12-02-2025
Indiana lawmakers want to add 'common sense' approach to police lineups
For 25 years, Leon Benson remained behind bars after the execution-style killing of a Plainfield man.
His fate changed in March 2023 when investigators retraced Benson's case and no longer believed police or prosecutors had the right man. Investigators had relied on a vague description from an eyewitness in the shooting, officials determined, and court records pointed to another man as the perpetrator, one whom at least two eyewitnesses spotted pulling the trigger on Kasey Schoen. But the records state Indianapolis police never shared that information with prosecutors or Benson's defense.
A judge soon exonerated Benson from his 1999 sentence, 10 years of which he served in solitary confinement as his young children grew up.
Tuesday, Benson stood in front of Indiana lawmakers as a free man to support a bill making its way through the General Assembly that aims to decrease wrongful convictions by tightening state law surrounding how eyewitnesses identify suspects.
"An ounce of prevention is better than a ton of cure," Benson said.
Senate Bill 141, if passed, would create guidelines for how police should conduct lineups for eyewitnesses of a crime to point out a suspect.
More: Murder. A conviction. An exoneration. Was evidence of another suspect ignored — or hidden?
Under the bill, lineups would change in the following ways:
The lineup administrator cannot know which individual is the suspect to prevent unintentional suggestions or clues about who it may be.
Investigators must tell the eyewitness that a suspect may or may not be in a lineup before the investigation, that witnesses are not required to make an identification and that police will continue to investigate whether they identify a suspect or not.
To fill out the lineup, police must use non-suspects who resemble the witness's description of the perpetrator so a suspect does not stand out.
Police must document the eyewitness's level of confidence following the lineup by asking them to provide a statement in their own words.
The changes, advocates and Benson said, would align Indiana with 30 other states that have established similar safeguards – ones they say target the most common ways erroneous identifications occur.
"Eyewitnesses are relied upon by law enforcement and expected to identify perpetrators by memory but that is incredibly malleable," said Winnie Ye, a state policy advocate for the Innocence Project, a nonprofit that seeks to exonerate wrongfully convicted people.
Since 1989, Indiana has seen at least 47 people wrongfully incarcerated, a third of which officials estimate is due to mistaken eyewitness identification, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, the most comprehensive list of wrongful convictions in the country.
Supporters backing the bill include the Indiana Public Defender Council, the Innocence Project and the Notre Dame Exoneration Justice Clinic, which helps investigate and overturn wrongful convictions.
"(This bill) provides some very common-sense measures that will substantially reduce the risk of wrongful convictions in Indiana,' said Professor Jimmy Gurulé, director of the Notre Dame Exoneration Justice Clinic and former federal prosecutor.
The bill also stipulates police cannot conduct a lineup if investigators used facial recognition technology to identify a suspect, unless they show another basis to believe the alleged perpetrator committed the crime.
The bill passed in a 9-0 vote during its second reading Tuesday in the Indiana Senate's committee on Corrections and Criminal Law, receiving bipartisan support and praise.
'Protecting the constitutional rights of Hoosiers is paramount,' said Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, who authored the bill alongside Sen. Susan Glick, R-LaGrange.
Sen. Rodney Pol, D-Chesterton, co-authored the proposal.
IndyStar reporter Kristine Phillips contributed to this report.
Contact IndyStar reporter Sarah Nelson at
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana police lineups often unreliable. Bill hopes to change that
