Commonwealth v. Bastaldo: Endorsing the Use of Scientific Information on Eyewitness Identification, the SJC Wades in to the Fray on How to Define Race and Ethnicity
Six months ago we wrote about the SJC’s recent cases grappling with the fallibility of eyewitness evidence in criminal cases, and the provisional jury instructions the Court had drafted on this topic. Two weeks ago, the SJC again tackled the issue of eyewitness identification in Commonwealth v. Bastaldo, and revised the provisional model instructions with respect to cross-racial identifications.
In Bastaldo, the defendant was accused of assaulting the bouncer at a nightclub. The defendant identified himself as a “dark-skinned Hispanic of Dominican descent,”[1] and the SJC determined that he had “black” skin. He was identified in court by three witnesses: two self-identified as Caucasian, and one – the victim – was of Puerto Rican and Italian descent and self-identified as Hispanic. The SJC determined that this last witness had “brown” skin. The defendant requested an instruction on cross-racial and cross-ethnic eyewitness identification. The Commonwealth opposed the motion, arguing that at most the evidence suggested the witnesses may have had different ethnic backgrounds than the defendant, and that if any instruction were given it should not apply to the victim because he, like the defendant, was Hispanic. The trial judge declined to give a cross-racial or cross-ethnic identification instruction.
The provisional model jury instructions set forth in Commonwealth v. Gomes stated that “if witness and offender are of different races” the court should instruct the jurors that “research has shown that people of all races may have greater difficulty in accurately identifying members of a different race than they do in identifying members of their own race.” Because Bastaldo’s case was tried before the Gomes opinion was released, the Court determined that no cross-racial identification instruction had been required, and the trial judge had not erred in denying Bastaldo’s request for one. The Court, however, went on to modify the provisional model jury instructions set forth in Gomes to “direct that a cross-racial instruction be given unless all parties agree that there was no cross-racial identification.”