## Facts

- On January 1, 2003, Rodney Harper was shot in his Camden, New Jersey apartment and died days later.
- James Womble was present and had been smoking crack cocaine and drinking wine.
- Two men entered; Womble knew one as George Clark and said the second man held him at gunpoint in a small, dark hallway while Clark confronted Harper.
- About ten days later, Womble gave police a statement and on January 14, 2003, identified Larry Henderson from a photo array at the prosecutor’s office.
- At a later hearing, Womble testified that a detective pressured him to make a choice during the identification procedure.
- Henderson admitted being outside the building with Clark but denied entering the apartment, claiming he heard shots from the hallway.
- The trial court admitted the identification after a pretrial hearing and Henderson was convicted of reckless manslaughter, aggravated assault, and weapons offenses.
- The Appellate Division reversed and remanded for a new hearing, citing noncompliance with the Attorney General’s identification guidelines.
- The Supreme Court ordered a plenary evidentiary record before a Special Master on scientific research concerning eyewitness identification.

## Issues

1. Whether the identification procedure used with Womble was unduly suggestive such that due process required suppression or other relief.
2. Whether New Jersey’s existing framework for assessing eyewitness-identification admissibility adequately measured reliability in light of modern scientific research.
3. What pretrial procedures, burdens, and trial safeguards should govern the admission and evaluation of eyewitness-identification evidence.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court modified and affirmed the Appellate Division’s judgment and remanded for a new, expanded pretrial hearing under a revised framework.
- The Court rejected the continued adequacy of the prior Manson/Madison approach as the governing test for reliability.
- The Court adopted a system/estimator-variable model and required a more searching pretrial hearing once the defendant makes a threshold showing tied to a system variable.
- The Court directed the development of enhanced jury instructions addressing factors affecting identification accuracy.
- The Court endorsed strengthened record-making requirements for out-of-court identifications and recognized remedies for incomplete records.
- The revised framework applied prospectively after new jury instructions were approved, with Henderson (and a companion case) receiving application on remand.

## Legal Principles

- A defendant who presents some evidence of suggestiveness tied to a system variable is entitled to a robust pretrial hearing on admissibility.
- System variables (state-controlled factors such as lineup administration, instructions, feedback, multiple viewings, and showups) and estimator variables (event/witness factors such as stress, weapon focus, lighting, distance, cross-racial effects, and time delay) must be evaluated together in assessing reliability.
- After the defendant’s threshold showing, the State must prove reliability while accounting for both system and estimator variables.
- The trial judge must exclude an identification if, considering the totality of the evidence, there is a very substantial likelihood of misidentification; otherwise the identification may be admitted with appropriate safeguards.
- Courts should use detailed, scientifically informed jury instructions to reduce the risk that jurors will overvalue factors like witness confidence or undervalue conditions that impair perception and memory.
- Identification procedures should be documented in a manner that preserves what occurred, including the witness’s confidence statement in the witness’s own words, to permit meaningful judicial review and tailored remedies where documentation is deficient.

## Conclusion

The court restructured New Jersey law governing eyewitness identifications by replacing the prior reliability analysis with a hearing-based framework centered on system and estimator variables, shifting the State to prove reliability after a threshold showing of system-based suggestiveness, and requiring enhanced jury instructions and improved documentation; Henderson’s case was remanded for a new admissibility hearing under that revised standard.


State v. Henderson, 208 N.J. 208, 27 A.3d 872 (N.J. 2011)