Justice Barbara Pariente of the Florida Supreme Court recent­ly com­ment­ed on the dan­ger of mis­take in eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny and the impor­tance of warn­ing juries about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of error. Her com­ments came in a death penal­ty case where she said that wide­ly accept­ed sci­en­tif­ic research, “ ​‘con­vinc­ing­ly demon­strates the fal­li­bil­i­ty of eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tes­ti­mo­ny and pin­points an array of vari­ables that are most like­ly to lead to a mis­tak­en iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.’ ” (cita­tion omit­ted). She also not­ed that ​“eye­wit­ness misiden­ti­fi­ca­tion has played a role in more than sev­en­ty-five per­cent of con­vic­tions that were sub­se­quent­ly over­turned through DNA test­ing” in Florida. She rec­om­mend­ed that courts allow experts to tes­ti­fy about the fal­li­bil­i­ty of such testimony.

(D. Kim, ​“Justice Pariente Beats Drum For Eyewitness Expert Testimony,” News Service of Florida, June 26, 2014; see Peterson v. Florida, SC 12 – 1442, per curi­am, June 26, 2014 (Pariente & Quince, JJ. con­cur­ring in denial of relief). See Innocence and New Voices.

Citation Guide