An Encouraging Step Forward

International Association of Chiefs of Police

The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), in connection with the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs and the Innocence Project, is announcing new recommendations and guidelines that it says should help substantially in preventing innocent people from being convicted. The report carries the weighty title, National Summit on Wrongful Convictions: Building a Systemic Approach to Prevent Wrongful Convictions. But if the recommendations are followed, we predict it will do just that.

We heartily applaud IACP’s work on this. Many of the items on the list are practices and procedures we’ve been advocating for quite some time. If widely adopted, they should not only cut down on miscarriages of justice, but also restore public confidence to our criminal justice system in areas – both geographical and intellectual – where it is currently lacking.

Some of the recommendations we dealt with specifically in our recent book, Law & Disorder. These include videotaping all interviews and interrogations and independently corroborating any information or testimony that comes from jailhouse informants.

As West Memphis Three appeals attorney Stephen Braga told us, “Every interrogation should be videotaped from beginning to end. If you don’t want people to see what you’re doing in there, then you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing.”

As for jailhouse snitches, they always have something personal to gain by cooperating with the prosecution, so it is critical that their testimony be subjected to rigorous investigative scrutiny.

If these two guidelines alone are put into widespread practice, the beneficial results will be profound.

“At the end of the day, the goal is to reduce the number of persons who are wrongfully convicted,” Quincy, Florida Police Chief Walter A. McNeil told The Washington Post‘s Spencer S. Hsu.

Other recommendations concern the proper way to conduct lineups and show photo arrays to witnesses, and additional research into best practices on basic investigative procedures. For example, in the wake of so many convictions based on eyewitness testimony later being overturned by contradictory DNA evidence, there is a general acknowledgment that many eyewitness accounts – possibly as many as one third – may simply be erroneous.

What is particularly encouraging about IACP’s actions is the leadership in making clear that self-questioning and stringent investigative practices are not a sign of weakness or being soft on crime, but of strength and confidence in pursuing justice above all else – above favorable arrest and conviction statistics, above knee-jerk response to community demands, above playing to the media.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police is a prestigious and influential organization, one of the most widely respected in law enforcement. By taking on this mission and fearlessly acknowledging that the current system is far from perfect, its members have proclaimed a new standard that it now behooves every criminal justice agency and organization to follow.

•