|
|
||
Crime commission eyes stronger rules for police Date published: 9/9/2010
RICHMOND --The head of the State Crime Commission seems to be leaning toward stronger rules on police lineups.After a presentation on how the state's 134 law-enforcement agencies conduct lineups, state Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax, said she was disappointed that, despite a state recommendation from 2005, some police departments don't even have written policies on lineups. "I'm feeling aggrieved," Howell said. "We put in code that every jurisdiction would have a written policy, and they don't. At least 25 percent don't. That is very discouraging that so many don't." Howell, the chairwoman of the crime commission, was responding to a survey of lineup policy done by crime commission staff. The survey found that 75 percent of responding agencies--95--have a written lineup policy. It also found that only about 56 percent of agencies use the sequential lineup method all the time. Twenty percent never use it--the rest use it some of the time, or did not respond to that question in the survey. The majority of police and sheriff's departments--67 percent--said they do not use independent administrators for lineups, and 52 percent said they require training in lineup procedures. Locally, Fredericksburg police do sequential lineups, while the sheriff's departments in Stafford and Spotsylvania do not. The survey was sparked by a bill before the commission, submitted in the 2010 session, that would require police statewide to use sequential lineups, in which witnesses are shown one picture at a time of potential suspects. Current state policy encourages, not requires, the use of sequential lineups. According to the Innocence Project--an organization that attempts to exonerate wrongly convicted defendants and reform police policies that led to those wrong convictions--research indicates that in traditional lineups, grouping potential suspects together, witnesses tend to compare the people in the lineup with each other and choose the one who looks most like the perpetrator, rather than comparing each person with the witness's own memory. Studies suggest that lineup procedures could make it less likely that a witness will name the wrong person. The Innocence Project says that in more than 220 wrongful convictions nationwide that were later overturned by DNA testing, misidentification by eyewitnesses was a factor in more than 75 percent of cases.
1. Be respectful. No personal attacks.
|
|
||||||||||||
