By Shoshana Guy
Rock Center
Ruby Session’s guests filed in slowly, clasping each other in warm, familiar embraces. Many, who were there to attend her 75th birthday, shared a harrowing history both with each other and the woman they had come to celebrate. “She didn’t adopt us. We adopted her,” said Christopher Scott, who spent 13 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. “She is what all of us dreamed of having, a mom or a loved one who believed in us not part of the time but the whole time, because she believed her son was innocent.”
In 1985, Ruby Session’s son Timothy Cole was accused of raping fellow classmate Michele Mallin near the campus of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. But Session never believed it. “That was not him, that was not him,” Session said. “That was not my child.”
Based on Mallin’s memory of the assailant, the Lubbock Police generated a composite sketch. And when an undercover officer bumped into Cole near the campus, she thought he looked like the sketch. Cole had recently reported a robbery and the police used that excuse to take a picture of him at his house. Experts and family members point to inconsistencies in the line-up. For example, Cole’s background was different and he was the only one looking directly in the camera.
Witness error: How mind tricks can put the innocent behind bars
Based on the eyewitness identification, Cole was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Devastated by the outcome, the family filed appeal after appeal. But in 1999, after serving 13 years of his sentence, Cole died in prison from an asthma attack. He was 39-years-old.
Still, the Session family refused to give up trying to prove Tim’s innocence, and their fight helped to change the criminal justice system in Texas and challenge an element of basic police work, the photo lineup.
Counter to the “live lineups” we see on television, more often than not the detective or officer working the case presents the witness with a five or six-person photo lineup. One of the people in the lineup is the actual suspect and the rest are what are referred to as “fillers,” all chosen to roughly resemble the suspect. However, decades of research suggest that this traditional method is flawed. Nationwide 75 percent of prisoners exonerated by DNA evidence were convicted on the basis of faulty eyewitness identification. As a result some states and law enforcement agencies across the country are beginning to change their procedures.
While there is still a lot of debate around which methods will lead to fewer faulty identifications, many researchers agree that the most important part of the process is who conducts the lineup and how the photos are presented.
Traditionally the detective or officer working the case shows the lineup. The Session family says the detectives working the case “steered” Mallin towards choosing Cole. “The police had tunnel vision,” Cory Session told NBC's Josh Mankiewicz in an interview scheduled to air Wednesday night on Rock Center. “They're going to make it fit no matter the circumstances surrounding the whole case.” The Lubbock Police Department maintains that at the time they were following standard protocol.
Social scientists say that even the most careful officers can give unintentional cues. Many researchers have found that when someone with no knowledge of the case presents the photo lineup, the witness is less likely to experience unintentional or subtle influences that can lead to mistaken identification. The process is referred to as “blind” since the person administering the lineup does not know which one of the photos is the suspect. A landmark decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court last August, pointed to the importance of using a “blind” process.
More controversial in scientific and law enforcement circles is whether or not the photos should be shown sequentially, that is one at a time, rather than all together. “People are naturally wired to make comparative judgments,” said Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State University who has been advocating for changes to the police lineup process for nearly 30 years. “For most of the tasks that we encounter, comparisons or judgments work pretty well. But for an eyewitness the question is not who looks most like him, the question is, is that the person?”
Last September, Wells helped publish a new study based on actual cases that found that photographs presented one-by-one, by a person unrelated to the case, significantly reduced wrongful identifications.
However, getting the more than 16,000 independent law enforcement agencies across the country to reform is a slow process, in part because many are not convinced the sequential process is the better procedure. While individual law enforcement agencies have changed their policies, currently only New Jersey and North Carolina have statewide mandates that police lineups be conducted blind and sequential.
In 2009, with the help of the Innocence Project of Texas, and eventually Michele Mallin, DNA testing proved Tim Cole's innocence. A year later, Governor Rick Perry made Cole the first person in state history to be posthumously pardoned.
The Session family has continued their fight for Texas’s community of exonerated men. The Tim Cole Act mandates financial compensation for the wrongfully convicted. Cory Session, who is now the Policy Director for the Innocence Project of Texas, helped persuade Texas legislators to pass a law calling on all police departments to create a policy for conducing photo lineups. The law went into effect this past January and, although the procedures each department will adopt has yet to be determined, Session feels the progress made was helped along by his brother Tim.
“Tim made the difference,” he said. “He made the difference in a huge way.”
