Virginia Study of Wrongful Convictions is Released
- Originally published in the Roanoke Times & World News (Roanoke, VA) March 30, 2005 Copyright 2005 Roanoke Times & World News
The woman was adamant: The camouflage-clad man who raped her in a car parked along the Blue Ridge Parkway was Edward Honaker of Roanoke.
The certainty of her identification, which led to convictions and multiple life sentences for Honaker in 1985, was shaken a decade later by DNA tests that exonerated Honaker and led to his release from prison.
Now, another decade later, Honaker's case is being cited as evidence of just how uncertain justice can be.
The Nelson County prosecution was one of 11 cases studied by a nonpartisan group for a report that examines wrongful convictions in Virginia and makes recommendations on how to prevent them.
The 134-page report, scheduled to be released today by the Innocence Commission for Virginia, was described as the state's first in-depth look at a topic that begs public scrutiny.
"When a plane crashes, there are exhaustive studies done of how this happened and what went wrong," said Steven Benjamin, a Richmond attorney who serves on the commission's board.
Likewise, "it is imperative that we examine each case in our criminal justice system that has demonstrably gone so terribly wrong," Benjamin said. "And that's what this study does."
Although the report identifies common factors from the 11 cases since 1982 in which a defendant was exonerated by a court or a governor, it made no predictions on how many people in Virginia have suffered a fate similar to Honaker's.
There were a few hints, though. One study found that of the rape investigations in which evidence was submitted to the FBI Crime Lab for DNA testing, as many as 25 percent involved cases in which the wrong man had emerged as the primary suspect.
"That is a very telling statistic, and it gives us a glimpse of what the possibilities and what the realities might be," said Donald Salzman, president of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, which sponsored the study along with George Mason University and the Constitution Project of Georgetown University.
In nine of the 11 cases studied by the commission, mistaken identity put the suspect in prison.
Honest mistakes by victims who identify an assailant are most frequent in cross-racial cases, the report found. The errors are sometimes the product of suggestive identification procedures, such as photo arrays or lineups that highlight a particular suspect. Comments or body language from the police officer conducting the procedure can also skew an identification.
The report recommends that police present multiple suspects - either by photograph or in a live lineup - one at a time, and that the officer conducting the process not know the suspect's identity "to reduce unintended influences on the witnesses."
A survey of police agencies conducted by the commission shows that in nearly three-quarters of the investigations, the officer conducting the lineup knew the identity of the suspect. The same percentage reported showing photographs of possible suspects as a group, rather than one at a time.
Simultaneous identification processes can tempt a witness to make relative judgments about the participants as a group, the report stated, while showing the suspects sequentially requires the witnesses to compare each image with their own memories.
Witnesses should also be alone when viewing possible suspects, the report suggested. In Honaker's case, the woman and her boyfriend, who was present at the time of the crime, were allowed to view photographs together.
The report also recommends that police be required by law to videotape interviews of suspects in all homicides and serious felony cases. Such a practice would make it less likely for someone to be convicted on the basis of a false confession, which happened in two of the 11 case studies.
Other recommendations include better pay for Virginia's notoriously underpaid court-appointed defense lawyers, a mandatory open-file discovery process in which prosecutors share certain information with the defense prior to trial, and expanding a new law allowing defendants to present newly discovered evidence of innocence to include those who plead guilty.
With the exception of Honaker, the cases studied by the commission occurred in the eastern half of the state. One defendant, Earl Washington, was convicted of capital murder. On average, the men spent 11 years in prison - at a cost of $2 million to state taxpayers.
The commission, which includes former FBI director William Sessions on its board, plans to release the report today. Copies were provided in advance Tuesday to The Roanoke Times, The Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk.
The report found little evidence of deliberate wrongdoing by police or prosecutors.
"Our finding was not that there are mean-spirited law enforcement agents out there trying to convict the innocent," said Jon Gould, a George Mason University professor who heads the Innocence Commission. "All the cases we investigated were situations where people, acting on an honest belief that the suspect was guilty, made a horrible error."
On the Web: www.icva.us
Wrongful convictions in Virginia
In a report on wrongful convictions, the Innocence Commission for Virginia made a number of recommendations. Among them:
- To reduce mistaken eyewitness identification, witnesses should be shown multiple photographs of suspects or lineups of multiple suspects.
- Police should videotape all interviews of suspects in homicides and serious felony cases.
- Discovery practice should be changed to require an open-file policy of prosecutors sharing certain information with the defense prior to trial.
- The General Assembly should increase the pay for court-appointed lawyers, which ranks lowest in the nation.
- A new law that allows inmates to present newly discovered evidence of innocence should be expanded to include those who plead guilty.