tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14668419043937291262024-03-12T19:20:32.231-05:00Eyewitness Identification Reform BlogTim From VAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10062447390068951011noreply@blogger.comBlogger95125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-54676323258221272512012-04-05T13:16:00.002-05:002012-04-05T13:22:08.115-05:00Relocating to Raleigh, North CarolinaIt’s been a long time since I’ve checked in here, but I have some news that I thought was worth sharing to those who found my past work here of interest: my family and I are moving to North Carolina in the next month, and I’ll be opening a criminal defense law practice in downtown Raleigh. If you’re ever in the area, or have friends or family in need of a criminal defense lawyer or just some Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-40940547728588628652008-01-15T11:27:00.000-05:002008-01-15T11:37:00.300-05:00We've MovedThe Eyewitness ID Blog has moved over to Wordpress. Check us out at the new location.Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-76445532088267826692008-01-03T09:47:00.000-05:002008-01-03T14:00:30.134-05:00Another Dallas Man to be Exonerated after 27 Years in PrisonAs we've mentioned before, Dallas County leads the country in wrongful convictions. Most of those wrongful convictions resulted from faulty police lineup procedures. Yesterday, the number of wrongfully convicted individuals to be freed as a result of DNA testing in Dallas County grew to 15, as news broke that DNA proved that Charles Allen Chatman could not have committed the rape for which he Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-37123865536450821542007-12-13T10:34:00.000-05:002007-12-15T14:30:31.713-05:00Another Georgia Man Exonerated, Will Appear before Eyewitness Reform Committee Two Days after ReleaseAnother Georgia man was exonerated by DNA evidence yesterday, after serving nearly 30 years in a state prison for a rape he did not commit. Like the six other men exonerated in Georgia since the Innocence Project started digging through old cases, John Jerome White was convicted on the basis of mistaken eyewitness testimony.Tomorrow, two days after his release from his decades-long prison term, Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-84793892960767408652007-11-28T11:14:00.000-05:002007-11-28T13:58:49.288-05:00Judge Precludes Questioning on Cross-Race IDs, Witness Gets 2 of 3 IDs Wrong, Man Still Goes to JailDonald Glenn Flack, a black man, was accused of assaulting a white woman at a mall in Knoxville, but when the victim attempted to identify her attacker from a photo in court, she picked another man -- even with Mr. Flack sitting directly across from her at the defense table. In the initial police lineup a month after the assault, she also picked someone other than Mr. Flack. The only time she Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-21087628630381629802007-11-27T10:44:00.000-05:002007-11-27T17:40:47.065-05:00The Great Engine of Truth Not So Great for Eyewitness EvidenceI recently received a copy of a law review article on the effectiveness of cross-examination for getting at the truth of eyewitness evidence. Prof. Jules Epstein explores in depth the efficacy of the "great engine of truth" as applied to eyewitness testimony, and reports that it falls far short. (Cite: Epstein, Jules, The Great Engine That Couldn't: Science, Mistaken Identifications, and the Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-590021712381084162007-11-02T10:02:00.000-05:002007-11-07T09:44:19.829-05:00Eyewitness Reforms Meet "Resistance from the Very People Who Should Care Most about Justice for All"Professor Katherine Ramsland of DeSales University has a new commentary in the Philadelphia Inquirer on the widespread resistance among law enforcement officers to policy changes designed to make law enforcement more accurate and effective. At the top of that list is a set of proposed measures known to make identification procedures more accurate, and less likely to pollute witness memory with Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-91859613205006103832007-10-29T09:07:00.000-05:002007-10-29T10:17:08.703-05:00Houston City Council "Should Be Weary of Making Apologies to Innocent People"According to former Texas appellate judge Michol O'Connor, the time has passed to wonder about what can be done to address Houston's notorious wrongful conviction problem, just as the time has passed to wait for the Houston Police Department to fix the problems on their own. He describes status quo police lineup procedures as "a suspect process" in dire need of reform. Yet despite clear Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-50707930775605785452007-10-15T13:20:00.000-05:002007-10-15T17:33:46.657-05:00Schwarzenegger Terminates Legislative Reform Effort in CaliforniaDespite our earlier hope, Governor Schwarzenegger again vetoed a bill aimed at reducing wrongful convictions. The bill would