The National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Department of Justice, has just released Technical Working Group for Eyewitness Evidence: Training Teams, a Trainer's Manual for Law Enforcement. This manual is the followup to the the 1999 NIJ Research Report, Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement. Both are available free to download.

It has been known for several years that faulty eyewitness evidence is the major cause of wrongful convictions. In most cases, the eyewitnesses are mistaken, not lying. Faulty eyewitness identification procedures used by police have been a large part of the problem. The procedures in these guides, if used by law enforcement, will go a long way towards reducing such errors.

We are proud to have been a member of the panel that produced the 1999 Guide and look forward to seeing its prinicples put into action in police departments around the country, through the new Training Manual.

We'd also like to see police departments go further and adopt sequential lineups and double-blind testing procedures, which are mentioned in the 1999 manual but not given the same endorsement as the other procedures.