One of the prin­ci­pal caus­es of wrong­ful con­vic­tions in death penal­ty cas­es and oth­er felonies is mis­tak­en eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny. On July 19, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued instruc­tions designed to help jurors bet­ter eval­u­ate the reli­a­bil­i­ty of eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tions. A judge is now required to tell jurors before delib­er­a­tions begin that stress lev­els, dis­tance, or poor light­ing can affect an eyewitness’s abil­i­ty to make an accu­rate iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. The new instruc­tions also warn that fac­tors such as the time between the com­mis­sion of a crime and an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of a sus­pect, and the behav­ior of a police offi­cer dur­ing a line­up, can also influ­ence a wit­ness. In cas­es involv­ing cross-racial iden­ti­fi­ca­tions, judges are required to tell jurors that ​“research has shown that peo­ple may have greater dif­fi­cul­ty in accu­rate­ly iden­ti­fy­ing mem­bers of a dif­fer­ent race.” The instruc­tions, which take effect in September, address prob­lems raised in last year’s state Supreme Court rul­ing that con­clud­ed the tra­di­tion­al test for the reli­a­bil­i­ty of eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny should be revised. The instruc­tions are expect­ed to be influ­en­tial as oth­er states look to revise their approach to this prob­lem. Barry Scheck, co-direc­tor of the Innocence Project in New York, called the instruc­tions crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant. ​“It changes the way evi­dence is pre­sent­ed by pros­e­cu­tors and the way lawyers defend. The whole sys­tem will improve,” Scheck said.

New Jersey abol­ished the death penal­ty in 2007.

(B. Weiser, ​“New Jersey Court Issues Guidance for Juries About Reliability of Eyewitnesses,” New York Times, July 19, 2012). See Innocence. Listen to DPIC’s pod­cast on Innocence.

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