James Joseph Garner, Petitioner v. the People of the State of Colorado, Respondent.

Summary

The court held that due process does not require reliability screening of a first-time in-court identification when no impermissibly suggestive, law-enforcement-arranged pretrial identification occurred and the courtroom circumstances were not unusually suggestive. The brothers’ identifications therefore did not violate due process, and Garner’s evidentiary challenges were unpreserved and did not establish plain error. Justice Hart, dissenting, would have required pretrial reliability screening because the first-time courtroom identifications were arranged by the prosecution and posed a substantial risk of misidentification.