Source:
UPIWASHINGTON, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- Does the routine use of eyewitnesses in American criminal cases contribute to trials that put innocent people behind bars -- even on death row? Evidence suggests it does.
The U.S. Supreme Court is getting ready to hear a case out of New Hampshire that deals with a subtle but important point in the witness process.
Lawyers for a hapless burglar say the case asks whether the due process -- or fair trial and procedure -- guarantee in the 14th Amendment bans the use of all "unreliable eyewitness identification" arising from "impermissibly suggestive circumstances and which are very substantially likely to lead to misidentification, or only to those identifications which are also the product of 'improper state action?'" -- meaning police manipulation. But in a larger sense, the whole idea of eyewitness evidence is under attack in the case, scheduled to be heard Nov. 2.
"DNA analysis in particular has demonstrated that misidentifications by eyewitnesses continue to lead to a high incidence of miscarriages of justice, as previously recognized" by Supreme Court precedent, the New Hampshire defendant's merit brief to the U.S. Supreme Court said.
Read more:
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/10/16/Under-the-US-Supreme-Court-Unreliable-eyewitnesses-put-defendants-on-death-row/UPI-70051318750200/?spt=hs&or=tn
Hell, even the
police acknowledge that eyewitness testimony is the least reliable source of evidence. The fact that people can be sent to the death chamber on it in a majority of U.S. states is nothing short of astonishing.