Innocent? 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 "axiomatic and elementary." "[I]ts enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law."

There are several reasons for this, some of which are purely practical. One of these reasons is that it is no small feat to prove actual innocence. Another is that the average criminal defendant doesn't have the resources bestowed upon state and federal governments to cover court costs. So the burden of proof is on the party with the resources. This makes sense.

So why do innocent people have to prove their innocence in order to clear their records of false charges?

I came across a short editorial in the Sacramento Bee this morning arguing that they shouldn't, and I tend to agree. The editorial traces the story of Eric Warren, who spent 53 days in jail after being charged with a series of similar crimes in the area, following a phone tip and shaky other-race IDs by five witnesses. He maintained his innocence throughout, and a substantially similar crime was committed in the same area while he was locked up, suggesting someone else was behind all the crimes.

Ultimately Mr. Warren was released, after the eyewitness and other evidence quickly fell apart. Prosecutors admit to having "substantial doubts" about his connection to any of the crimes.

But,

If a mistake was made, what is the remedy for Warren? His family is out thousands of dollars in legal bills. Warren is out of jail, but he's not free from the effects of what appears to have been a false accusation. For example, if asked on a job application, "Have you ever been arrested?" must he answer "yes" -- a devastating admission for any job-seeker and particularly so for a young African American man? A declaration of "factual innocence" would officially expunge Warren's arrest record. But such a declaration requires Warren to petition the court himself, incurring yet more legal costs. That's unfair.

Not to mention extremely difficult. Even if the witnesses ultimately admit to being unable to make a reliable ID, that's still short of factual innocence. If Mr. Warren's only alibi is that he was at home sleeping at 4a.m. on the night of a particular crime, as most of the other innocent people in Sacramento likely were, he's going to be hard pressed to affirmatively prove that he wasn't out committing those crimes. Barring definitive DNA evidence, new eyewitnesses, or a confession by the actual perpetrator, Mr. Warren is left with an arrest record because the government made a mistake. The Sacramento Bee offers a better solution:

If a mistake, no matter how innocent, was made by witnesses, by police or by prosecutors, the system owes Warren an apology. A declaration of "factual innocence" is the one meaningful apology available to him. He should not have to pay for it.

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"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 court

I 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 included a live lineup of four men. Three of the men were "dressed in dark, subdued colors, whereas Mr. Mazur is wearing a bright red, slightly oversized jacket" -- a jacket "foisted" on Mr. Mazur by the authorities "in an effort to make his dress look less formal." In the words of the district court, "They may as well have made him wear a target on his chest or a sign over his head saying 'pick me.'" The court went on to say that the ID procedure employed by Polish authorities "would never pass muster in this country," that the lineup was unduly suggestive and "highly suspect." It further found that "the government's reliance on this identification is shocking and offensive." Id. at *24.

If only our courts could save some of that disdain for the procedures routinely done by our own police.

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When the DOJ Says It, Jurors Listen

A 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, 27 Basic and Applied Soc. Psychol. 155 (2005)).

The study used a set of mock trial transcripts, which were adapted from a real robbery case, in which a man was described as having robbed a convenience store while wearing a "makeshift" mask, and who told store employees that he had a gun and was "not afraid to use it." Three witnesses testified against the defendant -- one who claimed to have seen the perpetrator from about 40 feet away outside the store, as he removed his mask, a police officer who was inside the store during the robbery, and a friend of the defendant who testified that the defendant had a gambling problem and owed a lot of money, thereby establishing motive. The first witness selected the defendant from a photo array, after which charges were filed.

The researchers tested three different conditions, using the same facts -- in the first (control) condition, a trial transcript was provided to mock jurors including no mention of police errors in conducting the lineup procedure. In the second condition, two police errors relating to lineup procedures were mentioned, which were subsequently brought up by the defense. In the third, the same two police errors were mentioned, and the defense attorney not only highlights them, but also points out that they violate the Department of Justice Guide for Law Enforcement on Eyewitness Evidence (PDF). Aside from these modifications, the underlying transcripts were identical.