Editor's notes: NBC News correspondent Josh Mankiewicz' full report, 'Photo ID,' airs Wednesday, April 4, at 10pm/9c on Rock Center with Brian Williams. For more information read “A Plea for Justice: The Timothy Cole Story" by Fred B. McKinley.
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The problem with eyewitness falibility has been known for years. I always tell people to comb their hair and smile like the camera is their mother when getting a mugshot. Try to look like mama's little angel. Here is an interesting reference to the issue of eyewitness testimony.
http://agora.stanford.edu/sjls/Issue%20One/fisher&tversky.htm
Several studies have been conducted on human memory and on subjects’ propensity to remember erroneously events and details that did not occur. Elizabeth Loftus performed experiments in the mid-seventies demonstrating the effect of a third party’s introducing false facts into memory. Subjects were shown a slide of a car at an intersection with either a yield sign or a stop sign. Experimenters asked participants questions, falsely introducing the term "stop sign" into the question instead of referring to the yield sign participants had actually seen. Similarly, experimenters falsely substituted the term "yield sign" in questions directed to participants who had actually seen the stop sign slide. The results indicated that subjects remembered seeing the false image. In the initial part of the experiment, subjects also viewed a slide showing a car accident. Some subjects were later asked how fast the cars were traveling when they "hit" each other, others were asked how fast the cars were traveling when they "smashed" into each other. Those subjects questioned using the word "smashed" were more likely to report having seen broken glass in the original slide. The introduction of false cues altered participants’ memories.
To pile on a little more... Anyone that doesn't believe that eyewitness testimony is inherrently unreliable should read the research work of Karim Nader. In essence research has shown that within the human brain the act of remembering opens up a given memory to modification and change. As such the attempt to remember during an eyewitness recollection opens up that memory to modification and change - especially if the eyewitness is being "nudged" by law enforcement in a certain direction.
Nader's work is not science fiction, it is well document, peer-reviewed, and accepted. In fact it is now the basis for potential PTSD treatments. So there are positive benefits to this reality of the human brain, but we should not ignore this reality in law enforcement either. Sadly, the "innocent until proven guilty" mantra appears to be long dead in the US and eyewitness testimony was/is a significant contributor to that death.
Prosecutors are really "Persecutors" ..... they don't care if a person is innocent ...all they care about is convictions .... Most are truly "evil people" that will convict anyone to climb up the ladder ..... most of us believe in our system ... till we get caught up in it .. innocence doesn't matter, your just another fish to fry ...
@moonbeamracer. You got that right, brother! Prosecutors will pull every dirty trick in the book to obtain a conviction. Withhold evidence, fabricate evidence, coach witnesses. It's all in a days work to them. What's worse, the way our judicial system is constructed, they are absolutely free to do so. Truth and justice have very little to do with how some prosecutors go about their dirty business. Some cops, lawyers, and judges are no better. Sickening!
Boo: Did ya get the ax?
One thing I don't like is that a felon loses their right (privilege) to vote.
More often than we care to admit!!
There are many who want the truth. Most of them are hounded to clear the case load because others are coming along any moment.
NEA and Don't be -- great sources. Thanks.
And moonbeamracer-- I think your view is a little strong, but not that far off --sadly. As an attorney that has practiced in, but not made a career of this area of law, there are prosecutors that think all people are guilty of something-- they just haven't been caught yet.
For more on this see the movie "Conviction" (on HBO I think) with Hillary Swank. A true story about someone from my Alma Mater.
@xxx ooo Yes, I got the axe. I have an incredible story to tell, if I could get anyone to listen to the truth. Far too complex to explain here. 9 years ago I was a victim of entrapment. I have the truth, based on documented fact. But to those who wield the power, lies are better than the truth. My story would make a great basis for a movie. The fight goes on. I don't give up easily.
Indeed the legal system is just a big money machine and I know it! Lived it seen it hate it! Too many sheeple! Bahh..Working people are to busy to find out the truth until its too late!
