A new police photo lineup policy shows promise.
VA - Four of the five South Hampton Roads cities - all but Virginia Beach - have photo lineup policies that don't conform to the new policy. That may change, however, as training begins this month for police agencies in Virginia, starting in Hampton Roads, in an attempt to encourage them to adopt the newer procedures. Several police departments said they already are reviewing their policies.
Virginia Beach was among the police agencies that helped the state Department of Criminal Justice Services craft the policy.
"We want it to be embraced by the law enforcement community," said Teresa Gooch, the law enforcement division director for the department. The goal is to ensure "that the identification occurred in a way that didn't unduly influence the witness."
Research shows "cross-racial identification" is especially difficult - people have difficulty recognizing faces of a race different from their own.
The most crucial change is what's known as blind administration of photo lineups, according to the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York. In other words, the officer presenting a photo lineup to a witness does not know who the suspect is and therefore can't intentionally or inadvertently give hints to the witness.
Experts say even a seasoned investigator can inadvertently give clues when showing photos. To avoid that, the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services recommends that photo lineups be presented by an officer who does not know who the suspect is. Or, if extra manpower is not available, the department suggests a system in which the investigator puts photos in folders, shuffles and numbers them, and shows a lineup without knowing which photo the witness is observing.
That's a change many Virginia police departments have yet to adopt. A study in 2011 by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services showed just 13 percent of Virginia police departments used an independent administrator to conduct photo lineups; 28 percent said they did so "when possible" and 59 percent of departments said they did not.
The study and the upcoming training come in response to a 2010 bill by Norfolk Del. Kenny Alexander that would have mandated photo lineup changes for police.
Lawmakers were reluctant to mandate the changes but asked for studies of how police departments do photo lineups and for efforts to encourage police to make changes voluntarily.
"The reason I brought the bill to light was because we saw a number of exonerations," Alexander said. "Taxpayers have paid millions of dollars to persons that were wrongfully convicted based on an eyewitness getting it wrong."
People convicted in 15 cases in Virginia have been exonerated or pardoned after DNA later proved their innocence, according to Innocence Project research.
http://hamptonroads.com/2012/07/police-photo-lineups-fail-new-state-policy
Revaluating lineups: Why witnesses make mistakes & how to reduce the chance of misidentification.
http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/Eyewitness_ID_Report.pdf