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US SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS RULES FOR EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY
WPR News - US Supreme Court upholds rules for eyewitness testimony
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Thursday January 12, 2012
by Gilman Halsted
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(UNDATED) In an 8-1 ruling this week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the current rules for judging the reliability of eyewitness testimony in criminal cases. That's both good news and bad news for lawyers at the Wisconsin Innocence Project.
The court rejected an effort by Barion Perry of New Hampshire to have eyewitness testimony in his burglary conviction thrown out. He claimed police had used a suggestive technique to prompt a woman to identify him. He was the only black man standing next to police in a parking lot when officers asked her to identify him. Keith Findley is the co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project at the UW-Madison law school. He says the court missed a chance to broaden the ability of defendants to question eyewitness testimony.
At least since 1967, this Supreme Court has been keenly aware that eyewitness identification is prone to error and is one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions.
In fact more than 76 percent of the first 250 convictions overturned by DNA evidence involved people who were convicted on the basis of eyewitness misidentification, a fact highlighted in the lone dissent in this ruling by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Findley says the majority ruled that defendants can only challenge eyewitness testimony on a constitutional basis when police have clearly tried to sway the witness to finger a specific perpetrator, "Justice Sotomayor's dissent contends that what the due process is concerned about is the fairness of the proceedings in court and that turns on whether the evidence is reliable."
Findley says the ruling does have a silver lining though for innocence projects across the country in that reaffirms that the court is concerned about eyewitness testimony and leaves the door open for trial courts to consider the mounting research evidence that it is too often faulty.
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