Fifty years ago, on June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Wade-Gilbert-Stovall trilogy and expressed its concerns about the possibility and dangers of suggestive identification procedures. U.S. v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218 (1967); Gilbert v. California, 388 U.S. 263 (1967); Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293 (1967). Long before the term “wrongful conviction” became commonplace, the court noted the conclusion by one commentator that “the influence of improper suggestion upon identifying witnesses probably accounts for more miscarriages of justice than any other single factor—perhaps it is responsible for more such errors that all other factors combined.” U.S. v. Wade, 388 at 229 (quoting Patrick Wall, “Eye-Witness Identification in Criminal Cases”).
Fifty years following Wade, New York is about to embark on a new era of eyewitness identification. Effective July 1st, newly enacted legislation will permit evidence that a witness identified the defendant from a photograph provided, however, that a “blind” or “blinded” identification procedure was utilized. In addition, the New York Court of Appeals will decide shortly whether trial courts must include a cross-racial identification charge unless the parties agree that no cross-racial identification has occurred. People v. Boone, 129 A.D.3d 1099 (2d Dept. 2015), leave granted.
