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REEVALUATING LINEUPS: WHY WITNESSES MAKE MISTAKES AND HOW TO REDUCE THE CHANCE OF A MISIDENTIFICATION AN INNOCENCE PROJECT REPORT BENJAMIN N. CARDOZO SCHOOL OF LAW, YESHIVA UNIVERSITY BOARD OF DIRECTORS Gordon DuGan President and Chief Executive Officer, W.P. Carey & Co., LLC Senator Rodney Ellis Texas State Senate, District 13 Board Chair Jason Flom President, LAVA Records John Grisham Author CONTENTS Calvin Johnson Former Innocence Project client and exoneree; 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.................................................................................................3 Supervisor, Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority Dr. Eric S. Lander 2. HISTORY AND OVERVIEW OF EYEWITNESS MISIDENTIFICATION ..................................6 Director, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard Professor of Biology, MIT Hon. Janet Reno 3. PROBLEMS WITH TRADITIONAL EYEWITNESS IDENTIFICATION PROCEDURES.............10 Former U.S. Attorney General Matthew Rothman 4. HOW TO PREVENT MISIDENTIFICATION.....................................................................16 Managing Director and Global Head of Quantitative Equity Strategies, Barclays Capital 5. REFORMS AT WORK..................................................................................................22 Stephen Schulte Founding Partner and Of Counsel, Schulte Roth & Zabel, LLP ENDNOTES.....................................................................................................................26 Bonnie Steingart Partner, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP APPENDIX A: Andrew H. Tananbaum Wrongful Conviction Cases Later Overturned Through DNA Testing President and CEO, Capital Business Credit, LLC Which Involved Eyewitness Misidentification....................................................................28 Jack Taylor Head of High Yield Debt, Managing Director, APPENDIX B: Prudential Real Estate Model Legislation: An Act to Improve The Accuracy of Eyewitness Identifications................33 Board Treasurer Paul R.Verkuil Of Counsel, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP Rachel Warren M.K. Enterprises, Inc. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Eyewitness identification is among the most show a piece of the problem – they are a micro- prevalent and persuasive evidence used in cosm of the criminal justice system. courtrooms. Eyewitness testimony that directly Decades of empirical, peer-reviewed social science implicates the defendant is compelling evidence research reaffirms what DNA exonerations have in any trial, but it is not error-proof. Jurors may proven to be true: human memory is fallible.2 not realize that confident, trustworthy witnesses Memory is not fixed, it can be influenced and can be mistaken. A single witness’s identification altered. After the crime and throughout the can be enough to obtain a conviction. criminal investigation, the witness attempts to Eyewitness identification also plays a key role piece together what happened. His memory is in shaping investigations. In the immediate after- evidence and must be handled as carefully as math of a crime, an erroneous identification can the crime scene itself to avoid forever altering it. derail police investigations by putting focus on The Innocence Project identifies the common an innocent person while the actual perpetrator causes of wrongful convictions across DNA is still on the streets. Once a witness identifies exoneration cases and has found eyewitness the suspect to police, whether or not that person misidentification to be the leading cause. actually committed the crime, investigators may Innocence Project research shows: stop looking for other suspects. • Over 230 people, serving an average of Over 175 people have been wrongfully convicted 12 years in prison, have been exonerated based, in part, on eyewitness misidentification and through DNA testing in the United States, later proven innocent through DNA testing. The and 75% of those wrongful convictions total number of wrongful convictions involving (179 individual cases as of this writing) eyewitness misidentifications exceeds this figure, involved eyewitness misidentification. given the widespread use of eyewitness testimony and the limited number of cases in which DNA • In 38% of the misidentification cases, evidence is available for post-conviction testing. multiple eyewitnesses misidentified the Experts estimate that physical evidence that can same innocent person. be subjected to DNA testing exists in just 5-10% • Over 250 witnesses misidentified of all criminal cases.1 Even among that small innocent suspects. fraction of cases, many will never have the benefit of DNA testing because the evidence has been • Fifty-three percent of the misidentification lost or destroyed. DNA exonerations don’t just cases, where race is known, involved cross- racial misidentifications. