Six ways to prevent wrongful convictions

Time and time again in the criminal "justice" system, eyewitness testimony has proven unreliable. In fact, according to the Innocence Project, a legal organization dedicated to exonerating the wrongfully convicted, "[e]yewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions overturned with DNA testing, contributing to 75 percent of the 240 DNA exoneration cases to date!

So what can we do about this?

To help answer that question, the Innocence Project has released a new report that explores the problem and outlines six steps that states and municipalities can take to reduce the possibility of wrongful convictions.

A summary:

1. Proper lineup composition: The non-suspects in the lineup should resemble the eyewitness’s description of the perpetrator, and the suspect should not stand out.

2. Blind administration: The officer administering the lineup should not know which participant is the suspect.

3. Witness instructions: The witness should be told that the perpetrator may not be in the lineup and that the investigation will continue regardless. This helps the witness understand the role of the identification and may decrease the pressure to make an identification.

4. Confidence statements: Juries assume confident eyewitnesses are more reliable, but sometimes confidence in an identification increases as an investigation progresses. Lineup administrators should ask for a witness’s level of confidence, in his or her own words, immediately after the lineup.

5. Recording lineups: An accurate video or audio record of the lineup procedure can help a jury or judge gauge the possibility of misidentification.

6. Sequential lineups: When witnesses view lineup members one by one instead of all at once, they are less likely to misidentify an innocent person. Research is ongoing on this reform and the Innocence Project recommends it as an optional addition to the reforms above.

These steps are not drastic, expensive, or complicated to implement.

On the other hand, the costs of each wrongful conviction, in financial terms and most especially in human terms, are far too great to ignore.

>> Read the executive summary or download the full report.

>> Learn about the policy in your state.