"Eyewitness standards a good idea," is the editorial in today's Odessa American. It's a reprint of last week's Austin American-Statesman editorial.
We’d like to think the legislation would glide as easily through the House. That has proved difficult in previous years as it lacked a Republican champion and was seen by too many as being soft on crime.
Ellis has tried every session since 2005 to pass the bill. In 2009, it died before getting to the House floor. It’s different this session; the bill has garnered strategic support of veteran Dallas Republican Will Hartnett, who told The Dallas Morning News he plans to add his name to a companion bill in the House. That’s terrific. Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, is the lead sponsor.
“It’s true that Republican candidates often campaign on being tough on crime, and anything that could be perceived as softening law enforcement with regard to criminals can be subject to scrutiny in Republican circles,” Hartnett told the Morning News. “But my job in Austin is to do the best thing for justice, not necessarily what is politically best.”
He is right.The national Innocence Project reports that incorrect witness identifications are the most common element in all wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA evidence. About 75 percent of the 266 DNA exonerations in the country were because of faulty eyewitness evidence, the group reports.
And:
Continuing with the same faulty system that essentially allows police departments to conduct shoddy lineups hurts everyone.
Such a system denies victims the justice they deserve, robs innocent people of their freedom and permits the real criminals to escape punishment and continue committing crimes against society.
Earlier coverage of the reform measure begins at the link; related posts are in the eyewitness identification category.
Waco's KXXV-TV reports, "Waco Police department model for bill to cut down wrongful convictions." It's by Mark Wiggins. Here's an extended excerpt:
The most common method of getting an identification from a witness has long been the "line-up," where a witness is asked to point out the suspect from a battery of side-by-side photos of various individuals.
Research into the way humans remember faces and visual details is raising questions over how effective such methods are at identifying the correct subject and not an innocent person.
Dr. Charles Weaver is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Baylor University whose expert testimony has been used to analyze eyewitness identification for over a decade. Weaver says part of the problem with traditional lineups is that witnesses may be unintentionally influenced by factors other than their memory.
"We really store just a few bits and pieces of what happened, and then reconstruct a lot of the details," says Weaver. "It's in the reconstruction that often times we'll get things wrong."
In 1999, the National Institute of Justice issued a study addressing that very problem, and listed a model set of parameters for conducting a more reliable lineup. After a series of high-profile acquittals in Dallas that resulted from DNA evidence, many police departments updated their policies for photo line-ups.
The model policy is also the same one practiced by the Waco Police Department. In order to minimize unintended influence over a witness, detectives unfamiliar with the case are assigned to conduct a "sequential presentation" of images.
Before the presentation, witnesses are informed that the suspect may or may not be among the photos shown. Photos are then shown one at a time, as opposed to all at once, to discourage making subconscious comparisons that aren't based on memory.
Waco Police spokesman Steve Anderson says the sequential presentation process raises the level of certainty that a witness must have before identifying a person as a criminal.
"It may be harder to pick out the person, but the last thing you want is to put an innocent person behind bars," says Anderson.
A new bill in the Texas Legislature would require every law enforcement agency in Texas to codify their eyewitness identification process. Departments would have to either adapt a model like Waco's, or one that conforms to standards determined by the Bill Blackwood Law Enforcement Management Institute of Texas in Huntsville.
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