Vermont Passes Reforms to Reduce Wrongful Convictions

February 13, 2014 cdaniel

Vermont State House by Norsehorse / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The Vermont Senate passed important legislation last week to help ensure that criminal investigations are as fair and accurate as possible. S184 is designed to reform eyewitness identification procedures so that lineups are given by an officer not investigating the case and must contain at least four fillers who resemble the description of the perpetrator. This is a crucial step to reduce eyewitness misidentifications, which have accounted for three quarters of DNA exonerations to date, according to Rebecca Brown, director of state policy reform at the Innocence Project.

S297 mandates that police electronically record interrogations in homicide or rape cases and creates a task force to implement this procedure statewide. This will help protect suspects form coercive confessions and help police keep track of witnesses changing their stories.

Both bills passed with little debate in the Senate and now go on to the House for approval.