Missing tattoos: Altered photo lineup by Portland police draws objection
oregonlive.com
oregonlive.com
I've had to do an identity parade; I failed to correctly identify the perp. I'd eyeballed the guy for only a few seconds, and the line-up was three months later. I picked someone out, but it was the wrong guy. The perp and everyone in the line-up were all black guys; I'm white, and not very good at telling black guys apart.
Line-ups are on the whole poor quality evidence.
[edit] The cops also screwed up; I learned later that me and the suspect had been in the same room in the cop-shop, prior to the line-up.
Going further, where exactly is the line here? Could police add tattoos if they suspected the suspect had temporary ones? If the suspect had long hair and cut it before the photo was taken, would it be okay for police to add similar hair to their photo? Could they airbrush out scars/freckles/etc? Change hair color?
How far should we allow the police to go to make a photo look like their suspect?
Note that the linked article incorrectly says he was "found innocent." In fact the jury found the prosecution failed to meet the burden of proof that was he guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt."
How is that different from
> if someone fails to be found guilty, they are inherently innocent in the eyes of the law
?
No.
Imagine a father accused of raping his child. The case goes to criminal court, and they find him not guilty.
The mother thinks he did it, and she divorces the father and goes through the family courts to prevent him from having access to the child.
The family court will have their own fact-finding hearings, and since they work on a different burden of proof (criminal courts require "beyond all reasonable doubt", civil courts require "balance of probabilities") they may find that he did rape his child, and prevent him having any further access to the child. The earlier not-guilty verdict will carry little weight.
See this from England: http://www.transparencyproject.org.uk/the-x-files-or-the-tru...
> The difference between the civil and criminal standards of proof mean that a person who is not found guilty of doing harm to the higher criminal standard required in the Crown Court, may yet be found to have done harm on a “balance of probabilities” test, i.e. that it was more likely than not that they did it. This is often a cause of confusion and consternation about the justice system.
Or this: http://www.transparencyproject.org.uk/guilty-until-proven-in...
> The difference in the purpose and the approach of the two systems accounts for the way, in some cases, a person may be acquitted of having harmed a child because the jury in the Crown Court is not satisfied so that they are sure (beyond reasonable doubt) of that person’s guilt. Yet the same person may be found, by a single judge sitting without a jury in the family court, to have been liable for harm and/or likely to cause harm to the child/ren whose best interests therefore require intervention by the state to protect them.
A criminal trial may define it as "the victim has to use vigorous physical force to fight off the attacker, and if she (or he) doesn't then it's not rape". The family court may be saying that it's sex without consent.
But also jurors don't convict rapists because "he looks like a nice boy", "it'll ruin his life", "boys will be boys", "well, she was drunk", "well, she did go in that room with him". Rape is under-reported, under-recorded, under-investigated, under-prosecuted, and under-convicted.
Malicious rape allegations are rare. Abusive family members are not rare.
> Imagine a father accused of raping his child. The case goes to criminal court, and they find him not guilty.
> The mother thinks he did it, and she divorces the father and goes through the family courts to prevent him from having access to the child.
An example why this matters is the Simpson case itself. A 1997 civil jury went on to find him liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. The two findings are consistent because they applied different burdens of proof. The criminal jury said they weren't sure beyond a reasonable doubt that he killed them. The civil jury said it was more than 50% likely he did. Thus Simpson was criminally "not guilty," but civilly "liable" for the damage he caused. Taken together, these legal rulings say he was absolutely not "found innocent."
How are you going to "misidentify" a suspect with facial tattoos against an array without them? Not only that, until the tip, facial tattoos didn't even enter the equation. The prominent one on his right cheek should've been a dead give-away, even in the released surveillance photo.
This seems like a "We got him, boys, let's make sure he doesn't get away!" type of situation.