the opportunity of the witness to view the criminal at the time of the crime; the accuracy of the witnesss prior description of the criminal; the level of certainty demonstrated at the identification procedure; and. Psychologists have learned a lot about why such errors happen. Guidance can help jurors who might not know what to make of conflicting testimony. The parking lot attendants provided a description of the driver to a police sketch artist and the sketch was published in a daily police bulletin. Do you ask other countries who are in our region but are allies of the United States the same kinds of questions that you're asking me about the women's hijab? Thanks to the work of the Innocence Project of Texas, new DNA testing on biological material collected from underneath the victims fingernails cleared Grant and implicated another man, Jermarico Carter, who police said confessed to the killing. Well ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. Perhaps one of the most striking examples of the flaws in eyewitness testimony is the case of Jerry Miller, who was convicted of rape, robbery and kidnapping in 1982. 2023 Scientific American, a Division of Springer Nature America, Inc. 'This is not the way to conduct an interview. Carter has now been indicted for the murder by a grand jury, and Lydell Grant was released from prison. The way to avoid these problems with eyewitness testimony is for police to adopt best practices based on the psychological research. Confidence reported at trial after the eyewitness has received confirmatory feedback is not. Mugshots of Lydell Grant (left, in 2010) and Jermarico Carter (right, in 2007) show the men dont look very similar. Following criticism of the decision, the high court ordered the parole board to re-examine Worboys case. Several police officers reported and later testified at Heidelbergs criminal trial that they observed him driving the subject vehicle as it sped past them at various points during the chase. Kendall Taggart BuzzFeed News Reporter I can vouch for the truth of his observations, having been involved in several cases dealing with witness misidentifications while representing both plaintiffs and defendants. What the cases of Miller and Heidelberg highlight is that witnesses are often wrong. Nonetheless, the attendants mistakenly identified Miller in a subsequent police lineup. They range from photo lineups in which none of the other images resembles the suspect to subtle pressure on a witness from an officer who knows which picture is the correct one. Finally, almost a year later, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declared Grant actually innocent on May 19, 2021. But a comparison of the pairs mugshots reveals that they bear little physical resemblance to one another beyond both being Black men. Last updated: 27 February 2023. The subjects who had been asked the leading question were much more likely to choose the slideshow with the yield sign, since their memories had been tampered by the question asked earlier.4 Many studies have since corroborated the findings of Loftus, such as another experiment, where the same effect was reproduced using television screens, and then seeing the effects between the different participants.5 Studies like these have demonstrated the fickle nature of memory, and how details can be changed without the witness really even recognizing it. Miller was convicted and sentenced to 52 years in prison. For example, 21 police departments in the state conduct blind photo lineups, in which the person administering the viewing doesnt know who the suspect is. Examples of when an expert witness may be needed include: To hire an expert witness, you may make contact with us via our simple online contact form, call us on 01865 587 865 or by requesting a call back from our team via the link below. The attendants were also able to have a brief conversation with the driver before he fled on foot. Hale is an Emmy-nominated executive producer for several true-crime documentaries highlighting wrongful convictions. Another stated that the killers face was burned into [her] memory immediately.. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Claimed to have called out to Flowers that day. Eyewitness Testimony: Recommended Practices, Eyewitness testimony continues to be commonplace in law enforcement and trials. Recently though, with the rise of social science, eyewitness testimony has taken a tumble from its lofty standing. cases where eyewitnesses were rightammo donation to ukraine. Eyewitness testimony done right L.A. Times Archives Sept. 8, 2011 12 AM PT To many Americans including many jurors eyewitness testimony is the gold standard when it comes to evidence. 'Do you ask other countries? In a recent review of the literature, the authors reported across 15 experiments, suspect identifications made with high confidence were, on average, 97 percent accurate! Law enforcement officers, prosecutors, attorneys, and jurors need to realize that just because a witness says so does not make it so. Neighbors told arriving firefighters that they had heard a thunderous crash at about the same time as the blaze is believed to have begun. One reported that he had identified Grant without doubt or hesitation. The appeal was successful and the conviction was quashed. Scientific best practices for conducting eyewitness lineups require that the person administering the lineup not know who the police suspect. