Mistaken identifications by victims and eyewitnesses annually send too many people to jail for crimes they didn’t commit.

Nationally, at least 75% of more than 250 wrongful convictions involves "at least one mistaken eyewitness identification," says Steve Saloom, policy director of the Innocence Project in New York, which fights similar cases across the country. "We want to see improved eyewitness ID procedures at all times, everywhere."

Part of the problem of mistaken identifications lies in the fact that many police agencies do not have standardized best-practice policies regarding the conduct of live and photo lineups that are based on best practices. There is no reason why such policies can’t be applied, notes Saloom, considering there have been more than three decades of research on the "fallibility of human memory."

According to a 2008 study from The Justice Project, a nonprofit that works to increase fairness in the criminal justice system, just 88 of 750 Texas police agencies who responded to a request for information on their lineup procedures actually had any written protocols for the administration of lineups.

Among the small number that did have such protocols, The Justice Project found that the existing policies were "largely inadequate" to fight faulty IDs.

Inadequate policies generally take for granted the idea that human memory works like a camera, which it does not, Iowa State University professor Gary Wells told Texas lawmakers in 2008. Rather, he said, memory is an active reconstruction process-meaning that what "we expect to see affects what we think we see."

Wells told the Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit, a group of judges, lawyers and lawmakers who consider ways to improve Texas' criminal justice system, that ensuring police follow best practices when dealing with witnesses to crime is crucial. .

That's exactly what the new Texas law seeks to do. Under the new law (which is still awaiting the signature of Gov. Rick Perry), the Bill Blackwood Law Enforcement Management Institute at the Sam Houston State University, created by state lawmakers in 1987 to provide management training for police officials across Texas, will devise a "model policy" that is based on "credible field, academic, or laboratory research on eyewitness memory" –such as Wells' work – to include "best practices" that aim to reduce mistaken IDs.

Link:
http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/inside-criminal-justice/2011-06-false-memories-the-perils-of-eyewitness-ids