Eyewitness Identifications and State Courts as Guardians against Wrongful Conviction

Despite a growing awareness that mistaken eyewitness identifications contribute significantly to wrongful convictions, most courts continue to apply federal Due Process criteria for admissibility of eyewitness identification that has proved useless in protecting against the use of highly unreliable evidence. In response, this article reviews the path-breaking decisions of several state supreme courts that have blazed their own trail. It explores the issues that courts have addressed, the rules they have devised, and the legal grounds for their decisions, and from this, concludes that state supreme courts can implement appropriate criteria that would in fact promote accuracy and fairness in the use of eyewitness identification.