have provided an important first step toward making the collection of eyewitness evidence more reliable in California, by simply requiring the Attorney General to devise a set of best practices, in light of substantial research showing that certain procedures make false Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-77698504378498973082007-10-12T11:40:00.000-05:002007-10-12T12:42:26.973-05:00NIJ Acknowledges "Marred" Results of Illinois Pilot ProjectThe NIJ Journal put out an article this week called "Police Lineups: Making Eyewitness Identification More Reliable," acknowledging the unreliability of eyewitness memory and the role the police procedures play in making it more or less reliable. The article gives some detail on the simultaneous vs. sequential debate, including Nancy Steblay's continuing great work testing the efficacy of Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-33001755334905315112007-10-02T08:58:00.000-05:002007-10-02T09:48:40.125-05:00Georgia Cops Resist Reform, Defend Flawed Status QuoIn the second day of hearings by the Georgia House committee organized to consider a new law mandating that police adhere to well-established best practices when conducting eyewitness lineup procedures, law enforcement officials were out in full force in opposition.Given the total lack of empirical support for that position, cops are left to rely on baseless claims in defense of the status quo:Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-28620285610082770962007-10-01T10:39:00.000-05:002007-10-05T09:08:13.020-05:00Conviction Overturned for Failure to "Seriously Consider" Expert Testimony on Eyewitness FactorsThe Illinois Court of Appeals overturned a conviction Friday in People v. Allen (PDF) (update: now on Westlaw at 2007 WL 2821966), for the trial court's "failure to conduct a meaningful inquiry" into proposed expert testimony on eyewitness factors by Dr. Steven Penrod.Subjects of proffered testimony were to include the effects of stress, weapon focus, cross-race, lack of correlation between Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-20464780941459181472007-09-26T09:04:00.000-05:002007-10-03T12:42:44.922-05:00Dallas, TX: Wrongful Conviction Leader Come Poster Child for Eyewitness Reform, or Illinois All Over Again?Dallas County, notorious for its status as the county with the worst wrongful conviction record in the country, is now, at least ostensibly, making efforts to remedy this systemic problem. Eleven of the 13 wrongful convictions uncovered by the Innocence Project in Dallas County in the last six years resulted from faulty eyewitness evidence collected through flawed police procedures. Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-83555167231090621962007-09-17T12:42:00.000-05:002007-09-17T13:17:50.911-05:00Most Georgia Cops Have No Eyewitness GuidelinesDespite the fact that the Innocence Project has exonerated six men in Georgia who were wrongfully convicted as a result of faulty eyewitness evidence, the majority of Georgia law enforcement agencies still lack even basic written guidelines for the collection of eyewitness evidence. A recent report found that 83% of the 296 Georgia law enforcement agencies surveyed have no specific guidelines toBen Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-71885361662210890562007-09-10T09:51:00.000-05:002007-09-10T12:18:14.174-05:00Federal Court Finds Lawyer Ineffective For Failure to Call Expert on Effects of Blood Loss and Sedation on Witness's MemoryJust came across an interesting recent decision from the 2nd Circuit, in connection with a habeas claim from an old New York case.Brentonol Moriah was walking along a Brooklyn street at 2:30a.m. one summer night in 1996, when he was held up with a full-length shotgun. Mr. Moriah turned over the contents of his pockets, at which point apparently some headlights flashed, and his assailant fired Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-50890952051199837892007-09-06T08:20:00.000-05:002007-09-06T14:43:57.135-05:00New Zealand Government Funds Novel Eyewitness ResearchThe New Zealand Herald is reporting today that a New Zealand researcher will receive a government-funded grant in the amount of $170,000 to study factors affecting the reliability of eyewitness memory, in support of an effort to reduce wrongful convictions in the country. Dr. Rachel Zajac of the University of Otago will use some of the money to test a lineup modification on adults that was Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-43550629140130173602007-08-29T08:52:00.000-05:002007-08-29T10:01:24.131-05:00Innocent? Prove it.Last I checked, the U.S. Constitution mandates that criminal defendants are presumed innocent, and guilt must be proven by the state. It may not say it in the plain text, but people who read the Constitution for a living swear it's floating around somewhere in the "penumbra" of the 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments. In any case, the Supreme Court agrees. In