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. 26 The Innocence Project, DNA Exoneree Case Profiles,. 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. It gathered more than 100 signatures from prominent lawmakers, human rights campaigners and celebrities. As an experimental psychologist who conducts research on eyewitness identification, Ive seen hundreds of examples of highly confident yet mistaken eyewitnesses both in the laboratory and in actual court cases. 8 Clifford & Hollin, Effects Of the Type of Incident and the Number of Perpetrators on Eyewitness Memory, Journal of Applied Psychology 66.3 (1981). Psychological experiments have shown that lineup administrators who know who the suspect is end up cuing witnesses toward that person. The detective also admitted making a similar comment to at least one other witness. In Perry v. New Hampshire, the Supreme Court barred the defendant from challenging the eyewitness testimony proffered by the state, even though the circumstances surrounding the eyewitnesss identification of the defendant were decidedly suggestive. As of 2014, 44 states and all federal circuits, with the possible exception of the 11th Circuit, allow such expert testimony at the discretion of the trial judge.21, Eyewitness Testimony: Application in Court, The Manson v. Brathwaite test under the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution for assessing eyewitness identification evidence was established in 1977, before much applied research on eyewitness identification had been conducted. In reviewing the case, it is more than apparent that the convicted man had motive, opportunity and means to commit this crime. 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. If New Jersey can have statewide guidelines, so can California. Videos circulating on Twitter appeared to show dozens of UN diplomats walking out as he started to speak. Two other eyewitnesses, a couple, remembered discussing their selection with one another and confirming each others decisions. Other major dangers that have plagued eyewitness reports are factors such as high-stress situations, how witnesses are interviewed by police, and whether the victim is the same or different race as the witness.6 In 2001, Meissner and Brigham performed a broad review of research on cross-race identification, analyzing data from 39 research articles and 5,000 subjects/witnesses. In other words, the confirmatory remark made the mistaken eyewitnesses just as persuasive as the accurate ones. By itself, that fact only shows that contaminated memory is unreliable (just as contaminated DNA evidence is). But if the six eyewitnesses chose Lydell Grant from the lineup only because they were cued to do so by the case detective, why were they so confident in their identifications? Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, Eyewitness memory is reliable when initially tested using proper procedures, but the legal system nonetheless habitually relies on unreliable (contaminated) eyewitness evidence from later IDs. There have been hundreds of cases in which mistaken eyewitness identification testimony led to the conviction of innocent people. 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. (The Los Angeles Police Department does not conduct blind photo lineups, nor does it follow the commissions related recommendation that witnesses be shown photos one at a time. circuit court, the 29-year-old was convicted of a rape that he did not commit and was sentenced to five life sentences. Assistant Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University. But eyewitnesses aren't always right, and poor investigative practices can make matters worse. Standardized instructions regarding best practices should be given, including such tips as the importance of minimizing contact between witnesses at the scene, and how gathering eyewitness testimony as early as possible tends to increase its accuracy. The victim, a white female, parked her car in that garage every day and the attendants noticed that as the car approached there was an unknown black male driving the car. Delta agrees 34% pay rise for pilots - worth up to $90k - with other major airlines set to follow suit, Plastic surgeon reveals the one exercise that makes you AGE FASTER - saying he tells his patients to stop the popular workout if they want to avoid a 'gaunt, old face', Trans teacher with prosthetic Z-cup breasts is FINALLY put on leave after it was revealed they don't wear the fake boobs outside of school - as parents line up to criticize school board at meeting, Robert F. 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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. First, another DNA profileone belonging to John Ruelas, who was just a four-year-old preschooler at the time of the murderwas found on a blood spot taken from the victims left hand. In 2009, he was charged with assaulting 12 women. 