Bill Text: HI SB67 | 2013 | Regular Session | Amended

---

Bill Title: Criminal Procedure; Eyewitness Identification; Remedies

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 1-0)

Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2013-02-13 - Report adopted; Passed Second Reading, as amended (SD 1) and referred to JDL. [SB67 Detail]

Download: Hawaii-2013-SB67-Amended.html

---

 

 

STAND. COM. REP. NO. 221

 

Honolulu, Hawaii

                  

 

RE:    S.B. No. 67

       S.D. 1

 

 

 

Honorable Donna Mercado Kim

President of the Senate

Twenty-Seventh State Legislature

Regular Session of 2013

State of Hawaii

 

Madam:

 

     Your Committees on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs and Technology and the Arts, to which was referred S.B. No. 67 entitled:

 

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO CRIMINAL PROCEDURE,"

 

beg leave to report as follows:

 

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to:

 

     (1)  Create procedural and administrative requirements for law enforcement agencies for eyewitness identifications of suspects in criminal investigations; and

 

     (2)  Grant a defendant the right to challenge any eyewitness identification to be used at trial in a pretrial evidentiary hearing.

 

     Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from the Community Alliance on Prisons, American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii, Hawaii Women's Coalition, and one individual.  Your Committees received testimony in opposition to this measure from the Department of the Prosecuting Attorney, City and County of Honolulu; Department of the Prosecuting Attorney, County of Maui; Office of the Prosecuting Attorney, County of Kauai; the Criminal Investigation Division, Honolulu Police Department, City and County of Honolulu; and the Police Department, County of Hawaii.

 

     Your Committees find that mistaken eyewitness identification has been shown to have contributed to the wrongful conviction in approximately seventy-five percent of the nation's two hundred eighty-nine exonerations.  Over the past thirty years, a large body of peer-reviewed, scientific research and practice has emerged showing that simple systemic changes in administering eyewitness identification procedures can greatly improve the accuracy of eyewitness identifications.  Your Committees further find that more accurate eyewitness identifications increase the ability of police and prosecutors to convict the guilty and protect the innocent.  The people of Hawaii will benefit from the improvement of the accuracy of eyewitness identifications.

 

     Your Committees have amended this measure by:

 

     (1)  Inserting an effective date of January 1, 2020, to encourage further discussion; and

 

     (2)  Making a technical, nonsubstantive amendment for the purpose of clarity and consistency.

 

     As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs and Technology and the Arts that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 67, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 67, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Judiciary and Labor.

 

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs and Technology and the Arts,

 

____________________________ GLENN WAKAI, Chair		____________________________ WILL ESPERO, Chair