565 U.S. 228 (2012) (U.S. Supreme Court)
Perry v. New Hampshire is a cornerstone case in the law of eyewitness identification and due process.
Does the Due Process Clause require a preliminary judicial inquiry into the reliability of an eyewitness identification made under suggestive circumstances not arranged by law enforcement officers?
Under the Due Process Clause, courts conduct a preliminary reliability screening of eyewitness identifications only when improper police conduct created unnecessarily suggestive circumstances leading to the identification. If police arranged an unnecessarily suggestive identification procedure, the court must evaluate reliability under the totality of the circumstances—considering factors such as the witness's opportunity to view the perpetrator, degree of attention, accuracy of any prior description, level of certainty at the confrontation, and the time between the crime and the identification (the Neil v. Biggers/Manson v. Brathwaite factors). If the identification is sufficiently reliable despite the suggestiveness, it may be admitted; if not, it must be excluded. When suggestive circumstances were not orchestrated by law enforcement, due process does not require this special screening; reliability is tested through ordinary trial safeguards such as cross-examination, jury instructions, evidentiary rules, and the presentation of contrary evidence.
No. The Due Process Clause does not mandate a preliminary judicial reliability assessment of an eyewitness identification when the suggestive circumstances were not arranged by law enforcement. The judgment was affirmed.
Perry confines due process-based suppression of eyewitness identifications to situations involving police-arranged suggestiveness, reinforcing the Biggers/Manson framework and confirming that the Constitution is not a broad reliability filter for evidence. For students, it highlights the boundary between constitutional exclusionary rules and ordinary evidentiary controls, underscores the role of cross-examination and jury instructions in testing eyewitness testimony, and signals that more protective regimes, if any, must come from state law, evidentiary rules, or legislative reform rather than the federal Due Process Clause.