3 Eyewitness Misidentification. Pictured: Protestors take part in an anti-Iran demonstration on December 24, 2022 in Istanbul, Turkey, Women burned their headscarves in Kurdish-controlled north-east Syria in September 2022. Yet, based on, among other things, this powerful purported eyewitness evidence, Heidelberg was convicted. This section will focus on the courts current treatment of eyewitness testimony. Editorial: Los Angeles County bus riders get no shelter from the storm, Before and after photos from space show storms effect on California reservoirs, Dramatic before and after photos from space show epic snow blanketing SoCal mountains, Yet more rain expected to hit California in March. Thanks for reading Scientific American. 'You're supposed to interview me but you're actually having a confrontation with me,' he told Amanpour. Miller was ultimately charged with rape, robbery and kidnapping. 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. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. After . What law enforcementand the publicneeds to know. Published: 00:56 EST, 2 March 2023 | Updated: 01:01 EST, 2 March 2023. She was sentenced to life in prison. Do not sell or share my personal information. 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. 10 Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 114 (1977). To see why, let us revisit those DNA exoneration cases that so often involve eyewitness misidentification. Therefore, it is important that the individuals allowed to testify are accurate in their recollections. One might assume that Grant was the murderers unlucky doppelganger. The pathologist discovered that one of the babies had in fact died from a viral infection, not cot death. 'The issue in Iran at the moment is not that of hijab.'. Ernest Saunders only served 10 months of his sentence before being released. Videotaping allows for review of eyewitness testimony later on in the trial if the reliability of eyewitness testimony is called into question. Assessing confidence is critical because it provides direct information about the trustworthiness of the uncontaminated ID. There are a few ways in which eyewitness testimony can be inaccurate. Today, he remains in prison. The Law Enforcement Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran claimed she had a heart attack at a police station, collapsed, and fell into a coma before being transferred to a hospital. 109, 10910 (2006). I am currently involved in another case in which the failings of witness identification are starkly evident. "Double-Blind" Process for Lineups and Photo Arrays. Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. A full and fair examination of all the circumstances of the subject crime, and all the evidence involved, is necessary. Unfortunately for Lydell Grant, these reforms came a year too late. But in 2006, DNA testing on the victims slip exonerated Miller and established the identify of another man, Robert Weeks, as the real perpetrator. Instead of concluding that DNA evidence is inherently unreliable because of the contamination that apparently occurred in this case, a more reasonable conclusion would be that for DNA testing to be reliable, proper protocols must be followed. to select the person they believe to be a prime suspect. Instead evidence collected at the contaminated crime scene would probably be declared inadmissible. Alex Murdaugh's defense attorneys will deliver their closing arguments in his murder trial on Thursday as they seek to raise reasonable doubt about whether he killed his wife and son in 2021. Any evidence can potentially be contaminated, including what is considered to be the gold standard of forensic evidence: DNA. What it means is that the malleability of memory can harm reliability. 22 Edwin M. Borchard, Convicting the Innocent: Sixty-Five Actual Errors of Criminal Justice (New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., 1932). 31 Elizabeth Loftus, Eyewitness Science and the Legal System, 14 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 110 (2018). document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Medicolegal court reports are requested where expert witness evidence is required. Not only do such statements inflate eyewitnesses confidence in the accuracy of their identification, but they lead them to falsely remember having been that confident all along. 15 Perry v. New Hampshire, 565 U.S. 228, 248 (2012). Thomas D. Albright, director of the Vision Center Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, listed some of the many variables affecting eyewitness testimony in a 2017 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, entitled Why Eyewitnesses Fail.. Similarly, a witness may mistakenly perceive the circumstances of a crime or event, such as a car accident. 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. Why are we still having these debates? Arnaud, Celia Henry. Perhaps one of the most striking examples of the flaws in eyewitness testimony is the case of Jerry Miller, who was convicted of rape, robbery and kidnapping in 1982. Opinion: Why does Mexicos president want to dismantle the democratic system that elected him? 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