The court heard arguments [JURIST report] in the case in November. The petitioner argued that it was fundamentally unfair to allow potentially erroneous eyewitness identifications into the trial simply because they were not orchestrated by police. New Hampshire, supported by the US Solicitor General as amicus curiae, argued that the rules of evidence provided sufficient safeguards and that cases where the erroneous identifications were disallowed were aimed at deterring police misconduct, which no one has alleged in the case at hand. In addition, the government urged it is the primary role of the jury to assess the reliability of evidence and handing that determination to the judge would be a fundamental shift in our trial practice. The court questioned whether the role of these due process protections was strictly deterrence or whether it also included prevention of injustice, as urged by petitioner.
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