What it means is that the malleability of memory can harm reliability. He claimed police did not have the power to use firearms in the riots. When proper procedures are not followed, the potential for error exists. Eyewitness misidentifications are known to have played a role in 70 percent of the 349 wrongful convictions that have been overturned based on DNA evidence (so far). Although the high accuracy of an initial ID made with high confidence is important to appreciate, the low accuracy of an ID made with low confidence may be even more important to appreciate. Nevertheless, these subtle behavioral cues affect eyewitnesses decisions by making them more likely to choose the suspect. 'This is not the way to conduct an interview. Instrumental to the prosecutions theory was the testimony of at least twelve witnesses, each placing Flowers along a discrete portion of the route he was supposed to have traveled that day. As a result, witnesses who have received confirmatory feedback provide testimony that is highly persuasive to jurors. Police officers should avoid leading questioning while interviewing potential eyewitnesses, since eyewitnesses might be eager to say what they think will help the investigation, rather than the unblemished version of their memory. (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. Opinion: Why does Mexicos president want to dismantle the democratic system that elected him? It does make sure that photos in a lineup resemble one another.) Another stated that the killers face was burned into [her] memory immediately.. 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. 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. During Wednesday's interview with CNN, Amirabdollahian accused western media outlets of encouraging violent protests in his country. Arizona State University provides funding as a member of The Conversation US. 25 A. G. Goldstein, J. E. Chance, and G. R. Schneller, Frequency of Eyewitness Identification in Criminal Cases: A Survey of Prosecutors, 27(1) Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society: 71, 73 (January 1989). Two other eyewitnesses, a couple, remembered discussing their selection with one another and confirming each others decisions. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Andy Hale is a civil rights attorney, specializing in wrongful convictions in Chicago, Illinois. The Innocence Project found that out of 138 cases, two-thirds of the DNA exonerated cases were due to an eyewitness testimony (Howitt, 2012). The FBI estimates that 521,196 of these arrests were for violent crimes.24 Accurate data on the number of crimes observed by eyewitnesses are not available. Neighbors told arriving firefighters that they had heard a thunderous crash at about the same time as the blaze is believed to have begun. John Worboys worked as a cab driver and was charged with sexually assaulting several of his female passengers. Women in Iran have all the necessary required freedoms within the framework of the law, he claims, but says our interview is a confrontation: This is not the way to conduct an interview. pic.twitter.com/XKkC5uWYyj, Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian smiled as he chastised CNN host Christiane Amanpour, telling her 'this is not the way to conduct an interview', CNN host Amanpour laid into the Iranian foreign minister over his country's record on women's rights. 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. Judges should strive to make sure the jury is informed of all of the identifications an eyewitness has made prior to the trial. But faith in eyewitnesses runs so deep that despite the overwhelming proof of Grants innocence, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals initially refused his exoneration request. Renowned Expert witnesses include doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other professionals who are instructed to give expert opinions in legal proceedings. Continue reading with a Scientific American subscription. 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. 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. In contrast, a high-confidence ID is highly accurate, a surprising fact that has only recently come to be appreciated by experimental psychologists. Consider, for example, the case of Gary Leiterman, who, in 2005, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison following a cold case investigation in which his DNA was found on the clothing of a woman named Jane Mixer, who was murdered in 1969. Only radical intervention can save juvenile justice. . As with DNA evidence, eyewitness evidence needs to be safeguarded against contamination. The shooter had borrowed Heidelbergs car, and when Heidelberg went to retrieve his car later that night he was arrested by officers at the scene. 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. 8 Clifford & Hollin, Effects Of the Type of Incident and the Number of Perpetrators on Eyewitness Memory, Journal of Applied Psychology 66.3 (1981). by TCR Staff, The Crime Report May 24, 2021, This and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.. 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. Speak to our experts today for advice. 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. Witnesses arent able to tell whether their testimony was influenced in this way. 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.. 21 Commonwealth v. Walker, 625 Pa. 450, 47678 (2014). The reliability of these alleged identifications was suspect, since the officers would have had only a fraction of a second to observe the driver whizz by them at a high rate of speed at night. In addition to implementing double-blind lineup procedures, its essential that lineup administrators document eyewitnesses confidence immediately following an identification. Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy. Therefore, it is important that the individuals allowed to testify are accurate in their recollections. 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. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison. Some elements include the following: First, and most important of all, because the test itself contaminates memory, only the initial memory test provides uncontaminated results. It comes just two days after diplomats walked out of a speech given by the Iranian minister to the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva. Her defence had argued that the children had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), but expert witness, Sir Professor Roy Meadow, told the court that the probability of two children from an affluent family suffering SIDS was 1 in 73 million. Historically, eyewitness testimony has been in use not only in the United States and our penal system but all around the world. 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,. The person they think was the perpetrator in fact had nothing to do with the crime. Guidance can help jurors who might not know what to make of conflicting testimony. Attributing that error to the unreliability of eyewitness memory is, in our view, pointing the finger of blame in the wrong direction. For every one of those tests, the eyewitnesses were, at best, uncertain. The first is in the classic My Cousin Vinny situation, where eyewitnesses simply believe they see something, despite not actually being capable of truly witnessing the event accurately. Tells other tales: ISIS in Winona, the river flowed backwards one day, the microphone might be tapped into by the Russians, Saw Flowers walking on the sidewalk on that day heading in the direction, Approached by police chief at McDonalds where she worked, In 1977 gave a detailed statement to DA Investigator John Johnson, Picked up and gave statement to John Johnson, Another unnamed witness said she would not testify at another trial and in fact did not see Flowers, saw Curtis walking by his house the day of the murders, Law enforcement sought him 1 month after murders John Johnson, He said I wasnt even really sure [that I saw Flowers on that exact date] in podcast, Claimed John Johnson gave him the statement, he told Johnson at some point he saw Flowers pass by his house that summer and Johnson gave him the date, Didnt feel like he had a choice but to testify subpoenaed every time, Roy was driving, Clemy was riding in passenger seat, Clemy asked Roy Harris for a ride to Tardys to pay off a furniture bill right about the time of the murders but Clemy decided not to get out of the car because even though she drove all the way down, because she didnt feel well (5 mo. In the United States, more than 300 exonerations have resulted from postconviction DNA testing since 1989.26 According to the Innocence Project, at least one mistaken eyewitness identification was present in almost three-quarters of DNA exonerations.27 In many of these cases, eyewitness identification played a significant evidentiary role, and almost without exception, the eyewitnesses who testified expressed complete confidence that they had chosen the perpetrator. But studies demonstrate that a variety of factors can lead to the misidentification of criminals. Not so with eyewitness memory. 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! Create your free account or Sign in to continue. I am currently involved in another case in which the failings of witness identification are starkly evident. Scientific best practices for conducting eyewitness lineups require that the person administering the lineup not know who the police suspect. More and more research has come out in the last few decades indicating that there are many dangers to relying on eyewitnesses, from the uncertainty of relying on a persons memory all the way to how they are questioned at the police station. His doctors maintained that he was suffering from pre-senile dementia, and he couldnt remember three numbers backwards or the name of the US president. A neurologist also claimed that Saunders brain was small for a man his age and showed evidence of shrinking. Wegers attorneys, Celeste Stack and I, continue to seek to prove Chesters innocence and are seeking to review and analyze the physical evidence and are working to be able to conduct forensic testing on some of that evidence. 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? 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. 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. My Blog cases where eyewitnesses were right. The court tried to deter false identification with a stepped process. I believe the remaining 25 states should act swiftly to prevent additional miscarriages of justice. This allows jurors to make more informed decisions while evaluating particular eyewitness testimony. By itself, that fact only shows that contaminated memory is unreliable (just as contaminated DNA evidence is). Knowledge awaits. bn. Even if he allows it, he will have to instruct the jury about the variables that can lead to misidentification. In much the same way, an eyewitness can be led to falsely remember someone committing a crime that was actually committed by someone else. 