I know of a woman who the prosecutor thought that the state didn't have a case, and just went through the motions. The judge decided that, because he thought that the woman could abuse a child, that she did, and now, even though the evidence, the history, and everything didn't even register, she has a felony on her record. (The kid left her day-care in the morning, and went on the short bus, and was in an another program, and then was in class when the teacher noticed the child's face had a red mark on it. I saw the photos--the red mark is just like when my kids would sit in a car with their faces on the glass for about a half and hour. The bus driver and the later adult were not summoned to ask if they'd seen the mark,and the kid has mental challenges, a symptom includes parroting back. The woman never even spanked her own children, and when the child was asked in the court who had hit him (even though the only evidence was the red flat mark that had faded without a bruise), he pointed to a man sitting in the chamber.
However, it was Child Abuse National Prevention Month, and the judge was up for re-election. No jury, as both prosecutor and defense attorney thought that there wasn't enough to justify what should have been an open and shut case for dismissal.
So not all prosecutors are bad, but at least one judge could not care less for the facts.
I would never agree to a police questioning without an attorney present nor would I ever take a polygraph test. The police will zero in on someone and hound them into submission to confess to a crime, they will fabricate or bend evidence to fit their version of events. They will use the refusal of an individual to take a polygraph test as a publicity stunt to plant in the minds of the general public, i.e. the potential jury pool, the guilt of an individual even though polygraph tests are so unreliable that they are inadmissible as evidence in every court in the United States. I know that a lot of people have been exonerated because of DNA testing but I really wonder how long it's going to be before it's found unreliable.
I used to teach law enforcement and during class would run an id test. I would have a friend enter the back of the class, turn off the light, smack something on a desk, flip the light on and holler at the class then run out. The class would see him for no more than 3-4 seconds. I would then have the class write a description using defined characterisitics such as height, weight, hair color etc. The results were all over the map, they wouldn't even get what he said correct. It was an awful indictment of how bad witnesses can be in stressful situations. The only thing people would get close to correct was clothing and that is usually only good until they change their clothes. In my opinion, any case relying solely on eyewitness testimony from stranger witnesses is deeply flawed to the point of being unprosecutable. Mind you, this is stranger witnesses, if the witnesses actually know the perp it is another ball game as you can id the known much quicker and with more certainty.
The photo line ups are great but should be changed. They should be required to add a Police Officer and local Prosecutor in the line up. If either are picked they should go to prison no questions asked. Maybe the point would get driven home.....
If you ever get arrested, the only words out of your mouth should be "I want a lawyer." Don't say another word until you speak privately to your attorney.
If I remember correctly the movie was titled "Civil Action" and contained a line that said: "a courtroom is the last place you want to look for the truth (or justice)."
Seems about to sum it up.
I have made an interesting observation after reading a number of comment boards regarding crime and those accused of crimes. On here, after a story about those proven to have been wrongly convicted, we have all kinds of comments about how evil prosecutors all are, how they are all morally and ethically bankrupt and ready to trod on the innocent as they climb the ladder of success. On any article about someone being judged not guilty, the comments are all about the slime ball attorneys who represent the accused and how they will do anything to get guilty people off, how the system is all stacked against the victims and the criminals are allowed to get away Scott free. Reality probably falls somewhere in between. The prosecutors do not always convict innocent people. The system is not designed to give defendants more rights than victims. Sometimes, innocent people are convicted (it's horrible, but it happens), sometimes they get the right guy. Sometimes, the need to protect the rights of all mean defendants catch a break, and sometimes those same rights prevent an innocent person from going to jail. Some lawyers (on both sides) do the wrong thing, some lawyers are honest men and women trying to do the right thing. The system is not perfect. It is quite flawed, in fact. It is in all of our best interests to see that it is improved in any way it can be (acknowledgment that some practices - like relying on eyewitnesses - are inherently flawed and using research to devise a way to do it better, for example), but treating the system and the people who work in it like characters in a bad novel, like caricatures of pure evil is just silly and fails in any way to usefully address the problem. Time to stop trying to assign blame and get down to business about making changes for the better.
We have another huge problem. Not long ago a report came out that 6 in 10 American adults were in the criminal justice system in some fashion, and nearly 3 in 10 involved felony charges, meaning 30% of Americans are not allowed to vote or own a gun to protect themselves or family......I wonder what portion of that 30% are middle class working Americans.................In many, especially southern states, any crime with aggravated in front of it is a felony. A fist fight, pushing a person, 1.5 DUI, struggling to resist having the cuffs put on can all be classified as aggravated.
A very small number of states allow for civil rights to be reinstated over a period of time, but most do not, meaning approximately 25 out of every 100 Americans cannot vote at all, mostly democrats I would suspect.