From the second condition:

Q. Officer Jacobs, I want to now ask you about the lineup which you showed to Ms. Wilcox.
A. Okay.
Q. Officer Jacobs, did you ever inform Ms. Wilcox that the culprit may or may not be in the lineup?
A. I don’t believe so.
Q. Don’t you believe it would have been a good idea to let the witness know that she didn’t have to pick somebody?
A. In my experience, things like that don’t make any difference.
Q. Officer Jacobs, Mr. Martinez has a mole on his left cheek, did any of the other photographs you showed Ms. Wilcox have a mole?
A. No.
Q. Aren’t you afraid that would make Mr. Martinez stand out?
A. No sir I wasn’t. In my experience, witnesses either recognize someone or they don’t.

And then from the condition in which the procedures used were contrasted with DOJ best practices:

Q. Officer Jacobs, I want to now ask you about the lineup which you showed to Ms. Wilcox.
A. Okay.
Q. Officer Jacobs, did you ever inform Ms. Wilcox that the culprit may or may not be in the lineup?
A. I don’t believe so.
Q. Don’t you believe it would have been a good idea to let the witness know that she didn’t have to pick somebody?
A. In my experience, things like that don’t make any difference.
Q. Officer Jacobs, are you familiar with the Department of Justice guidelines that were recently published entitled “Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement”?
A. I’ve heard of them.
Q. And are you aware that they state that the investigating officer should make clear to the witness that the culprit may or may not be in the lineup?
A. No I wasn’t.
Q. Alright Officer Jacobs, Mr. Martinez has a mole on his left cheek, did any of the other photographs you showed Ms. Wilcox have a mole?
A. No.
Q. Aren’t you afraid that would make Mr. Martinez stand out?
A. No sir I wasn’t. In my experience, witnesses either recognize someone or they don’t.
Q. I see, well were you aware, Officer Jacobs, that the Department of Justice guidelines state that the suspect should not stand out as being different from the
other members of the lineup?
A. No I wasn’t.

The same tactics were echoed in closing arguments.

The result?

Mock jurors in the DOJ condition (a) voted to convict at a lower rate, (b) rated the eyewitness as less credible, (c) rated the investigating officer as less professional, and (d) were more likely to opine that the investigating officer had thereby jeopardized the prosecution’s case.

Just as interesting was the fact that raising problems with the ID procedures on cross and again in closing produced no fewer convictions than the condition in which the errors were never mentioned at all.

The moral? Juries listen when they learn that police violated practices set forth by an authoritative source. They pay less mind when the source is a defense lawyer.

UPDATE: I should mention, as has been mentioned to me, that the results of this study should not be taken to invoke a sort of fatalism in those cases where introduction of the DOJ guidelines, or some other authoritative source, is not permitted or otherwise possible. A cursory look at the study shows that the second condition by no means involved a properly developed cross of a cop on a flawed ID procedure, and the lack of difference in conviction rate between the first two conditions should certainly not be taken to mean that it isn't worthwhile to wage a full scale attack on bad IDs, even when you can't get authoritative best practices in front of the jury. The silent lesson from the study might just be that your cross shouldn't look like the one in condition #2.

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The Problem with Telfaire

The 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 in 1972, which was decided before the majority of eyewitness research now available was conducted, when the entire field was in its infancy. As a result, the instruction often backfires, causing jurors to rely even more heavily on shaky eyewitness testimony, rather than serving its intended purpose of sensitizing them to the factors that tend to make it unreliable.

It opens as follows:

Are you satisfied that the identification made by the witness subsequent to the offense was the product of his own recollection? You may take into account both the strength of the identification, and the circumstances under which the identification was made.

Here's the first problem. When a judge instructs a jury to rely on the "strength of the identification," she asks them to consider the confidence of the witness in assessing his or her accuracy. Yet it is well-established among experts that a witness's confidence is "a dubious indicator of eyewitness accuracy even when measured at the time an identification is made." See, e.g., Steven Penrod & Brian Cutler, Witness Confidence and Witness Accuracy: Assessing Their Forensic Relation, 1 Psychol., Pub. Pol., & L. 817 (1995). According to the same article, the more emphasis that is placed on the Telfaire instruction, the more jurors tend to credit eyewitness testimony. That is, "the instruction produced a credulity rather than a skepticism effect." Id. at 833.

