Ringside Seat: Lawmakers have chance to improve justice system
Ringside Seat: Lawmakers have chance to improve justice system
State Sen. Cisco McSorley, D-Albuquerque, is sponsoring a bill to enhance the accuracy of eyewitness identifications. The measure would require police departments across the state to follow common-sense policies when they use eyewitnesses to identify a suspect, either in live lineups or in photo arrays. Jane Phillips/New Mexican file photo
MILAN SIMONICH
Ringside Seat
Posted: Sunday, January 11, 2015 7:00 pm | Updated: 1:24 am, Mon Jan 12, 2015.
Eyewitnesses are stars of the courtroom.
All at once, they can be sincere, honest, utterly believable and dead wrong.
“It’s a human system, and humans make errors,” says Gordon Rahn, director of the Innocence and Justice Program at The University of New Mexico.
His innocence project now is focusing on three men convicted of separate murders in New Mexico during the 1980s. Rahn says DNA evidence, still to be obtained and analyzed, may cast doubt on the guilty verdicts returned against some or all of the three.
Read more here: http://www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/local_columns/ringside-seat-lawmakers-have-chance-to-improve-justice-system/article_390179a7-6b6f-52ba-951e-e53744fcf8a0.html