Your statistics are grossly incorrect, Ellis. You may have seen a report on a particular group, such as young black men. The overall numbers are nowhere near what you cite.
walks-upright said, in part, in post 1.7
"And moonbeamracer-- I think your view is a little strong, but not that far off --sadly. As an attorney that has practiced in, but not made a career of this area of law, there are prosecutors that think all people are guilty of something-- they just haven't been caught yet."
So, what are those prosecutors guilty of? They *are* part of 'all' people. Bet if they were asked the question they'd be astonished. There's no difference between them and others who get caught up in the 'justice meat grinder'.
Detective fiction and Hollywood movies have convinced the public that eyewitness testimony trumps other kinds of evidence and that "circumstantial evidence" is the most unreliable of all. In fact, eyewitness testimony is notoriously unrealiable. Memories grow progressivelly dim over time, and even the most careful observer cannot be trusted to identify a stranger from a photograph or even a lineup. By removing the human element, so-called circumstantial evidence may be far more reliable, as DNA testing has confirmed time and again.
Law enforcement, including prosecutors and judges LIKE the current system. They "know" that the perp they take down is guilty, even after DNA proves said perp COULD NOT have done the crime. LEO's and prosecutors remain convinced despite scientific evidence. A good part of this is NOT b/c they are evil people: it is simply part of human psychology. In NC we have a rather famous pair, a rape victim and the man she ID'd as her rapist who was convicted. After many, many years, and a volunteer lawyer who worked incredibly hard, the defendant was exonerated. He and "his victim" speak at conferences. The "victim" tries to explain that even today, fully accepting that the man is NOT her rapist, her mind tells her that his face is the face of the man who raped her. Once a suggestion has been confirmed, you cannot erase "what you know".
There is nothing new in any of this. Tests back in the 1930's proved conclusively that "stranger" eye-witness ID, that made by people who did not before know the person identified, is almost entirely unreliable, yet almost no judge in the US will instruct a jury that only 1 in 10 eyewitness ID's are reliable, that the witness who wrongly ID's a person is NOT LYING, they, like all of us, have a brain that works a certain way to convince them that what they are saying is the truth.
No one should be convicted on eye witness ID by a person not thoroughly familiar with the defendant's appearance before the crime AND corroborating, OBJECTIVE evidence must be required in all cases.
Correcting the photo ID procedure is simple: judges need to simply exclude testimony not based upon a blind, sequential photo ID. We would not allow a witness with no education and a 50 IQ testify as an expert witness on the workings of a computer: why allow the testimony of a human when we KNOW the odds are very much against them being right, but that the jury will believe them?
I believe that a great many cops and prosecutors do not care at all about the truth, only in carving notches in their belts and furthering their careers.It has also come out recently about deliberate prosecutorial misconduct of cases were DAs withheld info that they know would clear suspects. Any DA who does this should receive a mandatory life in prison sentence.
AMEN
You are correct that a prosecutor may get caught up in behaviour dictated by human psychology. But carrying on doing your job under unjustified circumstances when you know the circumstance we are describing leads to incorrect judgements is somewhat evil. I think therefor I am seperates us from the animals, if we can think upon human psychology, then we can modify our behaviour accordingly.
As a man I may have a human desire to procreate with every woman I see, but as an advanced creature I can curve my desires accordingly.
Eddy, your last line is disturbing. Hopefully you are not advanced like ET screwing earth women randomly...........
Cops and prosecutors will ignore or hide exculpatory evidence when they know a 'suspect' is innocent. They know a truly innocent person may be easier to convict than a guilty one, because they will naively cooperate with the legal system believing they are looking for justice rather than just another conviction notch on their belt.
Never, ever talk to a prosecutor or police officer investigating a crime. You see many examples of groups of individuals where those that spoke with the police get convicted and those that just kept their mouth shut are never even charged. Your cooperation will be used against you if they have the opportunity.
@727 Clearly, the "v" was a bit larger than the adjacent "b" on Eddie's keyboard. This may be a good example of how one tiny mistake can change the meaning. Something to consider in the context of this discussion about errors and consequences.
