Strickler v. Greene, 527 U.S. 263, 8 (1999)

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270

STRICKLER v. GREENE

Opinion of the Court

between the time that petitioner, Henderson, and Donna Tudor picked up Whitlock and the time of Whitlock's murder.

Anne Stoltzfus' Testimony

Anne Stoltzfus testified that on two occasions on January 5 she saw petitioner, Henderson, and a blonde girl inside the Harrisonburg mall, and that she later witnessed their abduction of Whitlock in the parking lot. She did not call the police, but a week and a half after the incident she discussed it with classmates at James Madison University, where both she and Whitlock were students. One of them called the police. The next night a detective visited her, and the following morning she went to the police station and told her story to Detective Claytor, a member of the Harrisonburg City Police Department. Detective Claytor showed her photographs of possible suspects, and she identified petitioner and Henderson "with absolute certainty" but stated that she had a slight reservation about her identification of the blonde woman. Id., at 56.

At trial, Stoltzfus testified that, at about 6 p.m. on January 5, she and her 14-year-old daughter were in the Music Land store in the mall looking for a compact disc. While she was waiting for assistance from a clerk, petitioner, whom she described as "Mountain Man," and the blonde girl entered.5

5 She testified to their appearances in great detail. She stated that petitioner had "a kind of multi layer look." He wore a grey T-shirt with a Harley Davidson insignia on it. The prosecutor showed Stoltzfus the shirt, stained with blood and semen, that the police had discovered at petitioner's mother's house. He asked if it were the same shirt she saw petitioner wearing at the mall. She replied, "That could have been it." App. 37, 39. Henderson "had either a white or light colored shirt, probably a short sleeve knit shirt and his pants were neat. They weren't just old blue jeans. They may have been new blue jeans or it may have just been more dressy slacks of some sort." Id., at 37. The woman "had blonde hair, it was kind of in a shaggy cut down the back. She had blue eyes, she had a real sweet smile, kind of a small mouth. Just a touch of freckles on her face." Id., at 60.

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