2020 Georgia Code
Title 17 - Criminal Procedure
Chapter 20 - Identification Procedures for Live Lineups, Photo Lineups, and Showups
§ 17-20-1. Definitions
As used in this chapter, the term:
- "Fillers" means individuals who are not suspects.
- "Law enforcement agency" means a governmental unit of one or more individuals employed full time or part time by the state, a state agency or department, or a political subdivision which performs as its principal function activities relating to preventing and detecting crime and enforcing state laws or local ordinances, employees of which unit are authorized to make arrests for crimes while acting within the scope of their authority.
- "Live lineup" means an identification procedure in which a suspect and fillers are displayed in person to a witness.
- "Photo lineup" means an identification procedure in which a photograph of a suspect and photographs of fillers are displayed to a witness, either in hard copy form or via computer.
- "Showup" means an identification procedure in which a witness is presented with a single individual.
- "Suspect" means the individual believed by law enforcement to be the possible perpetrator of an alleged crime.
- "Witness" means an individual who observes an alleged crime.
(Code 1981, §17-20-1, enacted by Ga. L. 2015, p. 1046, § 4/SB 94.)
Law reviews.- For article on the 2015 enactment of this chapter, see 32 Ga. St. U.L. Rev. 79 (2015). For annual survey on criminal law, see 68 Mercer L. Rev. 93 (2016).
JUDICIAL DECISIONS
Newspaper photograph was not identification procedure.
- To the extent the defendant's motion for mistrial was based on the state's failure to disclose any identification procedure to the defense before trial, the defendant did not show a violation of the state's reciprocal discovery obligations as a witness's viewing of a photograph in a newspaper was not an identification procedure employed by law enforcement. Curry v. State, 305 Ga. 73, 823 S.E.2d 758 (2019).
Allegedly suggestive pretrial encounter must result from police or prosecution action.
- Allegedly suggestive pretrial encounter must be the result of either police or prosecution action to have effect on admissibility of subsequent in-court identification. Curry v. State, 305 Ga. 73, 823 S.E.2d 758 (2019).
RESEARCH REFERENCES
ALR.
- Criminal defendant's age or height as factor in determination of whether circumstances of witness's identification of defendant in photographic array shown by police to witness were impermissibly suggestive as matter of federal constitutional law, 102 A.L.R.6th 365.
