Associated Press
07-31-06
Guilty until proven innocent?
The Associated Press
Orlando Bosquete was sentenced to 55 years in prison because he was bald and
shirtless on a hot summer night in 1982.
A woman had been raped. The rapist was bald, shirtless and Hispanic.
The victim identified Bosquete — the only bald, shirtless man in a crowd of
Hispanic
men detained by police — across a dim Key West parking lot as she sat in a
patrol car. It took 23 years, a team of lawyers and DNA evidence to prove his
innocence.
Nina Morrison, one of Bosquete’s attorneys from the New York-based Innocence
Project, said five of the six wrongful convictions the group has uncovered in
Florida were a result of mistaken identity, often influenced by flawed police
lineups that put the focus on a single suspect.
‘‘He might as well have had a red flag on him that said, ‘Pick me, pick me,’ ’’
Morrison said of the impromptu lineup that resulted in Bosquete’s arrest. ‘‘She
never had an opportunity to compare his face to others under proper lighting.
Cases similar to Bosquete’s spurred sweeping witness identification reform in
states such as New Jersey and Wisconsin. But despite being identified by
researchers as one of the top five states for convictions overturned by DNA,
Florida police, prosecutors and lawmakers show little interest in taking on the
police lineup issue.
‘‘The courts oversee that,’’ said state Rep. Everett Rice, R-Treasure Island, a
former sheriff and attorney who recently withdrew from the race for Florida
attorney general.
‘‘The courts have drawn bright lines in the sand in regard to lineups and show
ups. Unless it is patently unfair on the face of it, or patently suggestive, let the
jury decide. Defense attorneys are pretty adept at casting doubt on lineups.’’
But some say the state is ignoring a serious problem.
‘‘Florida has a lot of work to do,’’ said Stephen Saloom, the Innocence Project’s
policy director. ‘‘The state would do well to learn from the massive body of peer-
reviewed research that establishes a simple way to significantly decrease the
likelihood of mistaken eyewitness identification.’’
A 2004 University of Michigan study, the most comprehensive to date, found 90
percent of false convictions for rape are caused by eyewitnesses picking the
wrong suspect. And those are only the mistakes that were discovered.
The study suggests that the 328 DNA exoneration cases in the U.S. between
1989 and 2003 are ‘‘the tip of the iceberg.’’ Hundreds may be wrongfully
imprisoned for serious crimes such as robbery where DNA evidence is not as
common, the researchers said.
‘‘Maybe as much as 5 percent of eyewitness cases have any DNA to be
analyzed, primarily sexual assault cases, so what about the other 95 percent?’’
said Gary Wells, an Iowa State University professor who has studied the
issue for 30 years.
‘‘If you’re mistakenly identified in a drive-by shooting or a 7-Eleven robbery, there
is nothing to trump that eyewitness,’’ Wells said.
University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, one of the authors of the
2004 study, said eyewitnesses get the right man most of the time.
‘‘The problem is they are not always right,’’ Gross said. ‘‘And their testimony can
be very convincing to a jury. You have to be absolutely always right.’’
One of the fixes is simple. Don’t do ‘‘show ups,’’ where witnesses are given only
one suspect to choose from, or a single suspect who stands out — like bald
Bosquete. Everyone in the lineup should fit the general suspect description.
‘‘There will always be errors,’’ Wells said. ‘‘But you can reduce those errors
significantly by changing how you conduct those identification procedures.’’
Wells said he is finally seeing progress after 15 years.
State Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, said the lineup issue did not come up
this year, even as it passed a bill eliminating DNA testing deadlines for prisoners
seeking to prove their innocence.
‘‘Our objective is to get the bad guys, not the innocent,’’ Wise said.
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