This is a true story that has terribly bothered me since it was first told to me about 1996. I had a retail store that local police officers frequented, on day as I was talking to who I thought was an honest police officer he looked at his watch and realized he was late for court and said " crap, I have to be in court in 10 min. to testi-lie", I thought I heard him wrong and ask him what did say, he repeated "testi-lie", I asked what that was and he proceeded to tell me the say what ever they have to to make there case stick because they get in trouble if their case or man walks. I was shocked as I considered this person an honest person. This has bothered me for years and I always wonder when I hear a police testifying what the truth really is. As a disabled Marine, and a proud, honest man, I want you to know this is an actual true story. He told me that all his cop friends called it testi-lie-ing, and in the cops fraternity it was a well used word. And I am disabled for this kind of crap, it makes me sick. Semper Fi.
Marine,
First and last, I Thank you for your Service.
Please consider that you didn't serve so cops can lie, but so that millions of us can freely speak our minds on fora like that and others, so that Truth - however it appears at the time, can still have a voice.
Semper Fi, indeed.
Hey, Marine, concentrate on good people doing good. There are always a**holes among us, even in our Corps. I would hope you "called" the cop on it: something like, "I thought you were a better man than that" sometimes works to remind good people who they ought to be.
Semper Fi,
Tom
Marine et al.
Thank you for your service. I have had members of the police force justify their lying (sometimes in court they have said) because they think they are "getting a bad guy of the street". What they don't realize I think is that they are betraying the very thing they are trying to protect, and, frankly, I can see where they get frustrated sometimes. But it certainly does not excuse this behavior.
For more about this look at the Innocence Project in Texas -- and then ask yourself how anyone can support the death penalty? We can be just like Iran, Yemen, North Korea, Saudi Arabia (and now add strip searches for parking tickets).
What is it called when the state executes an innocent person?
Wrongful conviction
@disabled Marine. i've heard similar. it's sad but i hope you realize not all are like that. thank you for your service *hugs*
@ Disabled Marine
I first heard that term back in the early 80's when I was in my late teens, and it sickened me also.
Unfortunately since then I have seen it in practice, decent people convicted because a police officer wanted them to be. I heard cops tell fantastic lies to get a traffic ticket conviction. One would have to be unbelievably insecure with themselves to have a need to lie to get a traffic conviction I would think.
I have a fairly close friend who is a Judge and I asked him once about cops and the lies they tell while testifying. He told me all Judges know cops are liars, and believe most to be chronic liars. I then asked why they let them get away with it. The answer; based on observations and conversations spanning his 21 years on the bench, is complex with many reasons he said. There are judges who fear being labeled some even fear retaliation, there are some who are lazy and believing a cop is easy and convenient, then there are the lock them up and through away the key types who share the opinion of many prosecutors that people are generally guilty and they may not have done the crime they are on trial for now, so this is for all the stuff they didn't get caught doing, the number one reason in his opinion was public trust if you can imagine that. They don't want to confirm that cops are exactly what they are, liars willing to violate the law at will. Unless an act committed by a cop is egregious enough to rally the public in sufficient numbers, their crimes are usually overlooked or covered up. And if your a cop in LA it's almost impossible to get prosecuted thanks to Cooley the most morally bankrupt DA in the country. They don't want a large scale break down in the public trust. Rather ironic isn't it. I think it's happening anyway. There will always be those odd ball believers who think cops can do no wrong but I think the numbers are shifting, slowly but there shifting.
In GOP circles, reason to applaud.
Many years ago i was involved in "Special Investigations". I had reason to confront a police officer and ask why he lied under oath. This is not his exact words but my recollection of his response: Everyone lies. They lie so we lie. Most of the time we can do it better, we have more experience.
I believe that the ADA wanted the officer to lie and officer was never charged with perjury.
This goes on all of the time. Police frequently beat or coerce false confessions from suspects. They withold exculpatory evidence. they introduce false evidence. They put winning a case over honesty and justce. Both the police and the district attorneys staff work together to get convictions. They break the law and are rarely if ever charged or punished for their crimes.
Here's one but one example. It's a case in which I'm more than a little familiar. Do your own research about the Tankleff case in Suffolk County New York. It is but one of many: http://civiletti.blogspot.com/2009/01/tankleff-case-may-be-tip-of-iceberg.html
I've been retired for a while . but I can tell you that this criminal misconduct in the judicial system is ongoing.
It is so easy to manipulate a "lineup". Have a picture of the designated "perp" that makes him look mean and evil. Have pictures of other people who look pleasant and normal. darken the image of the "bad guy". Let the witnesses believe they are required to pick one of the pictures.
