Reforms

NEW PROCEDURES FOR EYEWITNESS MEMORY EVIDENCE

Police Training Consultants

With the advent of eyewitness reforms, police departments across the country are beginning to develop expertise in managing new eyewitness evidence collection and preservation procedures on the ground. Two leading police investigations experts in the field, retired Chicago Detective Sgt. Paul Carroll and Northampton, Massachusetts Detective Lieutenant Ken Patenaude were members of the original National Institute of Justice Technical Working Group on Eyewitness Evidence, and provide consulting services for departments and academies working on the new techniques.  They can be reached by e-mail at SgtPCRet@aol.com


The National Institute of Justice Technical Working Group Manual

In 1999, the National Institute of Justice Published Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide For Law Enforcement, a pioneering recognition that in eyewitness cases, the memory of the witness was for all practical purposes the scene of the crime, and must be rigorously guarded against contamination. The Training Manual for police designed to carry the lessons of the Guide into practice contains lesson plans, a CD-ROM with illustrative material, and a helpful text.


REFORM INITIATIVE UPDATES

A growing list of jurisdictions has adopted eyewitness evidence reforms. In most of these examples, the reforms have been instituted by the elected prosecutors. These include Dan Conley, Suffolk County (Boston) and William Keating, Norfolk County in Massachusetts, and Amy Klobuchar, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Kings County (Brooklyn) New York District Attorney Charles Hynes has argued for "blind" lineup administration, although not for "sequential" (e.g., one-at-a-time presentation of photographs or suspects). Advisory Commissions in Illinois and North Carolina have urged adoption of research-based procedures. The American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Section has also issued a call for identification evidence reform. Legislative iniatives are pending in a number of states. The progress of these initiatives is tracked by NLADA Defender Services. The current issue of the National Institute of Justice Journal carries an accurate summary of where the debate now stands.


Learning From Error Initiative

The eyewitness reforms discussed throughout the book "True Witness" and on these pages are only one example of how valuable a concerted effort to learn from wrongful convictions and other criminal justice accidents can be.  For a lengthy article describing how medical reforms made use of this tradition, see:
 James M. Doyle "Learning From Error In American Criminal Justice" at: