Bill aims to reform eyewitness identification procedures.

Eyewitnesses don't always get it right.

Just ask James Bain, Orlando Boquete, Larry Bostic, Alan Crotzer, Cody Davis, Wilton Dedge, Luis Diaz, William Dillon, and Frank Lee Smith.

They served a total of 180 years in Florida's prisons for crimes they did not commit. Eyewitness misidentification was a contributing cause in all of their wrongful convictions. Eventually, DNA evidence came to the rescue to exonerate them.

In 2010, the Florida Innocence Commission studied how unreliable eyewitness identification can be, the psychological reasons why witnesses seem so certain even when they're wrong, and reforms other states have taken in the way law enforcement conducts photo or live lineups.

Seven years later, Sen. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, and Rep. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, are sponsoring CS/SB 312 and HB 643 and hope to pass the Eyewitness Identification Reform Act that would require state, county, municipal, or other law-enforcement agencies that conduct lineups to follow specific procedures to ensure a fairer process.

"As many of us who have served in the House, we remember this legislation back in 2011. It passed the Florida Senate and made all the committees in the House, but did not make it to the floor," Baxley said, in closing on his bill in the Senate Criminal Justice Committee on February 21, where it passed unanimously, and later passed the Judiciary Committee unanimously on March 14. HB 643 unanimously passed both the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee on March 15 and the Judiciary Committee on March 27.

"I'm really surprised it's been this long before we got back around to seeing it again. It is my privilege to present it. I think it's a good move for justice, and it will protect law-enforcement, state attorneys, and the accused from being mistakenly identified," Baxley said.

Michelle Feldman, a state policy advocate for the national Innocence Project, said, "Nationally, eyewitness misidentification is the No. 1 cause of wrongful convictions proven by DNA. This bill would not only protect the innocent, but it would protect public safety, because when the wrong person is convicted, the real perpetrator can be out harming others."

Of 349 DNA exonerations nationwide, she said, 71 percent involved eyewitness misidentification, and the real perpetrators identified in those crimes went on to be convicted of 100 additional violent crimes, including 64 rapes and 17 murders.

Baxley explained that he took recommendations from the Florida...