Innocence Commission reaches for the 'gold standard' in eyewitness identification policy.

Smoothing over hurt feelings about trust issues with law enforcement after proposed legislation failed, the Florida Innocence Commission passed its own beefed-up recommendations for statewide uniform police standards on conducting eyewitness identification lineups.

Those recommendations include the ideal "gold standard," with a caveat about cost: Agencies with available resources shall have an independent administrator who does not know who the suspect is, to prevent even inadvertent cueing to the witness during a photo or live lineup.

Three "no" votes came from Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Gerald Bailey, Charlotte County Sheriff Bill Cameron, and Fifth Circuit State Attorney Brad King.

During the debate on May 16 in Orlando, Second Circuit Public Defender Nancy Daniels, president of the Florida Public Defender Association, said she wished Innocence Commission-endorsed legislation had passed to put statewide protocol into law and voiced surprise that law enforcement fought even the watered-down House version. She moved to strengthen flexible guidelines submitted by law enforcement groups to clearly show a preference for the independent administrator, otherwise known as "double blind."

Cameron said the cost was too great for most law enforcement agencies.

"To put in the word 'shall'--'if you have the resources, you shall use an independent administrator'--that's wrong. You have to leave that up to the organization, and you have to have trust in law enforcement that they are not going to do it wrong," Cameron said.

"Because no matter what system you use in evidence-gathering, there is always an opportunity for a bad officer to do a bad thing. We call them 'bad actors.' And that's for law enforcement to deal with and get the bad actors out. Just like there are bad attorneys. We all have them. So I think it's a mistake for the commission to send down a recommendation that says, 'We don't trust law enforcement.' And that's really what that discussion is about."

Not so, countered Alex Acosta, dean of the Florida International University College of Law, who headed the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District for five years.

"I don't think anyone here is saying they don't trust law enforcement," Acosta said. "I hear that refrain far too often when law enforcement doesn't get something it wants. I just want to push back against that....

"Don't we want to say the absolute best we can come up with and leave it to law...