Framing their case as a matter of justice for victims and the community at large as well as those accused, the Innocence Project and the state Bar Association held a press conference at the Capitol to push for two pre-trial reforms to criminal procedure. As described by the advocates:

• To prevent false confessions, they are calling for legislation requiring police to videotape interrogations in full so that there is a complete record of the interrogation that can be shown in court. • To prevent eyewitness misidentifications, they are seeking approval of a bill mandating that police identification procedures be conducted in a double-blind fashion, meaning that the officer who conducts the lineup does not know the identity of the suspect. This will ensure that the eyewitness is not influenced by clues delivered either directly or indirectly by police. These reforms were endorsed by the Bar Association’s Task Force on Wrongful Convictions, which issued a report in April 2009. (www.nysba.org/wcreport)

Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project (and the O.J. Simpson trial) kicked off the press conference, which included statements from five exonerees who collectively had spent more than nine decades behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit. Scheck said New York was far behind most other states on these issues; he recalled making the case for videotaping in the late 1990s in testimony offered on a bill backed by “a little-known state senator” in Illinois: Barack Obama.

He expressed the hope that the proposed reforms wouldn’t emerge as a wedge issue in an election year. (Good luck with that.)

“We are all victims of wrongful convictions,” said Vince Doyle, president of the state Bar Association.

The exonerees — including Utica’s Steven Barnes, recently interviewed for Marie Cusick’s “New York Now” report on DNA evidence — submitted a joint letter that calls for the changes and concludes by saying, “We lost everything. How many more New Yorkers must suffer our fate?”

Also on hand: Barnes’ mother and Michele Mallin, who was horrified to learn that the man she identified as her attacker following her 1985 abduction and rape had been exonerated by DNA evidence — but only after dying in prison 14 years into a 25-year sentence.

Assemblyman Joe Lentol has introduced a bill that requires videotaping of confessions along with a number of other provisions; it currently lacks a Senate sponsor.

Lentol said even some of his fellow lawmakers have asked him, “Why are you bothering with this stuff? … You know they must be guilty of some crime.”

The state District Attorneys Association has endorsed an expansion of videotape protocols, but its support falls short of backing legislation to mandate the change. Scheck said his group and the state Bar Association made the decision to not reach out to the group or recruit individual DAs to attend the news conference.

Here’s Scheck’s opening statement:

The event also featured Reade Seligmann, the former Duke lacrosse player who was one of three players falsely charged with rape in a 2006 case that serves as a textbook example of law enforcement misconduct run amok. Seligmann, now a law student at Emory University, worked for similar reforms to the ones sought in New York during his days as an undergraduate at Brown University in Rhode Island.

Here’s his statement:

The press conference ended just after one of the New York exonerees, Jeff Deskovic, called up Lorenzo Johnson of Yonkers, whose conviction was only this week reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that Johnson’s conviction in a 1995 shotgun death was based on insufficient evidence.

And here’s the joint press release from the Bar Association and the Innocence Project: