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The Metropolitan Police Department will alter the way it conducts criminal identification lineups and local courts will change how they handle criminal informants as measures to decrease the number of wrongful convictions.
In a report issued by an ad hoc committee impaneled by D.C. Superior Court Judge Lee Satterfield, D.C. police were suggested to have officers not affiliated with a particular investigation conduct photo lineups to avoid potentially influencing witnesses. Additionally, the report advised that police should, rather than gather suspects and potential defendants in one large group, present witnesses with one photo at a time. The task force also suggested that police make greater use of computers and other technology when asking witnesses to identify potential defendants.
The recommendation for having non-involved—or “blind”—officers conduct identification sessions was issued unanimously. The report reads:
Law enforcement should employ blind administration when practicable; that is, identification procedures should be conducted in a manner in which the administrator does not know the identity of the suspect or cannot discern which photo the witness is looking at when attempting to make an identification.
In a letter to Satterfield, Judge Russell F. Canan, who led the committee, wrote that MPD has started a pilot program of “blind administration” in robbery cases. The D.C. Council last month proposed changes to the police lineup process.
Satterfield convened the committee in January 2011, a little more than a year after a judge overturned the conviction of Donald Gates, who was wrongly convicted in 1982 of the rape and murder of a woman in Rock Creek Park. Gates spent more than 28 years in prison because of the false testimony of two witnesses, including an informant for the prosecution. A genetic investigation eventually concluded that semen found inside the victim’s body did not come from Gates.
At the time of his trial, Gates’ lawyers had little information about the witnesses who would be called against him. The Innocence Project, which works to overturn wrongful convictions, often by applying DNA evidence, reports that 72 percent of such cases result from faulty eyewitness testimony.
The committee strongly recommended that going forward, defendants be given at least two weeks’ notice if an informant will be testifying against them at trial, along with a disclosure about the informant’s own criminal history, so long as the witness’ safety is not jeopardized.
Satterfield forwarded the committee’s findings in a letter to U.S. Attorney Ron Machen, including the recommendation that D.C. create an “Innocence Commission” that would review the causes of wrongful convictions.
The committee met periodically over the last two years and included several judges from D.C. Superior Court, high-ranking Metropolitan Police Department officials, and outside legal experts.
