STAND. COM. REP. NO. 1035

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE:    S.C.R. No. 149

       S.D. 1

Honorable Shan S. Tsutsui

President of the Senate

Twenty-Sixth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2011

State of Hawaii

Sir:

     Your Committee on Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs, to which was referred S.C.R. No. 149 entitled:

"SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ENCOURAGING THE STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL AND STATE AND COUNTY LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES TO CONSIDER BETTER EYEWITNESS IDENTIFICATION PROCEDURES,"

begs leave to report as follows:

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to encourage:

(1) The State Attorney General and various state and county law enforcement agencies to adopt new eyewitness identification procedures to decrease the rate of erroneous eyewitness identifications; and

(2) Criminal investigations to be conducted by state law enforcement agencies in accordance with the newest and best practices available for eyewitness identification.

     Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the Community Alliance on Prisons, The Drug Policy Forum of Hawai‘i, and four individuals.

     Your Committee finds that recent studies have shown that traditional eyewitness identification procedures may lead to faulty eyewitness identifications.  The National Institute of Justice recommends the adoption of new policies and procedures that are readily available and proven to be effective in other jurisdictions.  Studies have also shown that the criminal justice system can significantly decrease the rate of erroneous eyewitness identifications by implementing modern identification procedures that would also increase the ability of police and prosecutors to convict the guilty and protect communities.

     Testimony submitted by two third-year law students at the William S. Richardson School of Law indicates that based on classroom experiments, eyewitness identification is inherently extremely inaccurate.  During the experiments, several students gave vastly different descriptions of the same purported classroom intruder after seeing that person only once, which is the typical situation in eyewitness identifications.  One or more students did not sufficiently observe the intruder to give any description.  Your Committee believes that eyewitness identification procedures need to be as fool proof as humanly possible, and preferably corroborated with other evidence. 

     Your Committee has amended this measure by making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity and consistency.

     As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs that is attached to this report, your Committee concurs with the intent and purpose of S.C.R. No. 149, as amended herein, and recommends that it be referred to the Committee on Judiciary and Labor, in the form attached hereto as S.C.R. No. 149, S.D. 1.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Public Safety, Government Operations, and Military Affairs,

____________________________

WILL ESPERO, Chair