NCJ Number
134302
Journal
Kentucky Law Journal Volume: 79 Issue: 2 Dated: (1990-1991) Pages: 259-316
Date Published
1991
Length
58 pages
Annotation
This analysis of judicial decisions regarding the right to due process of law concludes that a new formulation of the right is needed in connection with pretrial identification procedures which would exclude testimony derived from unnecessarily suggestive pretrial identification procedures and give defendants the right to introduce expert testimony to enable the jury to better evaluate such eyewitness testimony.
Abstract
In the 1967 case of Stovall v. Dennor, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a criminal defendant has a due process right to exclude evidence derived from improper pretrial identification procedures. However, decisions in a series of cases culminating in Manson v. Brathwaite in 1977 considerably weakened the right to due process. Since then, lower Federal courts and State courts have enforced the defendant's right only in the most egregious situations. Thus, the due process right now gives criminal defendants almost none of the protections it was originally intended to provide. The proposed new formulation of the right to due process would protect the defendant's right to procedural fairness as well as the right to have the jury consider only the incriminating evidence that it can rationally evaluate. Footnotes