Radley Balko | April 8, 2009
Psychiatrists
and criminologists have been warning about problems with eyewitness
testimony for decades, mostly to little effect. Now new research,
along with the role eyewitnesses have played in more than
three-quarters of DNA exonerations, has sparked new calls for
reform.
Radley Balko explains that while just a few basic changes in procedure would go a long way toward improving how eyewitnesses are used in criminal cases, police and prosecutors refuse to implement them. If law enforcement continues to resist reform, Balko argues, policymakers should impose it on them.
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