"Rethinking The Police Lineup; State Task Force Begins Rewriting The Rules," is the title of Daniela Altimari's Hartford Courant report. It appeard October 20.
Eyewitness identification used to be the gold standard in criminal cases, but confidence in it has wavered as, increasingly, DNA is used to overturn convictions that were based on such evidence.
Recognizing the fallibility of witness identification, state lawmakers formed a task force to find ways to improve the reliability of that familiar staple of police work, the lineup.
At its first meeting, the task force Wednesday heard from Gary L. Wells, a professor at Iowa State University and a national expert on eyewitness identification. Wells has studied ways to improve the process, including presenting members of a lineup one at a time instead of as a group.
Wells, who testified for more than two hours, said eyewitness identification is far less reliable than most people believe. He cited a study by the Innocence Project, which found that 75 percent of people later exonerated by DNA evidence were misidentified as a suspect by an eyewitness.
The Daily Stamford coverage was, "State Panel Studies Accuracy of Police Lineups," by Anthony Buzzeo.
A state task force studying eyewitness police lineups recently heard an expert discuss ways to reduce false identification of suspects, State Rep. Gerald Fox III said in the release.
“Eyewitness identification is a critical law enforcement tool, but we have also learned that mistakes made during suspect lineups play a significant role in wrongful convictions,” said the Stamford Democrat, head of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee.
The specialist, Prof. Gary Wells of Iowa State University, outlined the findings of his published study on sequential vs. simultaneous lineups.
In the former, eyewitnesses view suspects, or photos of suspects, one at a time. In the latter, which are used by many police departments today, the witness sees all the suspects together. The task force is weighing the practical implications of a state law mandating sequential lineups, the release said.
The task force, headed by former Connecticut Supreme Court Justice David Borden, will submit recommendations to the Judiciary Committee by April 1, 2012, the release said.
Related posts are in the eyewitness identification index. There are also resources in the left-column webroll, including a link to Gary Wells' website.
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