- Originally
published in the Roanoke Times & World News (Roanoke, VA) March 30,
2005 Copyright 2005 Roanoke Times & World News
By
: Laurence Hammack
laurence.hammack@roanoke.com
The
woman was adamant: The camouflage-clad man who raped her in a car
parked along the Blue Ridge Parkway was Edward Honaker of Roanoke.
The
certainty of her identification, which led to convictions and multiple
life sentences for Honaker in 1985, was shaken a decade later by DNA
tests that exonerated Honaker and led to his release from prison.
Now, another decade later, Honaker's case is being cited as evidence of just how uncertain justice can be.
The
Nelson County prosecution was one of 11 cases studied by a nonpartisan
group for a report that examines wrongful convictions in Virginia and
makes recommendations on how to prevent them.
The
134-page report, scheduled to be released today by the Innocence
Commission for Virginia, was described as the state's first in-depth
look at a topic that begs public scrutiny.
"When
a plane crashes, there are exhaustive studies done of how this happened
and what went wrong," said Steven Benjamin, a Richmond attorney who
serves on the commission's board.
Likewise,
"it is imperative that we examine each case in our criminal justice
system that has demonstrably gone so terribly wrong," Benjamin said.
"And that's what this study does."
Although
the report identifies common factors from the 11 cases since 1982 in
which a defendant was exonerated by a court or a governor, it made no
predictions on how many people in Virginia have suffered a fate similar
to Honaker's.
There were a few hints,
though. One study found that of the rape investigations in which
evidence was submitted to the FBI Crime Lab for DNA testing, as many as
25 percent involved cases in which the wrong man had emerged as the
primary suspect.
"That is a very telling
statistic, and it gives us a glimpse of what the possibilities and what
the realities might be," said Donald Salzman, president of the
Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, which sponsored the study along with
George Mason University and the Constitution Project of Georgetown
University.
In nine of the 11 cases studied by the commission, mistaken identity put the suspect in prison.
Honest mistakes by victims who identify an assailant are most frequent in cross-racial
cases, the report found. The errors are sometimes the product of
suggestive identification procedures, such as photo arrays or lineups
that highlight a particular suspect. Comments or body language from the
police officer conducting the procedure can also skew an identification.
The
report recommends that police present multiple suspects - either by
photograph or in a live lineup - one at a time, and that the officer
conducting the process not know the suspect's identity "to reduce
unintended influences on the witnesses."
A
survey of police agencies conducted by the commission shows that in
nearly three-quarters of the investigations, the officer conducting the
lineup knew the identity of the suspect. The same percentage reported
showing photographs of possible suspects as a group, rather than one at
a time.
Simultaneous identification
processes can tempt a witness to make relative judgments about the
participants as a group, the report stated, while showing the suspects
sequentially requires the witnesses to compare each image with their
own memories.
Witnesses should also be
alone when viewing possible suspects, the report suggested. In
Honaker's case, the woman and her boyfriend, who was present at the
time of the crime, were allowed to view photographs together.
The
report also recommends that police be required by law to videotape
interviews of suspects in all homicides and serious felony cases. Such
a practice would make it less likely for someone to be convicted on the
basis of a false confession, which happened in two of the 11 case
studies.
Other recommendations include
better pay for Virginia's notoriously underpaid court-appointed defense
lawyers, a mandatory open-file discovery process in which prosecutors
share certain information with the defense prior to trial, and
expanding a new law allowing defendants to present newly discovered
evidence of innocence to include those who plead guilty.
With
the exception of Honaker, the cases studied by the commission occurred
in the eastern half of the state. One defendant, Earl Washington, was
convicted of capital murder. On average, the men spent 11 years in
prison - at a cost of $2 million to state taxpayers.
The
commission, which includes former FBI director William Sessions on its
board, plans to release the report today. Copies were provided in
advance Tuesday to The Roanoke Times, The Richmond Times-Dispatch and
The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk.
The report found little evidence of deliberate wrongdoing by police or prosecutors.
"Our
finding was not that there are mean-spirited law enforcement agents out
there trying to convict the innocent," said Jon Gould, a George Mason
University professor who heads the Innocence Commission. "All the cases
we investigated were situations where people, acting on an honest
belief that the suspect was guilty, made a horrible error."
On the Web:
www.icva.us
Wrongful convictions in Virginia
In a report on wrongful convictions, the Innocence Commission for Virginia made a number of recommendations. Among them:
-
To reduce mistaken eyewitness identification, witnesses should be shown
multiple photographs of suspects or lineups of multiple suspects.
- Police should videotape all interviews of suspects in homicides and serious felony cases.
-
Discovery practice should be changed to require an open-file policy of
prosecutors sharing certain information with the defense prior to trial.
- The General Assembly should increase the pay for court-appointed lawyers, which ranks lowest in the nation.
-
A new law that allows inmates to present newly discovered evidence of
innocence should be expanded to include those who plead guilty.