And asking them who looks most like the person who did it, not IS IT the person who did it. I've read that people think they're being helpful to the police, when the feel as if they have to choose someone from the lineup. Family member went to prison based ONLY on testimony of old lady, the first day she thought the perp might be familiar to her, the second day he sort of looked like him, and then it was definitely him. Why didn't she know that on the first day?
Texas,,,, who'd have figured.
Kinda fits with the "Shoot 1st, don't ask questions" law,,, A hoody is good enough for an ID... If you fit the general description, you must be guilty
Jim,
I too was surprised that Perry pardoned someone ----innocence notwithstanding. Must be something about it being "posthumously".
Some people in Texas are known to applaud the frequent use of the death penalty.
lol this is funny...sorta. the reason being is when i was attending a criminal justice course with my mother at harris county college in harris county Tx. 1988 our professor staged an event where 2 men with masks and fake semi-automatic gun burst thru the door yelled at the students, waved their guns and ran out. then we "the students" where asked to describe the "suspects" now out of 50 students only 2 got it semi-right and they were wrong to some degree. knowing this info id have to agree that eyewitness lineups are serverly flawed and needs to go the way of the dodo.
I agree that law enforcement has a 'quota' and they don't give a damn who goes up for the crime. They just want to 'move on' and get that good retirement. They do not see anyone as an individual and could care less. And the worse part...if they are found out to have lied later after the person has wasted years to be cleared...they are NOT held accountable and absolutely NOTHING happens to them. It's great to be the king!
Our law enforcement and justice system follows the fundamental rule of economics: people behave the way they are paid. There is no "pay" for clearing a suspect and keeping a case open. Ever hear of a cop being decorated and praised for NOT testifying against the person indicted? There is no positive reward for a prosecutor who does NOT move a case to the grand jury or who comes to doubt the case and dismisses it. Judges do not get kudos or any other "pay" for bouncing witnesses who they don't believe or even for questioning a witness who seems not quite "kosher". And it is absolutely true that prosecutors who manipulate the system to ensure that "they win" and thereby convict the innocent are NOT JAILED OR FINED. Seldom are they disbarred or even fired, and that's IF THEY ARE CAUGHT!. And no, there is no pay for pursuing a prosecutor who may have cheated the system.
Nope, We the People keep voting for pols who make the biggest noise about being tough on crime and locking up bad guys and making sure our jails and prisons are not country clubs. Since We the People don't ensure that those who do real justice are "paid" and those who corrupt justice are punished, we get what we demand.
Yes, I've been a part of the system on all sides: LEO, prosecutor and defense. Lawyers are intensely competitive and, if no severely regulated, will pursue "victory" over their opponent, regardless of "truth and justice".
Good Post T.H.Eagan! ..well said ..
Hey look at the four photos.... The one on the lower right.... Isn't that the so called child that the white guy murders. Isn' it curious that this "Evidence" didn't get out.....................................Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
How can you tell if it is he or not? They all look alike to you.
As sickening as this is, police are not the only participants in the justice system who deserve scrutiny. Prosecutors and judges who rail on about "law and order," and proudly thump their conviction records when running for re-election, also create this mania for conviction regardless of costs, regardless of justice. It all reminds me of Edwin Meese's comment, when he was US Attorney under Ronald Reagan, that "people wouldn't be arrested if they were innocent."
The victims are not only the innocent; they include all of us.
A posthumous pardon does nothing for the victim, and the cops who caused the wrongful conviction paid no penalty..
It doesn't do anything for the victim, but it is going to bring peace to the family, and might make them eligible for the Tim Cole Act referenced in the article.
It is common in a line up for the person who is going to ID the perpetrator to look at a picture of the one the officers and prosecutors think did it. It imprints, and out of 4 or 5, the one from the photograph will shine.
I do agree, that if a prosecutor or officer withholds, modifies, or lies in an investigation, they should go to jail. That would stop a lot of this. If the victim is going to point out someone that supposedly does a crime, they need say how sure they are, and not let the officer push them to make an ID.
