Exonerations Change How Justice System Builds a Prosecution

Joshua Marquis, district attorney for Clatsop County, Ore., and vice president of the National District Attorneys Association, warned against the new eyewitness procedures. He called the process an unproven fad that could unwittingly set perpetrators free.

"It's way far from being established that this is the magic bullet," he said, adding that prosecutors want "eyewitness identification that is valid."

Miller was a young Army veteran and line cook when he was identified as a rapist and arrested in September 1981. Police said his face resembled the composite sketch created from the memory of the victim, who was attacked in a parking garage and stuffed in the trunk of her car by an assailant.

Miller protested, saying he was at home watching Sugar Ray Leonard box Tommy Hearns in their famous bout. He offered a witness to corroborate his alibi: his father, who watched with him. "I can remember all of that like it was yesterday," Miller said. "I thought somebody set me up."

Miller was convicted after witnesses identified him during his trial. Police stored the evidence, including a slip with semen that led to Miller's exoneration. At a news conference last week, the Illinois state attorney general apologized.

It was not the first apology after a wrongful conviction. Jennifer Thompson Cannino apologized to Ronald Cotton, whom she misidentified in 1984 after she was raped in Greensboro, N.C. Cotton served nearly 10 years before he was exonerated by a DNA test in 1995.

Cannino, who is white, toured the country with Cotton, who is black, to speak out against eyewitness identifications and composite sketches. She said police helped influence her to choose the wrong man.

"When you sit down and look at the choices in front of you, the hundred noses, the hundred eyebrows, you try to get the best eyes, eyelashes, the best lips," she said. "When the composite was finished and I was asked, 'Does it look like the man who attacked you?' I said, 'Yes, it looks like the man.' "

Guided by the composite, Cannino said she picked Cotton out of photographs. "I did get verbal and nonverbal encouragement: 'Good job. Way to go,' " she said. "In the lineup, I looked for somebody who looked like the photograph. And Ronald Cotton was doomed."

In a second trial three years later, she continued to insist that Cotton raped her, even when the true rapist came forward. DNA testing confirmed the second man's guilt.

"Thank God the investigator in my case felt that he needed to hold on to evidence," she said. "Had it not been for that, Ron Cotton would still be in prison today."