O.C.G.A.

O.C.G.A. § 17-20-2 (2019)

Written policies for live lineups, photo lineups, and showups

✓ O.C.G.A. — 2019 edition (Public.Resource.Org Release 73)

Code text and O.C.G.A. statutory annotations on this page reflect the 2019 Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Public.Resource.Org Release 73, 2019-08-21; public domain per Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). The Syfert case-law annotations in Notes of Decisions, below, are current.

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(a) Not later than July 1, 2016, any law enforcement agency that conducts live lineups, photo lineups, or showups shall adopt written policies for using such procedures for the purpose of determining whether a witness identifies someone as the perpetrator of an alleged crime. (b) Live lineup, photo lineup, and showup policies shall include the following: (1) With respect to a live lineup, having an individual who does not know the identity of the suspect conduct the live procedure; (2) With respect to a photo lineup, having an individual: (A) Who does not know the identity of the suspect conduct the photo lineup; or (B) Who knows the identity of the suspect use a procedure in which photographs are placed in folders, randomly shuffled, and then presented to the witness so that the individual conducting such procedure cannot physically see which photograph is being viewed by the witness until the procedure is complete; (3) Providing the witness with instruction that the perpetrator of the alleged crime may or may not be present in the live lineup or photo lineup; (4) Composing a live lineup or photo lineup so that the fillers generally resemble the witness’s description of the perpetrator of the alleged crime;

(5) Using a minimum of four fillers in a live lineup and a minimum of five fillers in a photo lineup; and (6) Having the individual conducting a live lineup, photo lineup, or showup seek and document, at the time that an identification of an individual or photograph is made, and in the witness’s own words without necessarily referencing a numeric or percentage standard, a clear statement from the witness as to the witness’s confidence level that the individual or photograph identified is the individual or photograph of the individual who committed the alleged crime. (c) All law enforcement agency written policies adopted pursuant to this Code section shall be subject to public disclosure and inspection notwithstanding any provision to the contrary in Article 4 of Chapter 18 of Title 50.

History

Code 1981, § 17-20-2, enacted by Ga. L. 2015, p. 1046, § 4/SB 94.

Annotations

JUDICIAL DECISIONS Noncompliance. - Defendant failed to show that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to move to suppress a photo identification made by one of the victims because noncompliance with O.C.G.A. § 17-20-2 would not result in the automatic exclusion of the identification, and

none of the circumstances, including the prosecutor’s failure to read an admonition form to the victim prior to handing the victim the phone, amounted to an unduly suggestive lineup procedure. Roseboro v. State, 308 Ga. 428, 841 S.E.2d 706 (2020).

RESEARCH REFERENCES ALR. - Criminal defendant’s age or height as factor in determination of whether circumstances of witness’s identification of defendant in photographic ar-

ray shown by police to witness were impermissibly suggestive as matter of federal constitutional law, 102 A.L.R.6th 365.

Notes of Decisions

Cited in 5 cases (4 in the last 5 years), 2020–2025 · leading case: Anderson v. State, 869 S.E.2d 401 (Ga. 2022).

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Anderson v. State, 869 S.E.2d 401 (Ga. 2022). · cites it 22× “9 We note that this procedure appears to comport with guidelines set forth in OCGA § 17-20-2, which requires law enforcement agencies to establish a policy for the conduct of live lineups, photo lineups, and “showups.”

Kirkland v. State, 854 S.E.2d 508 (Ga. 2021). · cites it 8× “428, 433-434 (2) (a) (841 SE2d 706) (2020) (even assuming that OCGA § 17-20-2 applies to a procedure in which a photo lineup was conducted using pictures on a phone, noncompliance with the statute would not result in the automatic exclusion of an identification); United States v.”

Roseboro v. State, 841 S.E.2d 706 (Ga. 2020). · cites it 5× “To argue that the prosecutor used an unduly suggestive identification procedure here, Roseboro points to the prosecutor’s alleged noncompliance with OCGA § 17-20-2,7 a Georgia statute that 7 OCGA § 17-20-2 (a) and (b) provide: (a) Not later than July 1, 2016, any law enforcement…”

Harris v. State, 872 S.E.2d 732 (Ga. 2022). · cites it 4× “7 The evidence 7 Kirkland cites OCGA § 17-20-2 (b) (2) (B) for this proposition.”

Mitchell v. State, 911 S.E.2d 607 (Ga. 2025). · cites it 12× “23 SE2d 758) (2019) (not a substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification where witnesses viewed defendant “in full daylight”; “heard a gun- shot” and then “ran to see what was happening, and saw two men 6 Mitchell also notes the procedure used by Sergeant Burdette —…”

Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.