The Telfaire instruction continues:

You may also take into account that an identification made by picking the defendant out of a group of similar individuals is generally more reliable than one which results from the presentation of the defendant alone to the witness.

There's more trouble here. This is true if and only if the lineup is conducted in accordance with best practices, and given that rigid criteria are applied in adhering to the "similar" requirement. Lineup members can quite easily pass a broad interpretation of the "similar" test, by, for example, all belonging to the same race. But the requirements of a good lineup are far more subtle than a generic "similarity" requirement, which juries are not equipped to judge without insight from the research. And as Gary Wells has pointed out, a bad lineup can have the effect of pointing a giant finger at the suspect, while giving the witness heightened (though false) confidence because she "picked" him from a group.

The problems with Telfaire are apparent, and defense lawyers have been urging trial courts to abandon it for some time. As an alternative, researchers recommend detailed instructions that are informed by the findings of social scientists over the last 35 years, since the Biggers factors were identified by the Supreme Court with no scientific basis.

These tailored instructions should include, where applicable, instructions on the cross-race effect, the detrimental effects of stress on eyewitness memory, the weapon-focus effect, the absence of a reliable correlation between confidence and accuracy, and lineup procedures that have been shown to make an identification more or less reliable.

But scientifically accurate jury instructions are not enough. To properly sensitize jurors to the problems with eyewitness testimony and to begin to curb the nationwide wrongful conviction problem due to over-reliance on bad eyewitness evidence, expert testimony is critical. In fact, according to the recent Copeland ruling by the Supreme Court of Tennessee, expert testimony is the only reliable method to ensure that jurors have the necessary tools to assess eyewitness evidence accurately. State v. Copeland, 2007 WL 1498396, *11 ("Research over the past 30 years has shown that expert testimony on memory and eyewitness identification is the only legal safeguard that is effective in sensitizing jurors to eyewitness errors.").

It's time to stop misinforming juries based on the antiquated, unscientific musings of an old Court, and to start letting science into the courtroom at every phase of trial. The Constitution demands it, and the rights of the wrongfully accused depend on it.

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GA Supreme Court Will Hear Troy Davis' Case; Original Jurors Urge New Trial

On 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, one juror said that if Mr. Davis is executed, it will "haunt her until her own death." That juror and three others submitted sworn statements to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, urging them to avert this injustice.

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Mecklenburg and The Big Picture

I 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, present them both no matter what the objective merit, and let readers decide where the "truth" lies without further explanation.

"Scientists: Earth is round. Prosecutors: Earth is flat. Media: Time will tell who's right. "

There is a bigger picture here, though, and it's important not to miss it. A study like the Mecklenburg Report, which cost lots of money, got huge publicity and was supported by powerful interests, could have set the reform movement back many years, or killed it altogether. The response could easily have been delay, confusion, disappearing resources, and a strengthening of resolve against reforms. Some suspect that that was precisely the goal of Mecklenburg, since it clearly wasn't designed to create any usable scientific data.

In the short term, of course, Mecklenburg did succeed in setting back reform -- as some of the quotes from the Tribune story make painfully clear. But that, fortunately, was not the end of the story or anything close. In the long run, Mecklenburg did not kill the reform movement, and it did not even set it back very far because of the remarkable response of the scientific community. In fact, in many ways the Mecklenburg report strengthened the hand of reformers.

The Mecklenburg Report was released only a little more than a year ago. In that time, scientists from around the country (many of whom are new to the field) have reviewed its results, discredited them, and repudiated them. In other words, in a very short time, Mecklenburg has created more awareness of the identification research and, after much scrutiny, more recognition of its scientifically-rigorous underpinnings. The controversy has also spurred a host of field studies that, because of the serious protocols, will create good, usable data -- data that can be used to make procedures better and to figure out if there are principles that do or do not translate from the lab to the field. Absent Mecklenburg, it is hard to imagine these studies coming into being so quickly, and their results will answer a question that, Mecklenburg or not, would have always been used to critique the lab results -- namely, the question of whether the laboratory results can translate into real world procedures.

