By KERA News & Wire Services
Dallas, TX – A state House committee has advanced legislation to require law enforcement agencies to standardize the way they have eyewitnesses identify suspects.
The House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee voted to require agencies to adopt a model policy or something similar for determining how they conduct photographic or live lineups. To avoid unintentionally influencing the witness, the person administering the lineup would be precluded from knowing who the suspect in the case is.
The bill's author, Rep. Pete Gallego, says mistaken eyewitness identification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions in Texas. The Alpine Democrat says procedures would be written based on reliable research on eyewitness memory.
The state leads the nation in the most convicts exonerated by DNA evidence, with more than 40 people released from prison over the past decade.
Man charged with vandalizing North Texas mosque
A federal grand jury has indicted a man on a count of destruction of religious property after a North Texas mosque was vandalized last summer.
The indictment from the Fort Worth grand jury accuses 34-year-old Henry Glaspell of Arlington of violating a federal hate-crime statute. Conviction is punishable by up to 20 years' imprisonment.
The indictment alleges Glaspell torched playground equipment at the Dar El-Eman Islamic Center in south Arlington.
Tarrant County Muslim community spokesman Jamal Qaddura told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that a surveillance video showed Glaspell spray-painting obscene graffiti and setting fire to the wooden playground equipment last July.
A call to Glaspell's home Tuesday evening found his telephone line disconnected. A message left with his attorney, federal public defender William Hermesmeyer of Fort Worth, wasn't returned.
Texas executes Houston man for killing his son
Texas has executed a 42-year-old Houston man for the fatal 2002 shooting of his 19-month old son after an hours-long standoff with police.
Timothy Wayne Adams received a lethal injection Tuesday evening for the death of son Timothy Jr. He shot the child shot twice at close range after the standoff with a police tactical squad at his family's apartment.
Adams' execution took place moments after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a final appeal from his attorneys.
Prosecutors said the slaying was intended as retaliation against his wife for leaving him. Defense attorneys argued the killing was an aberration in an otherwise law-abiding life.