Carlos Starks Spent 11 Months in IN Jail Due to Mistaken Identity After Witnesses Picked Him Out of Photo Lineup as a Killer

Carlos Starks, a black man with dreadlocks bearing faint resemblance to killer, locked up in an Indiana jail due to mistaken identity after witnesses pick him out of photo lineup, though some expressed doubts.

Carlos Starks, a black man with dreadlocks,  spent 11 months in an Indiana jail for a crime he didn't commit, but was identified in a faulty photo lineup, that relies on eyewitnesses. How does this happen in the most powerful country in the world? Here's how the whole thing went down, according to the IndyStar:

At 9 p.m. July 20, 2010, Craft, 26, was carrying bags of groceries home in the Whitfield Apartments at 45th Street and Arlington Avenue when he was shot four times. At least five people in the complex got a look at a man walking away from the scene and gave arriving police officers a description.

Twenty minutes later, police stopped Starks at a bus stop in the 6100 block of East 46th Street, two blocks away. Black, in his 20s, with shoulder-length dreadlocks, Starks bore a vague resemblance to the man described by the witnesses, with at least one crucial difference: Starks was wearing a black shirt, not the red one witnesses described.

Starks said he was on his way to work. The officer let him go to answer another call but entered Starks' name into the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department database. Early the next morning, Detective Leisa Moore put Starks' picture into a photo lineup alongside five other men with dreadlocks.

In the mugshot, which was from an old misdemeanor arrest, Starks was wearing a red shirt. Five witnesses viewed the photographs, and three picked Starks. The suspect chosen by the other two witnesses was the only other man in the lineup with a red shirt.

How do you lock someone up for 11 months, even though the eyewitness expressed some doubts in fingering Starks? There's a serious problem with eyewitnesses picking someone out of a lineup. The word is that the police officers in this case didn't follow strict protocol and used a photo array rather than a sequential lineup. Be that as it may, what ever protocols were or weren't followed, faulty eyewitness testimony could have clearly occurred in the case of Troy Davis, who was executed last month for the murder of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail.

Who is going to give Carlos Starks back the 11 months he lost behind bars for something he didn't do? Any black man with the slightest resemblance to another man who committed a crime can be hauled in by police and locked up for months, if not years, due to being fingered by an eyewitness who wasn't too sure on who he or she saw commit that crime. That's pretty scary.

Read the entire article: http://www.indystar.com/article/20111009/LOCAL/110090369/Man-spent-11-months-jail-because-faulty-identification?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|IndyStar.com