Eyewitnesses who take the stand to testify about a perpetrator's identity are one of the most valuable sources of evidence in the criminal justice system. Often, eyewitness accounts are the only evidence available to help identify and prosecute suspects, such as in shooting, robbery, assault and other cases. As a result, legal scholars and psychological scientists have long worried about whether judges and jurors can adequately evaluate the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck while they were in school at the Cardozo School of Law. Their mission is to exonerate the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms in the criminal justice system, to prevent future injustices. The first person exonerated based on DNA evidence was in 1989. To date there have been 367 DNA exonerations. According to research from the Innocence Project, 69% of those wrongfully convicted have been involved in eyewitness misidentification. 42% of these cases involved interracial misidentification, 32% of these cases involved multiple misidentifications of the same person, and 27% of these cases involved misidentification through the use of a composite sketch. As of July 9, 2018, 130 DNA exonerees have been wrongfully convicted of murders. 40 of these cases involved false eyewitness identifications and 81 false confessions. The Innocence Project identified standard offender identification practices and the problems these practices cause. In a standard lineup, the lineup administrator usually knows who the suspect is. Research suggests that the administrator often provides inadvertent signals to the eyewitness regarding who he or she should choose in the lineup. Without guidance from the administrator, the witness commonly assumes that the person who committed the crime is one of the people involved. This can lead to a person's choice despite uncertainty. Many times, the lineup administrator will compose a lineup in which non-suspect stand-ins do not match the witness's description or do not mimic the suspect's qualities. This can lead to the suspect being distinguished from a witness due to the structure of the lineup. Typically, the training administrator cannot even extract or record a witness statement describing his or her level of confidence in the identification. The Innocence Project promotes a series of procedural fixes to improve the validity of eyewitness identification. These improvements have been recognized by police, prosecutorial and judicial expertise, as well as national judicial organizations, including the National Institute of Justice and the American Bar Association. The merits of these reforms are supported by more than 30 years of in-depth peer-reviewed research. (innocenceproject.org. 2019)1. The “Double Blind” Procedure/Use of a Blind Administrator: A “double blind” lineup is one in which neither the administrator nor the eyewitness knows who the suspect is. This prevents the lineup administrator from providing unintentional or intentional verbal or nonverbal cues to influence the eyewitness to choose the suspect. Instructions: “Instructions” are a series of statements made by the training administrator to the eyewitness that dissuades the eyewitness from feeling obligated to make a selection. They also prevent the eyewitness from reaching out.