Bills would change police lineup process

Bills that seek to change the way law officers do police lineups are being lauded by civil rights groups, but face opposition from at least one law enforcement group.

Supporters say the proposal would lead to fewer wrongful convictions, while opponents say the Legislature should not mandate how law enforcement conducts criminal investigations.

It would require the person who conducts both photo and in-person lineups to be someone who doesn’t know who the suspect is.

State Sen. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, and Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, each submitted identical bills recently for the legislative session that starts next month.

Baxley said witnesses are often suffering from trauma and may feel pressured to make a choice. There are also times when officers may, unconsciously, indicate to the victim who the suspect may be, he said.

“Making the procedures more uniform would help us avoid a wrongful conviction,” he said.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations at the University of Michigan, there have been 24 cases in Florida since 1989 where a bad witness identification, at least in part, led to a wrongful conviction.

The bills also require law enforcement to tell the witness that the suspect may or may not be in the lineup, the witness should not feel compelled to identify someone and the investigation will continue with or without the identification.

A similar bill in 2011 never made it to the House floor because police groups were opposed. It may face similar opposition this time around.

Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings, president of the Florida Sheriff’s Association, which was against the bill in 2011, expressed skepticism.

While he thinks blind tests are the right policy, Demings said setting the rules should be up to the departments and the agencies that accredit them.

“Much of what is recommended we are already doing, for the most part,” he said.

His office has been doing blind witness identification for about a year, he said.

The association said it plans to discuss the measure with its members before taking a position.

Demings said while witnesses can be wrong, he doesn’t think it’s a systemic issue.

“I do not believe it is the role of the Legislature to mandate how criminal investigations be conducted,” he said. “When they start to do so it becomes a slippery slope.”

The Fraternal Order of Police said it has not taken a position on the bill yet.

Baxley said the bill was pushed by the Florida Innocence Commission.

Seth Miller, the commission’s executive director, said witness misidentification of suspects is the No. 1 reason for wrongful convictions.

“We understand what the cause is, so we want to be able to put policy in place to address the issue,” he said. “There’s no better start than this.”

Miller likened the policy to a clinical drug trial, where neither the people running the trial nor the people taking the medicine know who is taking the placebo and who is taking the actual drug. “This is not new,” he said.

The commission recommends the law should go further, including provisions that would make witnesses say how confident they are that they identified the right suspect. Colorado, Nebraska and Maryland have adopted similar measures.

Miller cited two cases where a bad witness ID helped lead to wrongful convictions.

In 1993, a man named Derrick Williams was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in Palmetto. The victim identified Williams after seeing his picture twice in the lineup. DNA evidence eventually exonerated Williams.

In a 1989 case out of Orlando, Jules Letemps, 54, was convicted of raping a woman. After the woman returned to the scene, she saw Letemps walking by and identified him as her attacker. But Letemps was actually going to work.

His conviction was thrown out last year. Before he could be released, he was put into a detention facility because he was Haitian and had come to the U.S. illegally.