fact, the presumption of innocence is "Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-21639123005821392022007-08-28T13:33:00.000-05:002007-08-29T08:50:40.946-05:00"They may as well have made him wear a target on his chest or a sign over his head saying 'pick me,'" says US federal courtI just came across an interesting decision issued last month from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, in which the court considered (and rejected) eyewitness evidence in support of an extradition request by the Republic of Poland. In re Mazur, Slip Copy, 2007 WL 2122401 (N.D.Ill. 2007).The evidence presented in support of the government's probable cause showing Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-43106937705138978172007-08-23T09:47:00.000-05:002007-08-24T12:26:28.926-05:00When the DOJ Says It, Jurors ListenA study was published a couple of years ago that tested juror reactions to information suggesting that police had failed to follow best practices in conducting eyewitness lineup procedures. (I haven't found the text online, but here's the cite: J.M. Lampinen et al., The reactions of mock jurors to the Department of Justice Guidelines for the collection and preservation of eyewitness evidence, 27Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-12813135136361311532007-08-10T15:09:00.000-05:002007-08-10T16:39:37.900-05:00The Problem with TelfaireThe so-called "Telfaire instruction" (from U.S. v. Telfaire, 469 F.2d 552 (D.C. Cir. 1972)) is the most commonly used jury instruction on eyewitness ID in U.S. courts, aimed at alerting jurors to the potential pitfalls of eyewitness evidence. Unfortunately, it is based directly on the flawed and outdated criteria for assessing the reliability of eyewitness evidence set forth in Neil v. Biggers Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-48853994397686689262007-08-06T08:45:00.000-05:002007-08-06T08:56:16.256-05:00GA Supreme Court Will Hear Troy Davis' Case; Original Jurors Urge New TrialOn Friday, the Georgia Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal of Troy Davis, including new evidence of police coercion that undermines the eyewitness testimony that was the primary basis of his conviction.Now, four jurors from Mr. Davis' original trial have come forward urging clemency and a new trial, in light of this new evidence that has come to public attention. Knowing what she knows now, Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-73717545552853634652007-07-30T12:22:00.000-05:002007-07-30T13:13:38.444-05:00Mecklenburg and The Big PictureI agree with Ben. It just isn't right that, faced with a fight between prosecutors and scientists over a purely scientific issue, a respected newspaper looks at the dispute and basically calls it a draw. But I want to make sure we don't get too discouraged over this development. It seems to me that this story is just a fairly extreme example of the media's need to find two conflicting viewpoints,Tim From VAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10062447390068951011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-90479287910080680662007-07-30T08:55:00.000-05:002007-07-30T11:32:09.762-05:00Lipstick on a Pig, Part Deux: Scientists vs. ProsecutorsWe reported recently that the so-called "Illinois Report" on lineup procedures was found to be unscientific, unreliable, and generally adds no value to the dialogue on the most accurate and reliable police lineup procedures. Today, the Chicago Tribune is running a story, in the wake of the definitive debunking (PDF) of that police-sponsored report from Chicago, suggesting that the best lineup Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-88838823473702838422007-07-25T08:34:00.000-05:002007-07-25T09:43:14.886-05:00New Lineup Rules Pass in NCWith the passage of the Eyewitness Identification Reform Act earlier this week, police across North Carolina are now required to adhere to certain best practices with respect to lineup procedures, which have been shown to reduce the likelihood that innocent people will be identified from a lineup.The reform measures include "blind" administration of lineups, where someone not connected to the Ben Hiltzheimerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14209646722566791998noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1466841904393729126.post-22566386545913728602007-07-23T09:45:00.000-05:002007-07-23T10:08:53.858-05:00Two New Studies Conclude: Faulty IDs Caused "Thousands" Of Wrongful ConvictionsThe New York Times reported this weekend that two new studies have looked closely at the wrongful conviction epidemic, and have concluded that there are literally thousands of people serving sentences in prison for crimes they did not commit.The first, "Judging Innocence", is soon-to-be-published in the Columbia Law Review, conducted by University of Virginia Professor Brandon Garrett. ProfessorTim From VAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10062447390068951011noreply@blogger.com1