Governor Rick Scott has signed a bill into law seeking to improve Florida's eyewitness ID system.
In Florida, eyewitness misidentification has contributed to 64 percent of cases where DNA later led to an exoneration. So, the goal of the new law is to create a uniform procedure when it comes to conducting lineups for all law enforcement agencies to follow to avoid wrongful prosecutions, due to mis-IDs. Michelle Feldman with the National Innocence Project says it combines several best practices.
“One that a lot of smaller agencies use is the folder shuffle method, and that’s where you put the lineup photos in folders, you shuffle them, and then, you hand it to the witness one at a time, so the administrator can’t see which one is being viewed and that prevents any suggestiveness,” said Feldman.
The new law takes effect October 1st.
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