Kramer Levin Wins Argument on Behalf of the Innocence Project

Kramer Levin, representing the Innocence Project Inc., as amicus curiae in the New York Court of Appeals, filed a brief arguing that the trial court erred when it refused the defendant’s request for a cross-racial identification instruction. The brief discussed the extensive scientific research showing that people are better able to recall the face of a person of the same race than that of someone of another race. The brief also recounted the stories of several Innocence Project clients who were convicted on the basis of cross-racial identifications, but were later exonerated by DNA evidence. In a decision issued Dec. 14, 2017, the Court of Appeals held that, “[i]n light of . . . the cross-race effect, which has been accepted by a near consensus in the relevant scientific community of cognitive and social psychologists, and recognizing the very significant part that inaccurate identifications play in wrongful convictions,” in criminal cases courts must, upon request, instruct jurors that they may consider the unreliability of a cross-racial eyewitness identification. The Kramer Levin team consisted of Litigation partner David S. Frankel and associates Jennifer M. Klein, Michelle Ben-David and Aaron L. Webman.