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Sunday, October 09, 2011

Courts - More on "Reliability Of Eyewitness Testimony Under Scrutiny"

Supplementing this ILB entry from Sept. 1st, and this one from Aug. 22nd that was headed "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 ...'", John Tuohy of the Indianapolis Star has a lengthy story today on Carlos Starks, a case of mistaken indentity:

After 11 months in jail, Carlos Starks finally got his day in court.

Thirty hours later, he was a free man.

One after another, witnesses who had fingered him for the shooting death of Douglas Craft told prosecutors, "That's not him."

"I kept looking around the courtroom for the guy who did the shooting," said witness Patricia Baker. "I said, 'That can't be him. That isn't him.' He didn't look anything like the person I identified."

Marion Superior Court Judge Patricia Gifford dismissed the case with prejudice, which means Starks cannot be tried on the same charge again. Starks, jailed since Oct. 5, 2010, was released Sept. 13.

Starks' ordeal helps explain why judges, legislatures and researchers across the country are casting an increasingly skeptical eye on the value of eyewitness testimony -- especially testimony based on photo lineups.

"This is just an egregious example of how damaging eyewitness accounts can be and the lack of fair play," said Fran Watson, a professor of law at Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis and a former chief of the Marion County Public Defender Agency. "People get sentenced to death because of misidentifications like this."

Accompanying the Star story is a side-bar detailing Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department procedures for photo arrays.

The two earlier ILB entries include much useful background material.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 9, 2011 02:54 PM
Posted to Courts in general