## Facts

- Border Patrol agents stopped Juan Antonio Delgado driving a tractor-trailer at a checkpoint after a trained canine alerted.
- Agents opened the trailer and found 15 undocumented immigrants hidden under a blue tarp.
- Two passengers, sisters Eusebia and Luisa Aviles-Vences, reported seeing the tractor-trailer driver when they entered the trailer in Mexico and again about a day later during a stop for mechanical or maintenance issues.
- The sisters provided general descriptors of the driver (average height, baseball cap, moustache) consistent with Delgado’s appearance.
- Agents conducted a one-person show-up, bringing each sister separately to view Delgado.
- Luisa identified Delgado as the driver; Eusebia initially could not identify him.
- At trial, both sisters testified and each stated she was sure Delgado was the driver.

## Issues

1. Whether the one-person show-up identification procedure was impermissibly suggestive and, if so, whether the resulting identifications were nonetheless reliable under the totality of the circumstances such that due process permitted admission of the pretrial and in-court identifications.

## Decision

- The Fifth Circuit affirmed the convictions.
- The court held the district court did not err in denying Delgado’s motion to suppress the identification evidence.
- Even assuming arguable suggestiveness in the show-up procedure, the identifications were sufficiently reliable to satisfy due process.

## Legal Principles

- A pretrial identification violates due process only if the procedure is impermissibly suggestive and creates a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification.
- Even when suggestiveness is present, identification evidence is admissible if it is reliable under the totality of the circumstances; reliability controls the analysis.
- Reliability considerations include the witness’s opportunity to view the suspect, degree of attention, accuracy of prior description, level of certainty, and the time between the events and the identification.

## Conclusion

The Fifth Circuit upheld Delgado’s alien-transportation convictions, concluding that the show-up procedure did not render the witnesses’ identifications so unreliable as to require suppression under the Due Process Clause.


United States v. Delgado, 364 F. App’x 876 (5th Cir. 2010)