"The best eyewitness is an accurate one," is the title of a Fort Worth Star-Telegram editorial.
It's a common perception that an eyewitness to a crime surely provides the best evidence. It's also a misperception.
Memory can be influenced by many factors, and flaws can be reinforced so that someone becomes convinced they saw something quite different from what they actually did.
That's significant because, of more than 44 people in Texas who've been proved innocent through DNA testing, 85 percent were convicted partly or mainly because of eyewitness identifications.
Nationally, about three-quarters of the 266 DNA exonerations involved convictions based on eyewitness IDs that proved to be wrong, according to the Innocence Project. The Texas Legislature this year has an opportunity to start correcting this clear flaw in the criminal justice system.
The state Senate on March 16 approved SB121, which would require police departments to develop written policies for handling photo and live lineups. It also would direct the Blackwood Law Enforcement Management Institute at Sam Houston State University to develop model standards and training materials for improving procedures.
The House on March 31 approved HB215, which was amended to include the same language as the Senate version.
Efforts to pass the legislation died in the 2009 session, but there doesn't appear to be opposition this time.
And:
"Eyewitness reform is a very simple, straightforward change to help create a smarter, more just system," Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, said after the Senate bill passed.
He's right. Getting prosecutions and convictions right the first time punishes the guilty, protects the innocent, saves taxpayers money and builds trust in the system.
Earlier coverage of the eyewitness id reform legislation is at the post; related posts are in the eyewitness identification category.
Lisa Graybill, Legal Director of the ACLU of Texas posts, "Review of unfair death penalty sentencing as important as innocence," at the Dallas Morning News Death Penalty blog. Here are excerpts from this must-read:
Though death sentences and executions have declined in recent years in Texas, the state remains the national leader in executions. The Dallas County District Attorney's Office, under Craig Watkins's leadership, should be commended for taking a serious look at the questionable procedures and shoddy evidence routinely used in the past that have plagued former administrations and led to scores of wrongful convictions. But Dallas County still remains a leader among Texas counties in seeking and receiving death sentences and is on track to replace Harris County as the infamous "capital of capital punishment." Its recent handling of decades-old capital cases, including the resentencing trials of Ronald Chambers and Fernando Garcia and the retrial of Jonathan Bruce Reed now taking place, reveal serious shortcomings in its consideration of capital cases and decisions to seek death and its total unwillingness to review the unfair sentencing practices it inherited.
The case of Ronald Chambers, who was once dubbed the "Dean of Death Row" and was the longest serving inmate on Texas' death row at the time of his death, provides a telling example. Mr. Chambers, an African-American man, passed away last November in the Dallas County Jail awaiting his fourth capital sentencing trial for the 1975 murder of Michael McMahan, a white man. He had been tried three times before, in 1975, 1985, and 1992. Following each trial, his case was reversed due to clear, egregious constitutional errors, most recently in 2007 because his jury in his third trial had no mechanism to give meaningful consideration to his mitigating evidence.
The State's own misconduct and refusal to concede these errors or reform its own troubling practices over the 35-plus year history of the case resulted in years of needless delay in Mr. Chambers' appeals. Though the State was willing to spend enormous time and resources over decades fighting his appeals, it was totally unwilling to acknowledge that Mr. Chambers was a model prisoner who would not be a future danger and thus was ineligible for the death penalty under Texas law.
And:
Craig Watkins has also chosen to continue to pursue death against another capital defendant who was, like Mr. Chambers, granted a resentencing trial decades after his conviction because his jury did not have an adequate vehicle to give meaningful consideration to his mitigating evidence. Fernando Garcia was first convicted and sentenced to death in 1989. He, too, faces the very same challenges as Mr. Chambers and Mr. Reed in investigating and presenting mitigating evidence over 20 years after his conviction and sentence of death. Mr. Garcia has offered to accept a plea of stacked life sentences ensuring that he will never leave prison if the State agrees to stop seeking death against him. Against this contaminated historical backdrop, Craig Watkins should accept the offer.
Since his election in 2006, District Attorney Craig Watkins has made a very public commitment to reform. He deserves praise for the establishment of the Conviction Integrity Unit in his office and his willingness to take a look at the mistakes of the past. In seeking death sentences against Mr. Chambers, Mr. Reed, and Mr. Garcia, however, he has not distanced himself from the misconduct left at his door by former administrations. A true commitment to justice and integrity requires not only taking a look at the sad legacy of wrongful convictions, but bringing the same level of scrutiny to the unfair and troubled sentencing practices of the past. He had the opportunity to do so in Mr. Chambers' case, but of course, for Mr. Chambers it is now too late. However, Mr. Watkins still has an opportunity to consider the tainted legacy and extend his promise of reform to sentencing in other capital cases, starting with the retrial of Jonathan Bruce Reed and the resentencing trial of Fernando Garcia. He should do so.
Related posts are in the future dangerousness and sentencing indexes; more on Ronald Chambers, at the link.