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3 Eyewitness misidentification as the leading cause of wrongful conviction compared to other causes (based on the first 239 DNA exonerations) 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Eyewitness Unvalidated False Informant Misidentification or Improper Confession Testimony Forensic Science • In 50% of the misidentification cases, Many of these misidentifications could have been eyewitness testimony was the central evidence prevented, many wrongful convictions averted, used against the defendant (without other and many additional crimes avoided if police corroborating evidence like confessions, had used more reliable lineup procedures. forensic science or informant testimony). In recognition of this, procedural reforms have been developed by leading eyewitness psycholo- • In 36% of the misidentification cases, gists and successfully implemented by criminal the real perpetrator was identified through justice professionals. These reforms have a strong DNA evidence. scientific foundation and have been embraced • In at least 48% of the misidentification cases by leading national justice organizations includ- where a real perpetrator was later identified ing the National Institute of Justice and the through DNA testing, that perpetrator went American Bar Association.3 They include: on to commit (and was convicted of) addi- • Double-blind presentation: photos or lineup tional violent crimes (rape, murder, attempted members should be presented by an adminis- murder, etc.), after an innocent person was trator who does not know who the suspect is. serving time in prison for his previous crime. 4 THE INNOCENCE PROJECT • Lineup composition: “Fillers” (the non-suspects Despite positive feedback from police departments included in a lineup) should resemble the where the reforms have been implemented and eyewitness’s description of the perpetrator and mounting evidence of the reforms’ effectiveness, the suspect should not stand out. Also, a lineup the majority of jurisdictions have maintained the should not contain more than one suspect. status quo. There are no consistent standards for identification procedures from state to state or • Witness instructions: The person viewing a even from one police department to the next. lineup should be told that the perpetrator may In fact, many police departments do not have not be in the lineup and that the investigation written procedures for conducting identifications, will continue regardless of whether an identifi- so there is often inconsistency even within indi- cation is made. vidual police departments. Now is the time for • Confidence statements: At the time of the change. Misidentifications benefit no one: not identification, the eyewitness should provide the innocent defendants who face incarceration a statement in her own words indicating her for crimes they didn’t commit, not the victims level of confidence in the identification. who are denied justice, not the police officers working to catch the real perpetrator, and not • Recording: Identification procedures the public whose safety is jeopardized when real should be videotaped. perpetrators remain at large. • Sequential presentation (optional): Lineup This report provides a historical overview of how members are presented one-by-one (by a eyewitness misidentification came to be recog- “blind” administrator) instead of side by side. nized as a leading cause of wrongful conviction, Several states, cities and towns have already it examines the shortcomings of traditional adopted the reforms and found them to be eyewitness identification procedures, and it cost-effective and easily implemented. The describes how simple improvements to proce- benefits are extensive and include reinforcing dures can alleviate the problem, with examples the integrity of reliable identifications as well of cities and states across the country that have as reducing the rate of misidentifications. successfully implemented procedural reforms. “ It’s incumbent on us that we establish procedures that make them [police lineups] more reliable, that law enforcement can count on. If you identify the wrong person, you’re leaving a criminal out there free and you’re potentially convicting an innocent person.” North Carolina State Rep. Deborah Ross, The Herald-Sun, April 30, 2007 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5 HISTORY AND OVERVIEW OF EYEWITNESS MISIDENTIFICATION On December 19, 1974, thousands of viewers nothing new. Hundreds of witnesses in scores of watched a woman being mugged on a New York other eyewitness identification experiments had City television newscast. In a 13-second video been getting it wrong for decades. clip, viewers saw a man grab a woman’s purse, Hugo Munsterberg, a German-American psychol- knock her down