Yes, and what also gets me is they always ask the eye witness if the person who committed the crime is "in this court room' with the defendant who just had their handcuffs removed in plain view sitting in front of them............A Canadian friend of mine told me in Canada they conduct a live line up in court prior to the prosecutor asking witness to identify suspect, and do not allow live line ups prior to court.......................To me this sounds like a much fairer way to make IDs
This is what Texas and 12 other racist southern states call justice, if your black your guilty. The sad thing is that when talking with the citizens of these southern states they see nothing wrong and when they are proven wrong after the black mans execution, they say well he would have committed a crime in the future anyway so don't worry about it. Texas wears its execution of the black citizens of Texas as a badge, something they are proud of. The civil rights act is null and void in the 13 southern states and they have the protection of the republican supreme court on their side. The civil rights act was never part of the 13 southern states laws, the state laws over rule the federal laws in most states in the union. State law enforcement can refuse to follow the federal laws and the states know that it is almost impossible to get federal prosecutor to enforce federal laws. The republican state governors are in the process of doing away with voting laws for the poor, elderly, sick and non-white citizens and the federal government knows that if they try to enforces these voting rights that the repulbican supreme court will side with the states. Looks like civil war is around the cornor and I can't wait to see the outcome. If you want justice in the country you have to pay for it and that leaves 99% of the citizens unable to receive a fair trial or justice. How much justice can you afford today
"The Lubbock Police Department maintains that at the time they were following standard protocol." Yes, I'm sure they were. That doesn't mean that their protocol wasn't and isn't still, flawed. If you use a protocol that doesn't work, then you still FAIL. They should re-exam that protocol and ...is it too much to ask for Justice in this country? Being afraid of losing your job because you can't find a "guilty" suspect is no excuse for putting an innocent person behind bars....
Yea, the prototypical refuge of scoundrels. "I was just following protocol."
I was just following orders.
But what's the prosecutor's and judges excuse in this case? The cops may have followed protocal but it's their job to gather evidence, not determine guit or innocence. I tend to blame the prosecutor more for accepting the case based on nothing but one witness and the judge even more for convicting on it.
Does this ever happen to non-black suspects
actually, it does....probably not as often, but yes, it does.
True story. Leaving the Judges chambers with attorneys, a lady sitting in the hall way, jumped up and pointed at me saying I was the guy that had robbed 15 minutes ago. A Officer walking down the hall, grabs me and attempts to hand cuff me. The lady was screaming and hollering "he's the one who robbed me." Guess what? I had been visiting this Judge for over two hours, and never left his office during that period. Hearing the commotion in the hall the Judge came out to see what was going on. By this time I am laying on the floor had cuffed. The Judge asked the Officer what I was being held for, and he said armed robbery. The Judge asked when did this happened and the lady said about fifteen minutes ago. The Judge invited the lady and the Officer into his chambers and showed a video of our meeting that started at 10:10 a.m. and lasted until 12:15 p.m. Oh, and by the way I am a professional, and was dressed accordingly. All the lady could say was that a Black man wearing glasses had robbed her on her way to work. Need I say more about eye witness testimony.
@Alfred. just wow. imagine how that would have played out if you hadn't been able to account for that past 15 minutes. how horrible.
Marin County lawyer arrested for robbing a bank even though someone else's fingerprints on holdup note. Take him 4 months to clear his name. Contra Costa County nearby arrests man for robbing bank. He has video showing he was in Washington State at time of robbery. Cops even agree with him. Cops take my picture for legally riding a bicycle down the street. I get damn mad and you can see why. When I was in college, student came up to me and started talking to me like he knew me. I said "Do I know you?" He said "You're my high school chemistry teacher from Lebanon, Mo." I said "No, I'm not." He says "Yes you are." I have to admit chemistry was my favorite subject with over 32 semester hours, but I was not a chemistry teacher. Retired Nuclear Engineer and 14 gallon blood donor.
I was on a jury that refused to convict a defendant of robbing a store and escaping the police officer who caught one man. It was a photo lineup done two months afterwards, and we just couldn't believe that she could be absolutely sure it was the same guy. (Defendant, officer, and most of the jury were black.) Nor were we told, and couldn't ask, why this man was a suspect and put in the photo lineup in the first place.
Frankly it wouldn't surprise me if he was guilty, but the case was not proven, and I'd rather make a mistake that way than convict an innocent man.
