Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Grits for Breakfast

Criminal Law

: Grits for Breakfast

Exoneration punctuates need for eyewitness ID reform

As if to punctuate the gravity of the error, the day after the Texas House killed legislation to require eyewitness ID reforms among police, Texas will see its 40th DNA exoneree (the 20th from Dallas) walk out of court a free man today. The Dallas News ("DNA testing clears Dallas County man in 1986 rape of SMU student," May 27) reports that:Jerry Lee Evans matched the description of the man who abducted and raped a woman in Deep Ellum in 1986. He even had a similar speech impediment.But today Evans, 47, is expected to walk out of the courtroom a free man because DNA testing shows he is not the man who raped an 18-year-old Southern Methodist University freshman at knifepoint.As science has discovered more about how eyewitnesses really identify suspects, it's become clear, as the Justice Project's Edwin Colfax likes to say, that eyewitness testimony should be considered more like "trace" evidence which shoddy or biased collection methods can easily contaminate...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on May 27, 2009 (boomark / email).