive confrontations with the defendant that neither the police nor the prosecution arranged and (b) was not based independently on the witness’s original observations of the person whom she identified as the defendant. The trial judge, who considered the admissibility of the identification evidence by holding a voir dire during trial, ruled that, because the Commonwealth did not arrange the visual encounters between the witness and the defendant, principles of due…