This is all for the good. Although we already have field studies and real-world results that support many of the reforms, its always better to know more, particularly when we can know more quickly. Because of the resources and attention Mecklenburg has focused on the issue, we will in very short order have more good scientific results from the field. Those results will then inform the progress of which procedures to reform and how, and their existence will take away from the skeptics their current refrain about Mecklenburg being the "only" field study that has attempted to determine how reforms work in the real world. Those reports will prevent anyone's ability to delay longer by seeking field studies or the results from field studies.

It's highly unlikely that the goal of the Mecklenburg report was to highlight the rigorous nature of eyewitness identification science. It's also unlikely that anyone anticipated a response to Mecklenburg that was this fast, this focused or this rigorous. But it's looking like that will be the result, and that very soon there will be no lingering questions about whether and how the scientific principles work in the real world.

The media might say that only time will tell. My money is on the science.

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Lipstick on a Pig, Part Deux: Scientists vs. Prosecutors

We 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 format has yet to be identified.

Two problems with this characterization strike me with equal force. The first problem is that the "disagreement" is one of conflicting agendas, not unresolved questions of science. Scientists, with their well-known bias in favor of facts, are in general agreement that sequential lineup procedures are less likely to put innocent people in prison. Every peer reviewed study on the topic bears out this finding. A meta-analysis (PDF) was conducted by leading psychologists to extrapolate the comparative accuracy rates of the two types of procedures, and the clear finding was that sequential lineups are far less likely to result in an innocent person being identified. When "moderator variables" are considered, the two methods are also largely equivalent in their likelihood of bringing about a correct selection of the actual perpetrator, when he is present in the lineup. The general consensus among scientists is that "sequential lineups are superior."

To the extent that there is disagreement on this point, it is not a disagreement among scientists or any sort of conflict in empirical findings. Rather, it is an objection by prosecutors at the audacity of scientists who dare to suggest that science should inform criminal justice policy. After all, the Chicago Police Department has been doing lineups for decades. Who are these scientists to tell them their procedures are flawed? It's like a bunch of M.D.s telling cigarette manufacturers that smoking causes cancer.

So the Illinois Report manages yet again to avert attention from the uncontroverted findings of social scientists, namely that sequential lineups are less likely to result in wrongful convictions. To characterize the status of the debate as "not yet resolved" is to fall prey to the prosecutorial agenda to resist reform at any cost; it's tantamount to concluding that the smoking/cancer link has yet to be established because Philip Morris executives find that fact to be in conflict with their profit motive. Except that it's a little less clear what interest is being protected by the prosecutors who resist lineup reforms, since presumably they share the interest in prosecuting actual criminals, while protecting the innocent.

The other problem with the Chicago Tribune's framing of the debate on lineup reform is the myopia with respect to the simultaneous-vs.-sequential question. The fact is, the recommendation that lineups be presented one person at a time rather than all at once is a single bullet point amongst a long list of recommendations to make lineup procedures more reliable. To borrow some words from eyewitness researcher Gary Wells:

[L]et's not become myopic because of the sequential lineup. Let’s not forget that we need to institute a broad range of improvements to lineup procedures that make the terms "biased procedure" and "motions to suppress based on suggestive procedures" mere memories from the past. I continue to be amazed as to why prosecutors are not at the forefront of this effort to jettison suggestive procedures. Do prosecutors like to have these "motion to suppress identification" hearings? Of course not. Would not prosecutors prefer to have cleaner identifications to carry forward to trial? Of course they would. Are prosecutors at the forefront of efforts to: (1) improve instructions to witnesses, (2) select better fillers for lineups, (3) implement procedures that eliminate influence from the lineup administrator, (4) assess eyewitness certainty in an unbiased manner, (5) make sure that full records are kept? The answers are (1) no, (2) no, (3) no, (4) no, (5) no. I apologize to my prosecutor friends in Clinton, Iowa, in New Jersey, and in other places who are clear exceptions to this characterization of prosecutors not assuming leadership roles on identification issues. Still, the failure of law enforcement to significantly improve their lineup procedures is primarily because prosecutors have not pressed for these improvements.

With 27 wrongful convictions revealed by the Innocence Project in Illinois alone -- 19 of which resulting from faulty eyewitness evidence -- you'd think Illinois prosecutors would be eager to put themselves at the forefront of the reform effort, rather than fighting tooth-and-nail to preserve status quo procedures with a long track record of failure.

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New Lineup Rules Pass in NC

With 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 case who doesn't know which person is the suspect will be required to conduct the lineup, to prevent that person's knowledge from sending inadvertent cues to the witness. Lineups must also be conducted sequentially (one photo at a time) as opposed to simultaneously, which has been shown to reduce the problem of "relative judgments," where witnesses have been observed to pick the person who looks "most like" the culprit from the group, even when, in many cases, that person is innocent. Sequential presentation of lineup members has been shown to reduce guessing in general, which is thought to be a primary cause of eyewitness-related wrongful conviction.

Under the new legislation, lineup administrators in North Carolina will also be required to take confidence statements from witnesses, in their own words, immediately following an ID. Administrators are also prohibited from giving any feedback or making comments of any kind prior to recording that confidence statement, in order to reduce the likelihood that the witness's confidence will be distorted by intervening influences.

Lineups in North Carolina must also be videotaped whenever practical, and when not, an explanation must be documented, in addition to rigorous detail relating to the lineup procedure itself, including retention of the photographs themselves in photo lineups, the source of the photos, the identities of the individuals, and any words used by the witness to describe an identification.

Remedies for noncompliance include, at the court's discretion, suppression of ID evidence at trial, as well as jury instructions on the effect of noncompliance on the reliability of identification evidence.

The findings of the General Assembly are also interesting:

(1) Throughout the nation and in North Carolina innocent people have been accused or convicted of serious crimes because of mistaken eyewitness identification.

(2) Mistaken lineup identifications distract law enforcement agencies from apprehending perpetrators.

(3) Reports of the United States Department of Justice, the American Bar Association, 25 years of peer‑reviewed scientific research, and the experiences of practitioners across the country indicate that the accuracy of eyewitness identification can be greatly enhanced by the use of "blind" administrators, instructions to the witness, confidence statements, and the proper composition of lineups.

The text of the bill is here. More media coverage here.

As North Carolina joins the growing list of states adopting similar legislation, it is becoming increasingly clear that lawmakers are running out of patience for remedying the wrongful conviction problem. Let's hope states like Georgia will be quick to follow suit, despite Georgia and other states' prosecutors' continued resistance to practical measures that are demonstrated to reduce the conviction of innocents.

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Two New Studies Conclude: Faulty IDs Caused "Thousands" Of Wrongful Convictions

The 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. Professor Garrett's study systematically examined all of the DNA exonerations and concluded that "the leading cause of the wrongful convictions was erroneous identification by eyewitnesses, which occurred 79 percent of the time. In a quarter of the cases, such testimony was the only direct evidence against the defendant." Other leading causes of wrongful convictions were faulty forensic evidence, unreliable snithc testimony and false confessions.

As the Times reports, Professor Garrett's study also "strongly suggests . . . that there are thousands of people serving long sentences for crimes they did not commit but who have no hope that DNA can clear them." This suggestion is based on the fact that so many DNA exonerations have occurred despite the fact that DNA evidence onlly exists in a small subset of cases.

The second forthcoming study, by Professors Samuel Gross at Michigan Law School and Barbara O'Brien of Michigan State, reached similar conclusions. Specifically, the Michigan study concluded:

"The main thing we can safely conclude from exonerations is that there are many other false convictions that we have not discovered," the Michigan study said. "In addition, a couple of strong demographic patterns appear to be reliable:

Black men accused of raping white women face a greater
risk of false conviction than other rape defendants; and young suspects, those under 18, are at greater risk of false confession than other suspects."

