When a New Jersey court ruled last week that eyewitness testimony would be easier to challenge from now on, it was a splash in the water of criminal law that is now sending ripples out to police departments across the country. The bottom line: Police lineups — and the way they are conducted — are unreliable and must be changed.
The evidence against the classic lineup method (cops use pictures now, not actual people) has been mounting. Just last Friday, we told you about how a lack of, well, "expansive" men, lead to a convicted man getting a retrial, but there's much more. Because there are no clear guidelines on how lineups should be conducted, according to The New York Times, only about 25 percent of the nation's police departments have attempted to change anything to make them more reliable. This often results in lead investigators also guiding the lineups, which as you can guess, could influence the witness' testimony.
While some, like the Denver Police Department, have changed their policies, others have taken a "if it's not broke don't fix it" mentality. In other words, if no one ends up getting wrongfully convicted because of a lineup, then all is well. There is hope though. The Police Executive Research Firm is currently studying lineup procedures at over 1,200 random departments in the United States in an effort to see how they are implemented. The results of that study are expected later this year.
