What Price Justice? The Importance of Costs to Eyewitness Identification Reform
Texas Tech Law Review, Vol. 41, 2008
32 Pages Posted: 14 Feb 2009
Date Written: February 13, 2009
Abstract
The Department of Justice, as well as leading innocence organizations, have studied the social science findings on eyewitness identification procedures and have published recommendations to address the pitfalls outlined in the scientific literature. This Article provides a comparative study of the eyewitness identification recommendations of these groups and demonstrates that there is a growing national consensus on the procedures most likely to produce accurate identifications.
The Article suggests that the proposed reforms must be adopted at the state level in order to attain widespread adoption. There is currently a lack of congruence between the reforms proposed by reform organizations and those proposed by legislators. Many of the reforms proposed in state legislatures would make only minor, relatively cost-free changes, whereas those proposed by reform advocates would seemingly impose greater costs.
This Article urges innocence reform advocates to provide legislators with the political tools they need to enact the necessary critical reforms in eyewitness identification procedures. Unlike legislators, judges and lawyers tend to think in terms of moral imperatives, notions of fundamental justice, and the rule of law without giving much thought to the costs associated with establishing a justice system that reflects these ideals. But in the world of policy-making in which legislators operate, costs are a central concern. The Article proposes that reformers might engage the public policy research institutes at universities in reform-targeted states so that researchers can conduct cost-benefit analyses for proposed reforms. Preliminary reports on the feasibility of the most widely recommended improvements in eyewitness identification procedures indicate that the changes can be made without major disruption in the operation of investigations and without large increases in costs, but further study is in order.
Keywords: Eyewitness Identification, Innocence reform, Due process, Department of Justice, Wrongful conviction
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