Judges and Wrongful Convictions
“[T]he evidence will show, not that she’s a liar, but that she’s mistaken, that her identification is wrong and it’s a misidentification,” McKinley Cromedy’s defense lawyer told the jury in the opening statement. The victim, a white college student, had been raped by a black man in her apartment. A few days later, she had helped a police artist draw a composite sketch of a black man with a full face and a moustache. She looked at thousands of photos of black men who had been arrested. One of those photos was of Cromedy. In fact, the police had him in mind as a suspect because he had been seen in the area, but she did not identify him. Almost eight months later, she saw Cromedy crossing the street. She thought he was her attacker, partly because of his appearance but also because of his unusual way of walking due to a limp, “a swagger,” as she put it. She called the police, who called her back fifteen minutes later to say that they had picked up a man matching her description. She then went to the police station, where police asked her to identify Cromedy, standing in a room behind one-way glass. She positively identified Cromedy as her attacker. The police officer explained, “I’ve had a lot of experience with identifications and I’m not going to lead somebody. I asked her to see if she recognized this person.” Yet there was no justification for conducting an inherently suggestive showup in which she viewed Cromedy one-on-one, rather than conduct a lineup.