Judge Allows Victim’s ID of Holdup Suspect

A judge ruled Thursday that key evidence against an accused teen-age bank robber will be allowed during trial, even though police violated the youth’s rights after his arrest.

In a pretrial hearing in Van Nuys Superior Court, the defense attorney argued that a bank teller’s identification of Michael Scott Morrison should be thrown out because police solved the case through an illegally obtained confession.

Judge Alan B. Haber rejected the motion and ordered Morrison, 18, who is free on bail, to return for trial May 29. Had the defense prevailed in its motion to exclude the victim’s identification, the case would have been too weak to prosecute, Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert P. Imerman said.

Imerman acknowledged that police violated Morrison’s rights by continuing to question the youth when he was arrested in May, 1985--even after he had requested an attorney. During that interrogation, Morrison, who was then 16, admitted that he robbed Barclay’s Bank in Tarzana in January, 1985.

Identified From Photo

Police later showed Morrison’s photo to the teller, and she identified him as the robber.

Defense attorney Roger J. Diamond argued that, without Morrison’s illegally obtained admission, police never would have connected the youth to the bank robbery and shown his picture to the victim.

But Imerman asserted that “seasoned robbery detectives” would have linked Morrison to the crime because he fit the teller’s description of the robber and he had just been arrested on suspicion of having committed a similar bank robbery.

Morrison’s illegally obtained confession will not be admissible, Haber ruled.

Morrison initially was also charged with the May, 1985, robbery of Encino Savings & Loan Assn., but that charge was dismissed after a preliminary hearing when the victim was unable to identify him as one of two masked robbers.