Hopefully the MSM will pick up on the story, which hasn't yet gotten a lot of attention but which will affect law-enforcement agencies in every corner of the state. Here are the public hearing details if you're interested in attending, either to testify or just to watch:
It's nice of them to add the extra time in the evening for folks who can't make it there during the workday, but I know most of the experts, exonerees and advocates, your correspondent included, are planning to testify in the afternoon session.WHAT: Bill Blackwood Law Enforcement Management Institute (LEMIT) will hold public hearings on its new eyewitness identification policy.
WHO: Cory Session, Innocence Project of Texas Policy Director; Rebecca Brown, Innocence Project Senior Policy Advocate for State Affairs; Michele Mallin, a rape victim whose eyewitness testimony lead to Timothy Cole’s wrongful conviction; Seven Texas exonerees: Charles Chatman, James Giles, Johnnie Lindsey, Johnnie Pinchback, Christopher Scott, Billy Smith and James Waller.
WHEN: Thursday, December 1, 20111:00-4:00 p.m.6:00-9:00 p.m.
WHERE: State CapitolHouse Hearing Room E2.030 (located in the Capitol Extension)Austin, TX
Once LEMIT has published its model policy, local law enforcement agencies must produce their own departmental policies by September of next year. Those policies don't have to use language from LEMIT's model, but if history is any guide, most of them will. (The Innocence Project of Texas plans to request all those local policies - more than 1,000 of them - under open records next fall to determine which departments included all the important elements and which ones are still using inadequate procedures.)
For many years eyewitness testimony was considered gold standard evidence in court. Today, scientists understand that it's really a form of "trace" evidence, and like any trace evidence it can be contaminated during its collection. In this case, though, rubber gloves, tweezers and zip-locs won't do the trick. Enacting procedures like those required in the new law and actively training detectives on acceptable methods is the only long-term way to change what's happening at the police station when these lineups are performed.
If LEMIT's model and local departmental policies, in their final form, end up based on nationally recognized best practices, as the legislation clearly calls for - including criteria for filler choice, blind administration, sequential presentation, witness admonishments, the gathering of confidence statements, etc. - it will improve the reliability of eyewitness testimony by reducing (though not eliminating) errors on the front end. As a practical matter, every false accusation prevented on the front end is far preferable to exonerations decades after the fact, which are endlessly thrilling but also always bittersweet.
I'll update this post later today to add a link to the IPOT's written testimony, which I'm presently finalizing, and with a link to a live video feed for tomorrow if and when I find one.
RELATED: From the national Innocence Project blog: "The Role of Memory in Eyewitness Identification."
UPDATE: Go here for live streaming beginning at 1 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 1.
See related Grits posts:
- Will new Texas eyewitness ID law reduce false convictions?
- Onus on state, local departments to improve eyewitness testimony
- Court of Criminal Appeals: Trial court abused its discretion by disallowing eyewitness ID expert
- Model policy under development on eyewitness ID procedures
- Slow but steady progress toward improving eyewitness identification
- How much do eyewitnesses really see?
- Eyewitnesses and the 'feeling of knowing'
- Eyewitnesses in staged test only 8% accurate
- More on the fallibility of eyewitness testimony
- Eyewitnesses miss big changes in their environment, like the person in front of them
- Study: 88% of police and sheriffs have no written policy on eyewitness ID procedures, even fewer follow best practices
- Why Carl Reynolds would make a lousy witness
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6 comments:
We must undermine the eyewitness. No snitching!
I'd say it's the raft of DNA exonerations based on false IDs that undermined eyewitness testimony more than this blog ever could. I don't really get the snitching reference. Troll.
I've seen way too many suggestive photo or live show-ups employed throughout the years to make the identification come out the way the cop thinks is should at the time. It is many, many years overdue to have a fair and uniform procedure for the development of eyewitness identification evidence. Just ask Timothy Cole's family...
How much do eyewitnesses really see?
Not much!
To me, the most interesting part of this is blog post is:
"The Innocence Project of Texas plans to request all those local policies - more than 1,000 of them - under open records next fall to determine which departments included all the important elements and which ones are still using inadequate procedures.)"
If the defense bar can understand, and use, the inevitable delays or failures in the implementation of these policies, they will surely have a better chance to undermine prosecutors' attempts to secure convictions that are largely, or exclusively, based on eyewitness id.
There's an old saying that says "What I thought I said was not what you thought you heard." The same holds true for eyewitness observation. What I thought I saw may not have anything with what you thought you did or didn't do.
As long as eyewitness testimony is taken as gospel, innocent people will be convicted and guilty ones will get off free. Too many eyewitness accounts are just that, eyewitness accounts and not concrete evidence of anything - and it has nothing to do with snitching and everything to do with an incomplete biased observation compounded by a cop who has to be right and make an arrest.
I'm really glad that there is a public hearing to try and discuss this issue. Maybe there actually is some intelligent life out there after all.
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