Legal Commentary

Dallas County Breaks the Record Again

By TChris

Since this announcement in May that Dallas County had set a record with 17 exonerations of innocent prisoners due to new DNA testing, Dallas has broken its own record twice. TalkLeft reported exoneration 18 here. The next record-breaker could come tomorrow.

After nearly 26 years [in prison], the Dallas man [Johnnie Earl Lindsey] is one step closer to freedom this week after DNA test results showed that he was not the man who sexually assaulted the woman, said his attorney, Michelle Moore. ... "Hopefully he'll be released," said Ms. Moore, an assistant Dallas County public defender and a board member of the Innocence Project, a legal group that seeks to get wrongful convictions overturned.

Lindsey was convicted on the basis of a bad witness ID that probably resulted from showing the victim a suggestive photo array. [more...]

The suspect had been described as a black man in his 20s wearing no shirt, according to court records. Only two men in the lineup photos were shirtless, Ms. Moore said. And Mr. Lindsey was one of them.

"Juries back in the day believed that when a woman was raped, she must be able to identify her attacker," Ms. Moore said. "We know so much more now. There have been so many studies about how bad eyewitness accounts can be."

Jurors still believe victims are reliable witnesses. Fortunately, in recent years courts have been more open to permitting expert witnesses to educate jurors about the perils of eyewitness identification.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 18, 2008 (boomark / email).