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. He served 61 years in prison before being released on parole in February 2020. Gov. Advertise to our national and international criminal justice audience at The Crime Report and support our mission. Compared to administrators conducting double-blind lineups, these informed administrators are more likely to ask witnesses about the suspect and smile when witnesses are looking at the suspect rather than at another person in the lineup. But a comparison of the pairs mugshots reveals that they bear little physical resemblance to one another beyond both being Black men. 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. 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. During the meeting Amirabdollahian said Irans government was committed to upholding human rights. Hale is an Emmy-nominated executive producer for several true-crime documentaries highlighting wrongful convictions. The Manson admissibility test consists of two steps. Widespread civil unrest broke out in Iran following the suspicious death of Amini on September 16, 2022. The parole board initially approved him for release. Albright explains that witness misidentifications are essentially failures of visual perception (seeing things accurately) or failures of memory (lack of precision in storage and recall). John Wixted is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Judges in California routinely talk to jurors about the possibility of misidentification, but their instructions arent as complete as those contemplated by the New Jersey court. Nationally, more than 75% of convictions that have been overturned because of DNA evidence involved erroneous eyewitness testimony. 5 Brewer & Treyens, Role of Schemata in Memory for Places, Cognitive Psychology 13.2 (1981). But there is more to the story. 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. While 30+ years of research is too much to summarize in a few paragraphs, we will outline the general problems with eyewitness testimony as well as some of them more major research that has been performed on the subject. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Editorial: He spent 38 years in prison for a crime he didnt commit. If the contaminated evidence is relied on to establish guilt versus innocence at a trial, the risk of a wrongful conviction is high. Medicolegal court reports are requested where expert witness evidence is required. Any evidence can potentially be contaminated, including what is considered to be the gold standard of forensic evidence: DNA. They are child killers.'. 10 Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 114 (1977). 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. This section will focus on the courts current treatment of eyewitness testimony. In the sad case of the 1960 Starved Rock murders, there were EIGHT confessions by Chester Weger made to different people at different times, including a re-enactment of the crime at the scene covered by more than a dozen reporters/photographers. It is used to establish facts in a criminal investigation or prosecution. It should be revived and approved. He served 47 years in prison before his conviction was vacated in 2018. Dan tries to find out more about Mustafa . 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. 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 Press Esc to cancel. First, the judge must determine whether the procedure used by law enforcement officials in obtaining the proffered eyewitness identification (e.g., photographic array or lineup) was unnecessarily suggestive.11 The judge must then weigh this determination against the following five factors to assess the reliability of the identification: In practice, therefore, the test is flexible. But in 57 percent of those cases, it was possible to determine what happened on the initial (uncontaminated) memory test. One estimate based on a 1989 survey of prosecutors suggests that at least 80,000 eyewitnesses make identifications of suspects in criminal investigations each year.25 Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Today, he remains in prison. Laura Smalarz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Carter has now been indicted for the murder by a grand jury, and Lydell Grant was released from prison. Psychologists have learned a lot about why such errors happen. Two police officers thought the sketch resembled Miller, a man they had questioned a few days earlier. But in 2006, DNA testing on the victims slip exonerated Miller and established the identify of another man, Robert Weeks, as the real perpetrator. 22 Edwin M. Borchard, Convicting the Innocent: Sixty-Five Actual Errors of Criminal Justice (New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., 1932). Officers of the law should be instructed by their superiors about the potential inaccuracies and dangers of witness testimony. Miller was convicted and sentenced to 52 years in prison. It is not uncommon for the Parole Board to instruct expert evidence from psychiatrists and psychologists. In one clip an unidentified Iranian woman can be heard saying: 'They are without shame and should be embarrassed. Most recently, in 2012, the Supreme Court clarified that the Due Process Clause does not require judges to assess the reliability of eyewitness identifications made under suggestive circumstances when the circumstances are not created by law enforcement officials.15 In other words, in cases where the proffered identification does not result from suggestive police procedure, the judge need not consider whether the identification also passes the second step of the Manson test. Some courts have held it as an abuse of discretion for a trial judge to bar the defense from admitting expert testimony on eyewitness identification. Miller was ultimately charged with rape, robbery and kidnapping. 'Do you ask other countries? 