USA: Authorities Look at Wrongful Convictions

High-profile cases in which people were convicted of crimes they did not commit have led law enforcement officials to re-examine how they find out who did it.

"We must look at how we can prevent the conviction of innocent people," former Attorney General Janet Reno said Friday. "It is a real problem in terms of human beings who were convicted and spent time in jail."

Reno led off a three-day conference here that brought prosecutors, lawmakers,police, educators and judges to look at ways to avoid convicting the innocent.

 "We all share the same goal, making sure innocent people aren't convicted," said North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Robert Orr, a member of a new state commission studying how people sometimes are wrongly convicted and how to free them once new evidence proves their innocence.

 The conference comes shortly after Illinois Gov. George Ryan ended his term by commuting 167 death sentences out of concern that some on death row were wrongly convicted, and a month after a New York judge threw out the convictions of 5 men for the rape and beating of a female jogger in Central Park.

 Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske acknowledged pressure to arrest and convict in cases that receive a lot of publicity.

 "When you have a high-profile case, there's almost unlimited overtime," he said. "Police chiefs' careers rise or fall."

 Recent scientific advances, such as DNA testing, have provided new ways to determine the innocence, or guilt, of some of those arrested. The American Judicature Society, a Chicago-based educational and research organization, said DNA testing has shown that more than 100 people convicted of serious crimes were innocent.

 "DNA has shown unequivocally that we are convicting a lot more innocent people than we thought we were," Reno said.

 Indeed, legislation pending on Capitol Hill would make it easier for people arrested on federal charges to demand DNA testing, and would require the attorney general to review all federal death penalty cases and order DNA testing if it is available and appropriate.

 One reason innocent people are convicted is because eyewitnesses sometimes pick out the wrong person, said Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, a legal clinic at Cardozo Law School that seeks DNA tests to clear people wrongly convicted of crimes.

 "It's just been demonstrated again and again, the single greatest cause is mistaken eyewitness IDs," Scheck said.

 Some police departments are working to change that. In New Jersey, for example, witnesses view pictures of suspects one at a time rather than all together. The witness must decide whether the person is or is not the suspect before looking at another picture. When witnesses look at pictures of different people at one time, they compare them and choose the one that looks most like the perpetrator, said Gary Wells, an Iowa State University psychology professor.

 On the Net: American Judicature Society: http://www.ajs.org

 Innocence Project: http://innocenceproject.org