cases where eyewitnesses were right

In the Miller case, a woman was raped in her car in a parking garage in downtown Chicago. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Editorial: He spent 38 years in prison for a crime he didnt commit. Opinion: Why does Mexicos president want to dismantle the democratic system that elected him? 'The issue in Iran at the moment is not that of hijab.'. An initial eyewitness identification made with low confidence indicates that even though memory was not contaminated, the ID is untrustworthy (that is, by indicating low confidence, the eyewitness is effectively saying, Theres a good chance that Im making an error). 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Attributing that error to the unreliability of eyewitness memory is, in our view, pointing the finger of blame in the wrong direction. The variables include: viewing conditions (lighting-distance-duration), distracting stimuli (weapons-loud noises) and internal states of the observer (attention-motivation-skill-prejudice). Yes, the 1959 Matthiessen (Not Deer Park) State Park rape/robbery played a role in Wegers arrest (the rape victim ALSO ID Weger separately and BEFORE the line-up mentioned here), but it played NO role (not mentioned at all) in his trial or subsequent conviction. A cornerstone of the state's case is the video at or near the kennels filmed on Paul's phone starting at 8:44 p.m. in which Murdaugh's voice can be heard in the background. Witness misidentifications can affect both plaintiffs and defendants. Hossein Amirabdollahian told the host 'this is not the way to conduct an interview' after he insisting women in Iran had 'all the necessary, required freedoms' and accused Western media of fueling protests there. One reported that he had identified Grant without doubt or hesitation. Another stated that the killers face was burned into [her] memory immediately.. 5 Brewer & Treyens, Role of Schemata in Memory for Places, Cognitive Psychology 13.2 (1981). The murder victims cold case evidence was there because the case had recently been reopened; the 1969 preschoolers DNA sample was there as part of an active murder investigation, and Leitermans DNA sample was there because he had recently been arrested for forging a prescription. Some professionals have questioned whether this case has led to heightened caution when considering capacity and fitness in cases where dementia and cognitive impairment are diagnosed. Ruling in the case of a man convicted of manslaughter and aggravated assault, the court noted that several variables can produce mistaken eyewitness testimony. The prosecution then claims that Flowers then walked again from his house to Tardy Furniture to commit the murder, passing an auto body shop and a drycleaner on the way, as well as Highway 51. But eyewitnesses aren't always right, and poor investigative practices can make matters worse. 6 Wells, Memon, Penrod, Eyewitness Evidence: Improving Its Probative Value, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, (2006). The same is true of eyewitness memory: memory can be contaminated with the trace of an innocent person, but under proper testing conditions, eyewitness evidence is highly reliable. In addition to implementing double-blind lineup procedures, its essential that lineup administrators document eyewitnesses confidence immediately following an identification. His subsequent return to business raised further questions about the evidence that led to his early release. What law enforcementand the publicneeds to know. 2 What facts gave rise to the belief that Leiterman may have been wrongfully convicted based on contaminated evidence? Document Witness Confidence and Videotape Witness Identifications. In about 70% of these cases, misidentification by one or more eyewitnesses contributed significantly as evidence for conviction.3, Eyewitness Testimony: General Social Science Findings, Throughout history, eyewitness testimony was held up as the golden nugget of evidence. Now the influential New Jersey Supreme Court has instructed police and judges to take into account an array of responses that might prevent mistaken identifications. Thanks for reading Scientific American. The sooner police, prosecutors and judges understand that fact, the better off we all will beincluding you, if you are ever incorrectly fingered by an eyewitness. I must also add that Chester Weger also CONFESSED to the 1959 Matthiessen State Park rape/robbery but was never brought to trial (he already had received a life sentence for murder) to avoid putting the TEENAGED female victim on the witness stand. In response to this issue, the National Research Council (NRC) formed a research committee in 2013 chaired by Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District of New York and cognitive scientist, Thomas Albright of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.31 The group released their findings in 2014 in a report titled Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification. Sally Challen claimed she experienced years of emotional abuse before killing him with a hammer. 'In Iran we had an incident. 31 Elizabeth Loftus, Eyewitness Science and the Legal System, 14 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 110 (2018). Scientific best practices for conducting eyewitness lineups require that the person administering the lineup not know who the police suspect. Assistant Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University. Despite the frequency of use, we have been confronted as a country with many incredible failures of eyewitness testimony such as misidentifications that led to convictions and sentences of people who were later discovered innocent.1 Science has played no small role: post-conviction DNA profiling made possible by the development of the polymerase chain reaction, which enables amplification of crime-scene DNA to quantities sufficient for forensic analysis have meant that DNA identification is becoming increasingly used even in cases where it was previously not viable: those where we have smaller samples.2 As of now, almost 350 people, many serving long prison sentences, have been exonerated because their own DNA was discovered to be incompatible with evidence long ago collected from the crime scene. He did it and was fortunate not to be sentenced to death in that era. The case shed renewed light on the country's treatment of women, with a growing number of female Iranians choosing to flout the Sharia-based law to wear the hijab. (Sometimes there is an issue of racial bias connected with eyewitness misidentification, but this was not a factor as the parking lot attendants were also African American.). Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy. Improper lineup procedures can also lead to witness misidentifications. Guidance can help jurors who might not know what to make of conflicting testimony. This can be true even in situations where the witness has an ample opportunity to observe the offender. Harvard Univ Press; Cambridge, MA: 2011. See here: Innocence Project, Eyewitness misidentification accessed on March 9, 2019. Using eyewitnesses to identify a suspect as the perpetrator to the crime is a form of direct testimonial evidence that is used for forensic purposes. Once this fact is appreciated, then proper testing protocols can be put in place to minimize the likelihood that the original memory trace is contaminated. But. or debate this issue live on our message boards. He served 47 years in prison before his conviction was vacated in 2018. This evidence was not presented in the initial trial. The chance of a lifetime: Five friends ski the tallest mountain in Los Angeles, Shocking, impossible gas bills push restaurants to the brink of closures, Best coffee city in the world? 32 National Research Council, Identifying The Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification 38, 4-8 (2014). What it means is that the malleability of memory can harm reliability. To do this, proper testing protocols that reduce chances of contamination need to be followed. Like eyewitness memory, DNA evidence can be contaminated with the trace of an innocent person. Pay farmers handsomely to give up their water rights. A letter by UN Watch - a Geneva-based organization monitoring activities of the UN - urged all 193 members to leave the meeting. 2023 Scientific American, a Division of Springer Nature America, Inc. This is an updated version of an article originally published on July 4, 2020. Additional Reading: Truth, Lies and Police Lineups, The Crime Report, May 5, 2021. Judges should include within jury instructions clear and concise instructions on how to evaluate and make use of eyewitness testimony during their deliberations. Mahsa Amini, 22, died on September 16, three days after falling into a coma following her arrest, After the death of Mahsa Amini, Anti Iran protests have been held in many parts of the world. Recently, post-conviction DNA exonerations of innocent persons have dramatically highlighted the problems with eyewitness identifications. Years later, in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court highlighted the danger of erroneous eyewitness identification in United States v. Wade, stating, The vagaries of eyewitness identification are well-known; the annals of criminal law are rife with instances of mistaken identification.23 The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimates that U.S. law enforcement made 12,196,959 arrests in 2012. Well ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. Noting a victims initial confidence level at the initial identification can be important, so as to track if the witness grows more or less confident with the identification over the course of the trial, which might be an indicator of eyewitness unreliability. Widespread civil unrest broke out in Iran following the suspicious death of Amini on September 16, 2022. Questions were raised about the outcome after Ernest Saunders made a recovery following his release. 10 Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 114 (1977). 21 Commonwealth v. Walker, 625 Pa. 450, 47678 (2014). Andy Hale is a civil rights attorney, specializing in wrongful convictions in Chicago, Illinois. Eyewitness testimony can hold a lot of weight with jurors. In 1932, Yale University law professor Edwin M. Borchard documented nearly seventy cases of miscarriage of justice caused by eyewitness errors in his book, Convicting the Innocent. 4 Defffenbacher, et al. 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My review of the transcripts from Grants trial suggests a simple explanation for these high-confidence mistakes: The police did not use scientific best practices for collecting the eyewitness identification evidence. Many more sit in prisons who have not had the opportunity to have their cases re-investigated or samples re-tested. Instead evidence collected at the contaminated crime scene would probably be declared inadmissible. Eyewitness Testimony: Recommended Practices, Eyewitness testimony continues to be commonplace in law enforcement and trials. In one clip an unidentified Iranian woman can be heard saying: 'They are without shame and should be embarrassed. Working closely with our specialist human resource colleagues, we offer a holistic advisory and support service for employers encompassing both the legal and people risks of workforce management. In this case, 120 eyewitnesses from as far north as Grants Pass, Ore., to as far south as. Today, he remains in prison. In assessing the reliability of eyewitness identification, federal and state courts are still divided on (1) whether expert testimony on eyewitness identification should be allowed under either Daubert or Frye and (2) the proper exercise of trial court discretion when deciding whether to admit such expert testimony.18 In 2009, he was charged with assaulting 12 women. U. L. Rev. 'This is not the way to conduct an interview. During the tense interview, Amirabdollahian claimed Mahsa Amini - the 22-year-old who died after being arrested by morality police for failing to wear the hijab - was turned into a 'symbol' by protesters. Speak to our experts today for advice. After killing the officer, the shooter fled the scene and a high-speed car chase ensued. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. In an effort to overwhelm Chester and break him down, he was placed in a lineup regarding two incidents that took place in 1959 in a nearby State Park called Deer Park, one of which was that rape case and the other was a purse snatching. Three of the eyewitnesses reported that the detective told them that they had picked the same person other people had, though the detective himself denied having made such statements. He is the founder of Hale & Monico, Americas Justice Attorneys. Police said they believed Weger was a suspect in a rape that had occurred a few years earlier. John Wixted is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Finally, almost a year later, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declared Grant actually innocent on May 19, 2021. All six of those eyewitnesses were wrong. 23 United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 230, 288 (1967). Thirty Years of DNA Forensics: How DNA Has Revolutionized Criminal Investigations., See here: Innocence Project, Eyewitness misidentification, Crime in the United States 2012: Persons Arrested,. Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? , email, and poor investigative practices can make matters worse 31 Elizabeth Loftus, eyewitness testimony can a... Before his conviction was vacated in 2018 with tailored content, marketing and ads line. Her car in a rape that had occurred a few years earlier ample opportunity to the. The democratic system that elected him far south as this case, eyewitnesses... Without shame and should be embarrassed water rights out in Iran at the University of California, Diego... Made a recovery following his release, Editorial: he spent 38 years prison! Testimony during their deliberations Saunders was found guilty ofconspiracy, theft, and false accounting before his conviction was in. 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