Expert: Philip Sweeting - 9/5/2006

Question
Philip - given that in suspect cases reviewed by the Innocence Project the greatest percentage of 'false conviction'* is due to mistaken witness testimony, even where there has been no intent to pervert justice, how have the rules and procedures relating to eye-witness testimony been revised to make this less of a problem (to the innocent accused)? Has any far-reaching directive regarding this potential for injustice issued from a high level of the judicial system, or perhaps from government itself?  
Thanks
Tony  

* is some other phrase phrase other than 'false conviction' used in the judicial system?  

Answer
I was just having this conversation with someone yesterday. Unfortunately, not only in death penalty cases but also in others, people have been wrongly convicted due to incorrect witness identification and in some cases false confessions.

Even though the courts allow witness identification for obvious reasons, it is, in my opinion the least reliable evidence you should consider for a variety of reasons which would require a lengthy explanation.

As for the false confessions, there are also a variety of reasons for this which would also require a lenghty explanation.

You make an assumption that there is no intent to "pervert justice". This may be the case in most instances but both the police and prosecutor are charged with the responsibility to equally look at evidence that indicates both innoncence and guilt. Yet in many of these cases, it is later learned that the police/prosecutor ignored and or concealed evidence that would have indicated the person's innocence.

When this is discovered, other than overturning a conviction and or civil lawsuits, there are no consequences to the police/prosecutor who were involved in the case. I believe that a law should exist that when this happens, an independant investigation be required to determine if there was any wrongdoing by police/prosecutor and if so they could be charged criminally.

Of course for a politician to propose such a law would be political suicide since he/she would be viewed as soft on criminals and I suspect, as sad as this may sound, the majority of our society's attitude is "they must have done something" and don't care if someone is wrongly convicted.

As for your specific question other than requiring DNA testing if it exist, to my knowledge nothing has been done. One governor about a year ago did suspend all executions due to this issue.

And the credibility of  eyewitness testimony is left up to the jury unless it can be thrown out by a judge prior to trial.

If you copy and paste this web page it will take you to the Justice Departments eyewitness guide for police officers. Hope this helps.  
http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/178240.pdf