1-Hour Program

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Overview

Registration fee waivers and discounts are widely available to attorneys, paralegals and staff working in nonprofit and legal services organizations; pro bono volunteers (providing no-fee legal assistance to clients individually or through an organization); government attorneys; judges and judicial law clerks; law professors and law students; senior attorneys (age 65 and over); unemployed attorneys; and others with financial hardship.  All qualified individuals are encouraged to apply.

 Scholarships available

Eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions in our criminal justice system.  Own-race bias, the phenomenon of being better able to remember the faces of people who share one’s own race than the faces of people of other races, makes cross-racial eyewitness identifications decidedly less reliable than same-race identifications.  Yet absent clear and specific guidance on the shortcomings of cross-racial identifications, juries in criminal trials readily credit eyewitness testimony.

Criminal defense attorneys can play a vital role in reducing the risk of cross-racial misidentifications.  With the holding in New York v. Boone, New York recently became one of only a handful of states that require juries be informed about the risks of cross-racial eyewitness identifications in certain circumstances. 

Please join Marne L. Lenox, Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) and co-author of LDF’s amicus brief in New York v. Boone to learn more about:

  • The New York State Court of Appeals decision in Boone
  • How cross-racial eyewitness identifications heighten the danger of misidentification and wrongful convictions
  • Benefits of cross-racial identification jury instructions
  • States that require cross-racial identification jury instructions
  • Crafting an effective cross-racial identification jury instruction

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