Eyewitness Identification Bill Passes House Committee

Tim Cole was wrongly convicted based on a faulty eyewitness ID. He died in prison before he could be exonerated. An advisory panel named for Cole last year recommended eyewitness ID procedure reform to help reduce wrongful convictions

After several years of trying to get this measure passed, the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee passed out of committee a bill aimed at reducing wrongful convictions.

The bill, House Bill 215, by Alpine Dem Rep. Pete Gallego, who is also the committee chair, came up for hearing this afternoon, bringing with it emotional testimony from a number of the state's exonerees.

The bill would require Sam Houston State University's Blackwood Law Enforcement Management Institute to come up with a model policy covering the administration of live and photo lineups to try to prevent wrongful identifications. As it stands, faulty eyewitness ID is the leading cause of wrongful convictions – a fact testified to by numerous witnesses, including a handful of the the state's 41 exonerees.

The state's police agencies would then be required to adopt the Blackwood policy or to come up with their own based on the best practices contained in the model. This is no small beans, since the vast majority of Texas law enforcement agencies don't even have a written policy in place to cover eyewitness ID procedures. (And, of those that do, many are not particularly good. I'm told, however, that since 2008, when the Justice Project did its study of Texas police agency policies, the Austin Police Department has beefed up its policy and is now among Texas agencies with a model policy in place.)

Gallego laid out a committee substitute bill, which tweaks very few pieces of the filed legislation. In the end, the eight members of the committee present (only Center GOP Rep. Wayne Christian was not on the dais at the time) voted in favor of passing the legislation on to the full House for consideration. Dallas Rep. Will Hartnett, acting as chair during the hearing, said he wanted to move it today: The bill enjoys "tremendous public interest and support" and could use the "head start" in moving toward full passage.