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F I S C A L I M P A C T R E P O R T

SPONSOR

HJC

ORIGINAL DATE

LAST UPDATED

1/28/07

3/10/07 HB 295/HJCS

SHORT TITLE Reliable Eyewitness Identification Act

SB

ANALYST Wilson

ESTIMATED ADDITIONAL OPERATING BUDGET IMPACT (dollars in thousands)

FY07

FY08

FY09 3 Year

Total Cost

Recurring

or Non-Rec

Fund

Affected

Total

Unknown

Recurring General

Fund

(Parenthesis ( ) Indicate Expenditure Decreases)

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

LFC Files

Responses Received From

Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC)

Administrative Office of the District Attorneys (AODA)

Corrections Department (CD)

Public Defender Department (PDD)

Sentencing Commission (SC)

SUMMARY

Synopsis of Bill

The House Judiciary Committee substitute for House Bill 295 creates a new statute providing

procedures for law enforcement to use in line-up eyewitness identification procedures. The bill

defines “line-up" as a series of persons or photographs shown to an eyewitness to a crime to

determine whether or not that eyewitness can identify the subject. The bill also requires unless

otherwise required by age, disability or the language needs of the eyewitness, only an

administrator shall be present with an eyewitness during the lineup procedure, except that a

suspect's attorney may be present during a lineup of persons. No other person shall be in a

position to be seen or heard by the eyewitness during the lineup procedure.

The procedures require that prior to being shown a lineup, and as close in time to the incident as

possible, an eyewitness shall give a description of the subject and the circumstances under which

the subject was seen by the eyewitness, including the time of day, the length of time the subject

was seen, the distance from the eyewitness to the subject and the lighting conditions. The

description shall be recorded or written.

House Bill 295/HJCS– Page

2

Prior to a lineup, an eyewitness shall be instructed that the eyewitness should not feel compelled

to make an identification, the subject may not be among the members of the lineup and

an identification, or a lack of identification, will not end the investigation.

The bill requires a photo lineup to consist of at least ten photographs. No more than one

photograph of the suspect shall be included in the photo lineup.

The bill prohibits the presence of any person other than the administrator and eyewitness at a

lineup except a suspect’s attorney.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS

The AODA states there will be additional resources expended by law enforcement agencies.

Additional hearing will be held on eyewitness cases. As this will be a new requirement, no

documentation exists as to what additional expense will be incurred.

The AOC notes

t

here will be increased costs associated with a requirement to make a video and

audio recording of every lineup procedure, as well as the additional costs required for the various

records, instructions and documentation that are required in addition to the procedures currently

imposed by law.

There may be increased costs to the courts because of challenges to eyewitness identifications

and because litigation over such issues may demand more judicial resources than current law.

SIGNIFICANT ISSUES

A procedure such as is contemplated by the bill will likely reduce mistaken identifications, by

improving the reliability of identifications and thus improving confidence in the criminal justice

system. If these procedures are followed, it will likely reduce the number of hearings on motions

to suppress identifications and may reduce the number of cases proceeding to trial.

The AODA claims

that f

ollowing the mandatory provisions of the act will lead to increased

workload for law enforcement investigating crimes. The bill creates another method for

defendants to challenge their proper identification by witnesses. Currently State and Federal

Constitution govern eyewitness identification procedures. A recent study by the State of Illinois

showed this method to be less effective than current methods.

The AODA also notes that rural areas may have difficulty implementing the provisions of this

bill

ADMINISTRATIVE IMPLICATIONS

The bill will require extensive training for judicial and law enforcement agencies affected by this

bill. Policies and procedure manuals will need to be revised.

OTHER SUBSTANTIVE ISSUES

The SC has provided the following:

House Bill 295/HJCS– Page

3

•

The sequential, blind lineup procedures set forth in the Reliable Eyewitness Identification

Act are suggested as an alternative to traditional practice, which involves the

simultaneous presentation of a lineup to an eyewitness. Also, in traditional practice, the

person who administers the lineup often knows the identity of the suspect.

•

Proponents for the use of sequential, blind lineups believe that implementation of these

procedures will decrease the rate of mistaken identifications that result from the use of

traditional practices. They raise the following issues concerning traditional practices:

•

When a lineup administrator knows the identity of a suspect, the

administrator may provide unintentional or deliberate cues to the

eyewitness about which person to pick from the lineup.

•

When an eyewitness is shown individuals or photos simultaneously, the

eyewitness tends to choose a person from the lineup based upon a relative

judgment (who looks the most like the suspect) rather than basing the

identification on the eyewitnesses’ own mental image of the suspect.

Research and field studies show that compared simultaneous and sequential, blind lineup

procedures concluded that the sequential method reduced the number of false identifications with

little or no loss in the number of accurate identifications.

A 2001 research study on line-up presentations collected and analyzed the results of twenty-three

papers on sequential lineups compared to simultaneous lineups. The authors of the research study

came to the conclusion that the rejection of the innocent occurred at a significantly higher rate in

a sequential lineup compared to a simultaneous lineup.

Field studies that compared the effectiveness of sequential and simultaneous lineup presentations

in Minnesota and Illinois, respectively, yielded conflicting results. Reviews of the Minnesota

field study concluded that the sequential, blind lineup method was superior to the simultaneous

method, resulting in decreased rates of false identification and maintaining an effective rate of

suspect identification. On the other hand, the authors of a report on the Illinois field study

concluded that the Illinois data showed that the sequential, blind lineups, when compared with

the simultaneous method, produced a higher rate of known false picks and a lower rate of suspect

picks.

DW/csd