If the cops used the procedure described in this article there will be a major shit-storm, because the identification of the alleged perpetrators is hopelessly tainted. I don't see how a judge could let the results of this photo lineup in at trial.

A 15-page document shown to Darla Miles of WTVD, an ABC-owned station in Durham, N.C., described how the alleged rape victim, a 27-year-old exotic dancer and mother of two, identified three lacrosse players as those who she said attacked her the night of March 13.

According to the police report, the alleged victim was shown a police lineup of 46 photos individually depicting all the Duke lacrosse team members except for freshman goalie Devon Sherwood, the only black member of the team. He was excluded because the alleged victim told police her attackers were white.

After being shown the pictures in a sequence of PowerPoint slides, the document adds, the woman said she could identify the two players indicted April 17 with 100 percent certainty. She picked out Reade Seligmann as the attacker who forced her to perform oral sex and Collin Finnerty as the second man to rape and sodomize her.

She said she also could identify with 90 percent certainty the first man who raped and sodomized her. This attacker has not been arrested as of today, though District Attorney Mike Nifong said at the beginning of the week that he was looking to make a third arrest.

Think about it -- this is the equivalent of giving someone a bucket full of red golf balls and then claiming vindication when three red golf balls in a row are drawn. What else could have happened? In this case, the woman was given only members of the team to identify, and so she identified members of the team. It was a set-up!

However, an eyewitness identification expert believes the police lineup procedure was flawed because no non-lacrosse players were included.

Gary Wells, president of the American Psychology-Law Society, described it as "a multiple-choice test without any wrong answers."

By including "fillers," or non-suspects, in a police lineup, an accuser has to pick past the filler to choose people who actually might have committed the crime.

"Without fillers as a control, the process has no internal credibility check," Wells said.

David Rudolf, a North Carolina defense lawyer who has been an adjunct professor at Duke and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, believes the procedures may be problematic to the point of being inadmissible in court.

"I have significant doubt that this will be admitted in court," he said, "and no doubt defense will challenge it vigorously."

The issue, Rudolf explains, is that due process prohibits evidence from lineups that are unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to mistaken identity.

"When you take the only suspect group and put it in front of the victim," Rudolf says, "by definition you're suggesting it was one of the 46 people in that group."

Some have suggested that there should have been 46 different photo lineups. Others suggest that the sequential lineup was fine, but that additional individuals should have been included as a control on the process, to give the victim a chance to identify someone not at the party. You know -- sed a few white golf balls in amongst the red ones. That would have made the selections much more convincing.

If the identification is thrown out, there then arises the question of the validity of the alleged victim as a witness. And if she is excluded from testifying -- or at least from making an identification in front of the jury -- then the entire case will disintegrate due to the previously disclosed lack of DNA evidence.

This doesn't look good for anyone.

Posted by: Greg at 03:12 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 637 words, total size 4 kb.