"There is no question this case will have an effect on every state and federal court in the country," said Barry Scheck, cofounder of the Innocence Project, a New York legal center specializing in overturning wrongful convictions.
Because New Jersey already has updated guidelines for police on how to conduct lineups and other methods for witness identifications, the ruling will have a greater effect in its courtrooms.
Just as important as the ruling, Scheck said, was a yearlong review ordered by the Supreme Court of procedures used by police when they ask witnesses to identify suspects.
Scheck, who presented testimony during the hearings that called for stricter ID standards, called the review the "most extensive examination of social science in the area of eyewitness identification that has been done, using the leading experts around on witness IDs and psychology."
The review found that a test, created in 1977 and used by courts in 48 states and the federal system, to assess the reliability of witness identification is flawed and inadequate - a finding the court appeared to cement in its ruling Wednesday.
"A vast body of scientific research about human memory has emerged," wrote Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner in a unanimous ruling that encompassed two cases. "That body of work casts doubt on some commonly held views relating to memory."
Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75 percent of the 273 convictions overturned through DNA testing, according to the Innocence Project, and three of the five exoneration cases in New Jersey involved misidentification.
