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Monday, August 22, 2011
Courts - "Memory should be treated “as a form of trace evidence: a fragment collected at the scene of a crime, like a fingerprint or blood smear, whose integrity and reliability need to be monitored and assessed ..."
Adam Liptak's long Sidebar column this week in the NY Times is headed "34 Years Later, Supreme Court Will Revisit Eyewitness IDs." Some quotes:
WASHINGTON — Every year, more than 75,000 eyewitnesses identify suspects in criminal investigations. Those identifications are wrong about a third of the time, a pile of studies suggest.Mistaken identifications lead to wrongful convictions. Of the first 250 DNA exonerations, 190 involved eyewitnesses who were wrong, as documented in “Convicting the Innocent,” a recent book by Brandon L. Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia. * * *
In November, the Supreme Court will return to the question of what the Constitution has to say about the use of eyewitness evidence. The last time the court took a hard look at the question was in 1977. Since then, the scientific understanding of human memory has been transformed. * * *
“It is exciting that the court has actually taken an eyewitness ID case for the first time in many years,” Professor Garrett said, “even if it might be the wrong case on the wrong issue.” The justices are likely to rule only about which kinds of eyewitness identifications warrant a closer look from judges — just those made after the police used improperly suggestive procedures or all problematic ones?
The larger and more important question of what that closer look should involve is probably not in play in the case, Perry v. New Hampshire, No, 10-8974. * * *
Barry C. Scheck, a director of the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, said that what is needed in this area is a new “legal architecture,” one in which judges play an authentic gatekeeping role.
He pointed to a pioneering report last year from a special master appointed by the New Jersey Supreme Court. The special master, Geoffrey Gaulkin, suggested that memory should be treated “as a form of trace evidence: a fragment collected at the scene of a crime, like a fingerprint or blood smear, whose integrity and reliability need to be monitored and assessed from the point of its recovery to its ultimate presentation at trial.”
Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 22, 2011 03:27 PM
Posted to Courts in general