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I represent a number of people charged with robberies, car thefts, burglaries, and the number one defense, I’ll say mostly in robbery cases particularly is identification. If the person is not arrested on the scene and is not arrested with any sort of proceeds from a robbery, for example, and it’s just going based on a person’s ability to recollect what a person looked like at the time the crime occurred it is very, very difficult when a victim is under the stress of being robbed to get an accurate description of what that person looked like. And that’s even more so when we have what we call a cross racial identification where it’s been scientifically proven to be extremely unreliable. I have a number of cases or I’ve had a number of cases in the past where witnesses will look at photo arrays, go to line-ups up at the prison and they simply are not sure of which person did it. They may have a hunch. They may think that one person looks more like the person but identification is key in a robbery case. Now obviously, that’s not the case or the situation where you have somebody arrested on scene but in those types of cases identification is really an important defense.
Philadelphia, PA criminal defense attorney Brian Fishman talks about his experience in defending theft, burglary and robbery cases?