A Sampling of Proposed Reforms

Below are a few of the reforms Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck suggest in their book, Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted, Doubleday, 2000.

• Pass state and federal laws that allow postconviction DNA testing if it could establish a reasonable probability that an inmate was wrongfully convicted. [Editor's Note: Please see "The New Genetic World" at page 10.]
• Perform DNA testing within seven to 14 days of a crime to make sure innocent suspects are not incarcerated and to improve the chances of catching the guilty.
• Implement the recommendations from the 1999 National Institute of Justice report, Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement. Among them are videotaping lineups and other identification processes; using sequential (rather than simultaneous) presentations in lineups and photospreads so that witnesses must decide on each person before seeing the next one; and using independent, trained examiners to run lineups and photo spreads. These and other measures could help avoid the pitfalls in eyewitness identifications.
• Videotape, or at least audiotape, all interrogations.
• Assure that crime laboratories are an independent third force within the criminal justice system, unbeholden to prosecutors or defense lawyers. Their budgets should be independent from the police, and police officials should exercise no supervisory responsibility over labs' scientists.
• Subject all disciplines in crime labs to regulatory oversight and demand that they meet standards of professional organizations. States should create independent, multidisciplinary review panels, such as exist in New York.
• Require that crime laboratories earn accreditation.
• In public defender offices, hire at least one lawyer who acts as a full-time forensic science specialist and helps other lawyers on their cases.
• Form state and federal institutions modeled after England's Criminal Case Review Commission to investigate wrongful convictions.

Wisconsin Lawyer