Colorado man claims faulty witness IDs led to wrongful conviction

A Colorado man imprisoned for 15 years says he was wrongly convicted of a triple capturing inside an Adams County bar due to defective eyewitness identification.

James Garner, 51, is difficult his conviction with assist from the Korey Wise Innocence Project. He claims that three witnesses misidentified him because the shooter in a crowded bar and that new science across the unreliability of eyewitness identification ought to invalidate his 2012 conviction.

Not one of the three witnesses might decide Garner out of a photograph array shortly after the capturing. They didn’t determine him because the shooter till three years later, throughout Garner’s jury trial, when the three victims, all brothers, pointed to him on the protection desk and stated for the primary time that he was the shooter.

“That’s an infinite crimson flag,” stated Brandon Garrett, a professor of legislation at Duke University. “Folks’s reminiscence doesn’t get higher over time.”

Garner is due in Adams County District Court on Monday for the start of a two-day listening to on his petition for post-conviction reduction. He’s arguing each that his attorneys didn’t adequately characterize him throughout his jury trial and that the science round eyewitness identifications has modified sufficient that it critically undermines the unique proof in opposition to him.

Garner doesn’t dispute that he was on the bar at West 52nd Avenue and Pecos Avenue on Nov. 22, 2009. He was there celebrating a birthday with a number of buddies. Round 1:30 a.m., a dispute broke out between Garner’s group of buddies and a separate group on the bar, based on courtroom data.

Somebody fired not less than 5 photographs, and three brothers within the different group had been wounded, the data present. All three survived.

After the capturing, nearly everybody within the bar ran away, together with Garner. He dropped a pair of glasses within the chaos and his girlfriend dropped her telephone — police later used these gadgets to determine Garner.

The three wounded brothers and the bar’s workers stayed till police arrived, courtroom data present. Witnesses initially gave various descriptions of the shooter. One stated the shooter was a white bald man; one other stated the shooter was a Hispanic man with brief black hair, one other witness described the shooter as skinny with a mustache.

Police by no means discovered the gun used within the capturing and didn’t make any arrests for a number of months, till they ultimately recognized Garner as having been current within the bar. Officers confirmed the witnesses a lineup of photographs of 5 random folks and Garner, to see if they might determine Garner because the shooter.

None had been in a position to. One witness stated Garner was “presumably there,” after which recognized one of many random folks because the shooter. One other witness additionally picked out a random particular person because the shooter.

Not till Garner’s jury trial did the three brothers say they had been sure the person on the protection desk was the shooter that evening. Garner was convicted of assault and associated prices and sentenced to 32 years in jail. He will probably be eligible for parole in 2029.

However since his conviction, new science has proven that witnesses shouldn’t be proven a suspect’s face greater than as soon as, stated Jeanne Segil, an legal professional for Garner with the Korey Smart Innocence Challenge, a company throughout the University of Colorado Boulder that gives free authorized companies to individuals who declare to be wrongfully convicted.

“A primary take a look at actually might be fairly dependable,” she stated. “And the discovering that the brothers didn’t determine Mr. Garner, that’s really probative of innocence. That non-identification is checked out in another way immediately.”

In courtroom filings, prosecutors with the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office have argued the modifications in eyewitness identification analysis don’t represent new proof in Garner’s case.

“Since this proof doesn’t concern a debunked forensic course of, and was broadly accessible on the time of trial, it doesn’t qualify as newly found proof,” the prosecution wrote in a July 2023 movement.

A spokesman for the DA’s workplace didn’t return a request for touch upon Garner’s petition for post-conviction reduction.

Garner’s case went to the Colorado Supreme Court in 2019, which upheld the validity of the witnesses’ in-court identifications in a 4-3 resolution, discovering that the identifications of Garner weren’t “impermissibly suggestive.” The three dissenting justices discovered that first-time, in-court witness identifications needs to be dealt with with extra authorized guardrails to make sure a good course of.