The Austin Chronicle, our independent, alt-weekly hitting the streets today, has, "Panel Targets Roots of Wrongful Convictions." It's written by Jordan Smith.
The Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions made five major proposals last week for lawmakers heading into next year's legislative session. The panel, named for the state's first posthumously exonerated man (he died in prison while serving time for a rape he did not commit), was tasked with considering the causes of wrongful conviction and making recommendations to avoid future miscarriages of justice. Among those were recommendations that state police agencies record all suspect interrogations and adopt model policies for handling eyewitness identification procedures. Another proposal recommends that state lawmakers reform post-conviction law to allow for DNA testing of evidence regardless of why it was not previously tested. But whether the recommendations will be adopted and passed by legislators in 2011 – and whether they'll actually have their intended effect – remains to be seen.
Chief among the group's recommendations is to require the Bill Blackwood Law Enforcement Management Institute of Texas at Sam Houston State University to work with law enforcement and scientific experts in eyewitness ID to "develop, adopt, [and] disseminate" information to Texas police agencies and annually review policy and training materials on the administration of live and photo lineups.
Dealing with the problem of poor eyewitness ID is no small matter in Texas, where faulty IDs have been implicated in more than 80% of the state's DNA exonerations (there are 41 to date). Moreover, according to a 2009 report by nonprofit the Justice Project, only 88 police agencies – out of 750 that responded to inquiries – could supply any written policies covering live or photo lineup procedures.'
And:
The panel appears unanimous on other recommendations, including the suggestion that lawmakers amend the law governing post-conviction appeals to allow for testing of any "previously untested biological evidence, regardless of the reason the evidence was not previously tested" or for retesting evidence that was previously conducted with "older, less accurate" testing methods. Moreover, the group has recommended that the law be amended to allow inmates to appeal based on advances in science that may undermine the reliability of evidence originally used against them.
And:
The panel's recommendations have been accepted by the Task Force on Indigent Defense, and now state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, hopes his colleagues and the governor (whoever that may be next year) will make passing the recommendations into law a priority. "Now the ball is in the Legislature's court. I call on my fellow legislators ... to dedicate ourselves to creating a justice system that truly protects the innocent, ensures the guilty are brought to justice, and is instilled with the fairness and integrity that justice demands," Ellis said in a press statement. "We owe Tim Cole and his family that much."
Earlier coverage of the panel's work begins with this post; the Report and a volume of Research Details are available in Adobe .pdf format. More on Tim Cole's wrongful conviction and posthumous exoneration begins here.
One side note -- Chronicle journalist Jordan Smith is being honored this fall by the Texas Civil Rights Project for her reporting; details here.
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