Exonerees Testify About Mistaken Eyewitness IDs

A handful of Texas' exonerees – who together spent more than 150 years in prison for crimes they did not commit – were among those who testified Dec. 1 at a Capitol hearing on the newly developed model policy for police eyewitness identification procedures. The draft policy, developed by the Bill Black­wood Law Enforce­ment Management Institute of Texas at Sam Houston State University, outlines how police should conduct lineups to avoid mistaken identifications, implicated in the vast majority of Texas' wrongful convictions, including in the cases of those who testified last week. Karen Amen­dola, chief operating officer of the Washington, D.C.-based Police Foundation, noted that police now have more than 40 years of scientific research on memory and procedure, which demonstrates that the sequential lineup procedures incorporated into the new LEMIT policy – meaning, a lineup in which photos of potential suspects are shown to witnesses one at a time – reduce mistaken identification by 30%. "That is a very large difference," she says. The policy (at www.lemitonline.org/publications/eyewitnessid.html) is slated to be ready for dissemination to Texas law enforcement agencies by Dec. 31. The new law directing the creation of the policy (House Bill 215 by Alpine Rep. Pete Gallego, which passed this spring) mandates that police adopt the policy or a similar version by Sept. 1, 2012.