Credibility of eyewitnesses questioned

The floor of the Texas Senate chamber buzzed on May 8 with proposals to help stop wrongful convictions. What was billed by its sponsor -- state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston -- as a roundtable discussion about the prevention of wrongful convictions drew a big crowd of prosecutors and judges as well as nine of the 33 people in Texas who have been exonerated with DNA testing since 2001, according to the Justice Project, a Washington, D.C.-based group. The discussions, according to press accounts, led to a wide range of legislative and regulatory proposals being tossed around --with several focused on changing the way the criminal justice system deals with eyewitness accounts, which often are erroneous and can lead to wrongful convictions. The Associated Press reported that Ellis pledged “to sponsor a bill during next year's legislative session that would mandate police departments' use of specific procedures when presenting live lineups or photo arrays to eyewitnesses.”  The Grits for Breakfast blog noted that Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Barbara Hervey said she “is interested in pursuing either statutory or court-ordered changes in eyewitness ID methodologies.” But the Houston Chronicle reported that Jeff Blackburn, senior counsel of the Innocence Project of Texas, was not so sanguine. "For every exonerated up there [on the podium], there are probably 300 people in TDCJ [Texas Department of Criminal Justice] who are innocent and need to get out," he said.
-- Miriam Rozen