Police Lineups Start to Face Fact - Eyes Can Lie - NYTimes.com

The New Jersey Supreme Court has mandated pre-trial hearings when there is evidence of suggestiveness in the conduct of a police lineup.  And it has directed that juries be instructed in the factors that social science has shown make eyewitness identifications an often unreliable guide to the truth.  As a trial lawyer for the Public Defender early in my career we knew that to be true.  We cross-examined on things like weapon focus (you were looking at the gun, couldn't take your eyes off the gun, could you?').  But judges were entirely satisfied to allow the evidence to go unscrutinized to the black box of the jury room.  - GWC
Police Lineups Start to Face Fact - Eyes Can Lie - NYTimes.com:

The decision by New Jersey’s Supreme Court last week to overhaul the state’s rules for how judges and jurors treat evidence from police lineups could help transform the way officers conduct a central technique of police work, criminal justice experts say.

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