One other important point from the studies: "The courts performed miserably in ferreting out the innocent." Among other things, that really needs to change, and reforming ID procedures is one way to make it happen.

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Troy Davis Case Spotlights Eyewitness Fallibility, Drives Georgia Reform Effort

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a story today on the fallibility of eyewitness testimony, in connection with the ongoing Troy Davis case. The article highlights the systemic problem of wrongful convictions resulting from faulty eyewitness testimony, including all six DNA exonerations in Georgia over the last eight years, all of which resulted from inaccurate eyewitness evidence.

To explore the laundry list of problems with the eyewitness evidence in Mr. Davis' case, the defense team hired cognitive psychologist and eyewitness expert Dr. Jeffrey Neuschatz. Needless to say, he "found numerous concerns with the identification of Davis as the man who fatally shot Officer Mark Allen MacPhail in a Burger King parking lot on a summer night in Savannah."

Whether or not Neuschatz's analysis will be enough to sway the Board of Pardons and Paroles to permanently stay Mr. Davis' death sentence remains an open question.

Neuschatz's report has been filed with both the parole board and in Davis' court appeals for a new trial. Neuschatz analyzed the eyewitness identifications using contemporary standards to determine if there were flaws in the procedures used to implicate Davis.

Among other factors, Neuschatz highlighted issues present in the Davis case relating to the "mugshot effect (PDF) and the "weapon-focus" effect:

Neuschatz concluded that one witness, Dorothy Lee Ferrell, told police she had seen Davis' picture on the news as a suspect in MacPhail's slaying. "Prior exposure to the suspect's picture increases the likelihood that the suspect will be picked out of the lineup," Neuschatz wrote.

Neuschatz also made other observations, including: When a weapon is involved in a crime, witnesses tend to focus on it, rather than the suspect; the passage of time, in many cases 10 days, between the crime and the identification of Davis. Another witness testified that he had been drinking on the night of the shooting.

The Davis case has also given momentum to an ongoing effort to reform police procedures in Georgia relating to the collection of eyewitness evidence. Following the sixth DNA exoneration in Georgia earlier this year, by which Willie Williams was released from prison after serving 21 years for a rape he didn't commit, state Rep. Stephanie Stuckey Benfield (D-Atlanta) attempted to get a bill passed that would have required Georgia police to use procedures that have been demonstrated to make eyewitness evidence more reliable. Predictably, prosecutors fought the legislation, and for now, managed to win the day.

Despite the legislative loss, House Speaker Glenn Richardson supports the reforms, and appointed Rep. Benfield to chair a committee to investigate the connection between flawed police identification procedures and the systemic wrongful conviction problem in the state. Hearings are scheduled for the fall, where Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project, among others, is expected to testify.

The Georgia Innocence Project, which has played a role in three of the state's exonerations, is promoting lineup standards.

"In all six of those [Georgia] cases, the victims, and sometimes witnesses as well, incorrectly identified the attackers," said Lisa George, spokeswoman for the project. "It's not that these victims or witnesses were lying; it's just that they got it wrong. Human memory is extremely fallible."

Predictably, Rick Malone, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council of Georgia, said "prosecutors don't object to better standards for lineups, but they don't want them codified into state law." In other words, Georgia prosecutors support preventing the conviction of innocent people in theory, just not in practice.

Fortunately, cases like those of Mr. Davis and Mr. Williams are driving the effort to reform police procedures that are unmistakably linked to mistaken eyewitness testimony, and inform those procedures with well-settled scientific findings that reveal a better, more reliable methodology that is less likely to distort the memories of well-meaning witnesses. It's time for Georgia prosecutors to catch up, and stop standing in the way of efforts to keep innocent people out of prison.

In related news, check out Emory Law School's new project to Save Troy Davis, sponsored by their Indigent Criminal Defense Clinic.

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