Eyewitness ID Reform on NPR Today

Just got wind that NPR's show "To the Point" will be devoting today's show (live at noon on the west coast) to DNA and wrongful convictions, with a discussion on the reliability of eyewitness evidence and proposed reforms to police procedures to minimize future errors. Might be worth checking out:

DNA and Wrongful Convictions
MON MAY 7, 2007

After years in prison for crimes they didn't commit, hundreds of innocent people have been exonerated by DNA testing. Monday, on To the Point, can line-ups and other testimony from eye-witnesses be trusted? How can other mistakes be corrected? Is a flawed criminal justice system being repaired?

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Exonerations Spur Reform Nationwide

Law.com has a nice current snapshot of the nationwide movement to reform eyewitness ID procedures, which continues to gain traction in response to the mounting number of DNA exonerations.

One common theme throughout the proposed reform measures is a requirement for blind lineup administrators, or an alternative method that has the same effect of preventing the person conducting the lineup from influencing the witness's choice. Many of the proposed bills would also require cautionary instructions prior to any lineup procedure, in which witnesses are alerted that the perpetrator may or may not be present in the lineup. This instruction alone has been shown to reduce false IDs by as much as 41.6%, in lineups where right guy isn't present in the lineup.

Some of the other proposed reforms are less targeted at specific practices, and instead just require that law enforcement agencies develop written policies governing eyewitness procedures, in keeping with research on factors that are known to make lineups more or less reliable.

According to Scott Ehlers of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL):

Bills seem to have been going further this year than in the past. Exonerations and the wrongful convictions: I think that is really pushing the issue.

Ehlers mentions the West Virginia eyewitness reform bill which is now a law, as well as eyewitness procedure best-practices bills being proposed in California and Georgia, which Ehlers says have a good chance of passing as well. Overall, 16 bills proposing eyewitness ID reform were submitted across 10 different states this legislative session.

At the same time that reforms have been spreading nationwide, controversy over a study conducted in Illinois continues to draw attention to the same issues. A lawsuit filed by NACDL seeks to expose what many have suggested were serious flaws in the study's methodology, which its authors suggest support the status quo -- the same status quo which we know has resulted in wrongful conviction after wrongful conviction. According to Ezekiel Edwards of the Innocence Project, the questionable study from Illinois has only served to stimulate debate, and in conjunction with a continuing wave of exonerations, has helped push reform efforts forward.

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Innocence Project to Claim 200th Exoneration

According to an article in the Examiner this morning, the Innocence Project is slated to announce its 200th DNA exoneration later this month. According to Johns Hopkins criminologist (and former Maryland state trooper), the event "should be a huge wake-up call for the entire criminal justice system."

Faulty eyewitness IDs are again listed as the predominant cause of wrongful conviction. Suzanne Drouet of the Maryland Innocence Project weighs in on the problem:

"It's a confirmation for what defense attorneys have talked about for years: Eyewitness identification should be regarded with skepticism, scientific evidence is not infallible and confessions can be coerced," Drouet said. "People doubted that. With the advent of the DNA revolution, it showed what defense attorneys have been saying for years was correct."

But 200 exonerations is, we can only assume, the tip of a much larger iceberg. Hopefully the upcoming announcement will put the spotlight on the problem, and help focus resources on remedying those contributing factors that are within our control -- namely the flawed police procedures that are responsible for many of these inaccurate IDs.

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