State of New Jersey v. Larry R. Henderson, Defendant-Respondent

Summary

After a remand hearing before a Special Master featuring seven experts and more than 200 published scientific studies, the New Jersey Supreme Court concluded that the Manson/Madison two-part test for admitting eyewitness identification evidence is inadequate and must be revised. Going forward, when a defendant shows some evidence of suggestiveness, courts must hold pretrial hearings exploring all relevant system and estimator variables before ruling on admissibility, and juries are to receive enhanced model charges on identification reliability; the Court also used its supervisory power to require police to record confidence statements before any feedback and to ask witnesses about co-witness or outside contact. It declined to order hearings in every case, rejected a bright-line suppression rule, and left open questions such as sequential versus simultaneous lineups for lack of scientific consensus. The revised framework applies purely prospectively except to Larry Henderson and Cecilia Chen, and Henderson's case is remanded for a new pretrial hearing.