Eyewitness Identification Reform in New Jersey (2011)

In a 2011 decision in State v. Henderson, New Jersey became the first jurisdiction in the country to reject the test for evaluating eyewitness identification evidence set forth in the 1977 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Manson v. Brathwaite and adopted by every state in the years since. The court also issued a set of comprehensive jury instructions for cases involving eyewitness identification evidence. Among them is an explanation of how memory works, a necessary precursor to understanding how conditions at the time of the crime or at the time of the identification procedure could affect the accuracy or reliability of a person’s memory.

Read the State v. Henderson decision.