Now that Texas Gov. Perry is aware of the flawed eye witness identifications, I hope now he will take the necessary steps to make Texas the next state to require blind sequential photos of all law enforcement agencies. I can't imagine not making that mandatory across Texas. And if any LEO or prosecutor is ever found guilty of withholding any evidence that would prove any defendant innocent, that prosecutor should be disbarred for life and his prison time should be the same term as the person he wrongly convicted. No exceptions! We cannot ever allow an innocent person to go to prison ever again! A decent prosecutor should morally be more interested in obtaining justice rather than his conviction record!
I remember discovering I had the wrong kid who punched me in the stomach for my lunch money. My Aunt Marge paid him a visit at school to discuss the bullying. The kid kept saying it wasn't him. She came back to me to ask me to confirm if it was him and I said yes it was him. I few weeks later the bully came back, and I discovered my memory of african Americans wasn't as good as I believed. It wasn't him. So, that's another issue is white people's memories of African American faces may not be as good as our own.
It has been consistently demonstrated in experiments that no race is as good at identifying members of other races as they are members of their own. This is not just a white/black thing. But it is an important issue to remember when there are disparate races involved in a case relying heavily on eyewitness accounts.
And, Moonbeamer, defense lawyers will defend the devil. They will use any excuse they can dream up to get their client off. Even if they know they are guilty.It's really a game between defense lawyers and prosecutors to see which one of them will get their moment of fame. Who suffers, we do.
antoinette, defense lawyers are required by law to defend their clients to the utmost of their abilities, even if they know they are guilty.
However, no attorney is entitled to perpetrate a fraud upon the court.
Texas - land of sinners that always think someone else is doing the wrong thing. Such a backward state that businesses can buy buildings ands hide the records of their purchase. Texans buy beer and commit crimes, then go to church on Sunday and think all is forgiven.
jw101, at least we have enough sense to know not to put everyone in a state in the same catagory, as you did. We also have enough sense to know when someone, like yourself, has an agenda. What have you got against ALL Texans? Jealousy, perhaps? Or was your ex from Texas? No matter, really. We are ALL just so happy that you aren't among us!
Lineup id shouldn't be totally excluded but it shouldn't be the only evidence either. For example, an id obtained from a lineup that leads to further evidence is part of a chain of evidence that can demonstrate probable cause for serches etc.
Most prosecutors I know take their job seriously and require their cases be sufficiently corroborrated before proceeding. They generally are not out to "put another notch on their belts" as some of the cynics here claim. Eyewitness ID can be troublesome but usually it too is corroborrated by other competent evidence. The cops and prosecutors are seldom the evil ones.
You live in a dream world. Cops and prosecuters are as likely to be evil as anyone else, and the system is blatently designed to encourage this.
I was just going to ask what world you live in, vmgenn, but I think the answer is in John Rational's comment. Seriously deluded, that is certain!
I don't know where you're from, vmgennn, but prosecutors work differently in Texas. Here, questionable police lineups are among many shady techniques used without compunction to win convictions.
In fairness, the police, judges and even some court-appointed defense attorneys in Texas are complicit in what is best described as a system of ritualized mendacity that favors the wealthy and the white.
Wait just a minute here B Shane.."favors the white" ..not hardly!!
Here is a TRUE STORT OF A WHITE MAN-
google Michael Morton ..
or I will give you the facts..1986 Michael Morton of Williamson County Texas leaves for work..hours later his wife is murdered..25 years after being convicted he did not commit Mr. Morton (a white man) is declared innocent on December 19th 2011. The prosecutor- Ken Anderson (now a Williamson County District Judge) is right now being investigated for prosecutorial miscoduct by a Special Prosecutor-Mr. Rusty Hardin. District Judge Lewis Sterns of F. Worth was appointed by a Texas Supreme Court Justice to convene a court of inquiry schedule to start June 2012.
All of this is thanks to Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project who spent years re-opening this investigatio. Also interesting is that Mr. Morton was offered parole 5 years go if he would admit to killing his wife, Mr MOrton has steadfastly denied killing his wife of 25 years.
My only experience was at a grocery store I worked at in Alabama. We cashed checks all the time throughout the day. This is before cameras in the store. A policeman came in with about eight different mug shot pictures. Wanting me to identify the guilty one. When he seen I didn't know, he pushed this one picture in front of me. Wanting me to pick it as the guilty one. He seemed ticked at me, for saying I can't pick any of them out. Since that day, I always wondered how many go to jail, when they are actually innocent. That many law enforcement people are just out to get someone and close the case out.