The Rhode Island Public defenders office is sponsoring legislation that would reform eyewitness identification practices. Mistaken eyewitness identification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions according to the Innocence Project.
The Bill sponsored by the Rhode Island Public Defender's office would require that live and photographic lineups include filters that fit the suspect's height, age, race and other physical traits. Further, it would mandate that the witness be told not to assume that the perpetrator is in the line up. The Innocence Project has sponsored eyewitness identification legislation throughout the nation and aims to have lineups conducted by officers who do not know who the perpetrator of the crime is to avoid having the officer suggesting to the witness, either intentionally or unintentionally, who to pick through the officer's actions. As a Rhode Island criminal defense lawyer, the legislature should pass this bill to prevent wrongful convictions occurring in the State.
Cases of mistaken identification include the Duke Lacrosse case. There police provided the accuser with a lineup that included only Duke Lacrosse players. The three players were later cleared but not before being dragged through the legal system.
Another case of mistaken identification involved Ronald Cotton who spent 11 years in prison for rape when he was convicted based on a flawed identification procedure. Jennifer Thompson the victim in the case has advocated for eyewitness identification reform and was a speaker at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers eyewitness identification seminar.
In Massachusetts criminal cases, identification issues are addressed through a motion to suppress an identification as unnecessarily suggestive. In the leading case of Commonwealth v. Botelho, 369 Mass. 860 (1976), a Massachusetts criminal defense lawyer must show by a preponderance of the evidence that the procedures used to obtain the identification were so unnecessarily suggestive and were conducive to an irreparable mistaken identification so as to violate the defendant's right to due process of law and effective cross examination. Generally, identification issues arise in serious sex crimes, robbery cases or an assault case where the victim does not have a clear chance to see the suspect.