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. Police lineups have evolved over time, but some states still need to catch up. The ability of a person who witnesses a crime to later pick the perpetrator out of a lineup is atrociousright? Because she had already servednine years and four months of her initial life sentence, she was released following the change of conviction. For example, in cases where a mental disorder is an issue, the evidence of a psychiatrist may influence the conduct of legal proceedings, it may help to adduce medical evidence relevant to trial and may be the deciding factor between imprisonment and mental health treatment. What the cases of Miller and Heidelberg highlight is that witnesses are often wrong. Medicolegal court reports are requested where expert witness evidence is required. While his potential release faced intense scrutiny, it demonstrates how influential an expert witness report can be. Thus, Chester was charged with three separate felonies as a way to overwhelm him and break him down. 15 Perry v. New Hampshire, 565 U.S. 228, 248 (2012). Prosecutors, though, have no murder weapon, bloody clothes or eyewitnesses, leaving them to build their case about Murdaugh's murky timeline of his whereabouts when the crime happened in 2021 . Sally Challens appeal demonstrated the importance of expert evidence in establishing the correct outcome for a mentally disordered offender. And third, the confidence expressed by the eyewitness following an identification of someone from the lineup must be recorded. Iran's foreign minister could not stop smirking as he was grilled about his country's record on women's rights in a combative interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday. Out on his porch and saw Flowers walking by that morning. His subsequent return to business raised further questions about the evidence that led to his early release. the time between the crime and the identification procedure. 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. Who can help student-athletes cash in? Do not sell or share my personal information. A full and fair examination of all the circumstances of the subject crime, and all the evidence involved, is necessary. 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. Instructions given to eyewitnesses should be clear, simple and standardized across jurisdictions. 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. Expert witnesses are often instructed in cases where expert evidence is necessary to enable the court to understand specific issues, such as capacity, intent, causation etc. U. L. Rev. 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. The puzzling question in this case, though, is why did six eyewitnesses independently identify Lydell Grant as the killer and then confidently testify in court? Although she was due to face further trial at the Central Criminal Court, on the basis of the expert evidence, the Crown accepted her plea to the lesser offence of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. There, the prosecution claims that Flowers stole Doyle Simpsons gun from the glove compartment of Doyles unlocked car and then walked back to his home on the West side of town. Law enforcement officers, prosecutors, attorneys, and jurors need to realize that just because a witness says so does not make it so. With surprising ease, for example, participants in a memory experiment can be led to believe that they saw a stop sign when they actually saw a yield sign or that they became lost in a shopping mall as a child when no such experience actually occurred. The answer seems like a resounding yes if you consider some well-known and rather disconcerting information. Finally, a witness may have more difficulty making a correct identification when he and the suspect are of different races. They were then asked a leading question about how fast the car was going when it passed the yield sign. Expert evidence may be important in determining the right outcome. 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. Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? The transcript from Lydell Grants trial revealed that the homicide detective in charge of investigating the case administered the lineup to the eyewitnesses. In one of the earliest studies of this misinformation effect run by Elizabeth Loftus, subjects were shown a slideshow of a red car passing a stop sign and hitting a pedestrian. 27 The Innocence Project, Eyewitness Identification,. His offences led to him being named the black cab rapist by the UK press. Many more sit in prisons who have not had the opportunity to have their cases re-investigated or samples re-tested. 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. A Man Was Jailed For 20 Years Due To A Single Eyewitness Who Now Wants To Recant Antonio Mallet's conviction rested on testimony from one eyewitness who, in a new court filing, now says NYPD detectives assaulted him and threatened to lock him up if he didn't blame Mallet for the murder. Last updated: 27 February 2023. Readers speculate why, Letters to the Editor: Serious about the drought? Renowned Expert witnesses include doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other professionals who are instructed to give expert opinions in legal proceedings. 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). Used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Policy. Use firearms in the wrong direction a full and fair examination of all of pairs... A scientist who specializes in neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology 13.2 ( 1981.. Should strive to make more informed decisions while evaluating particular eyewitness testimony stepped process of Amini on 16! 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