Compiled by Ann Njarara, Bree Peilen, Daniel Neuman, Emory Cook, Linda Lin, and Perrin Lowrey, Introduction This can be true even in situations where the witness has an ample opportunity to observe the offender. A "double-blind" lineup or photo-array is when the person interviewing the potential eyewitness does not which of the persons in a photo array or lineup is the actual suspect. Does Irans Foreign Minister accept women can peacefully protest for change in Iran? Consider the important, and often overlooked, distinction between malleability and reliability. 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. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? 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. Just because memory is malleablefor example, it can be contaminated with the trace of an innocent persondoes not mean that it has to be unreliable. Here is a link to a general overview on eyewitness testimony from the National Science Foundation. 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. 10 Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 114 (1977). It turns out, back in 1998, just days after the crime, the NYPD had a main suspect for the murder of Al Ward: a man named Mustafa. He served 47 years in prison before his conviction was vacated in 2018. Abcarian: Mask mandates? 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. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. 23 United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 230, 288 (1967). Improper lineup procedures can also lead to witness misidentifications. Guidance can help jurors who might not know what to make of conflicting testimony. Read through our advertising and sponsorship rates and contact us. Having served 10 years in prison, the psychologist recommended his release from prison. Miller was ultimately charged with rape, robbery and kidnapping. Recently though, with the rise of social science, eyewitness testimony has taken a tumble from its lofty standing. According to the prosecution on the day of the murder, at around 7 am, Flowers walked from his home on the West side of town all the way to a sewing factory parking lot on the East side of town, crossing Highway 51, one of the towns largest streets, while doing so. As with DNA evidence, eyewitness evidence needs to be safeguarded against contamination. By itself, that fact only shows that contaminated memory is unreliable (just as contaminated DNA evidence is). Arizona State University provides funding as a member of The Conversation US. Judges should continue to allow expert testimony from social scientists on the general reliability of eyewitness testimony, so that jurors are informed about the strengths and weaknesses of eyewitness testimony as a practice. 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. Like eyewitness memory, DNA evidence can be contaminated with the trace of an innocent person. Assistant Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University. 109, 10910 (2006). But eyewitnesses aren't always right, and poor investigative practices can make matters worse. To see why, let us revisit those DNA exoneration cases that so often involve eyewitness misidentification. Publication Date: December 20, 2021 Eyewitness testimony in court is shown to highly sway the opinion of jurors. Blood and fingerprint evidence, per se, would not be deemed unreliable. He claimed police did not have the power to use firearms in the riots. The answer seems like a resounding yes if you consider some well-known and rather disconcerting information. After his conviction at Croydon Crown Court, several more women made allegations of sexual assault against him. 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. Speak to our experts today for advice. 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.. The variables include: viewing conditions (lighting-distance-duration), distracting stimuli (weapons-loud noises) and internal states of the observer (attention-motivation-skill-prejudice). She questioned the statistical basis of Professor Meadows evidence, which had led to Sally Clark being sentenced to life in prison. 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. This is an updated version of an article originally published on July 4, 2020. What would that mean for the reliability of the blood or fingerprint evidence, for example, collected at that scene? In recent years, more and more jurisdictions have come to accept expert testimony on the reliability of eyewitness identification. by TCR Staff, The Crime Report May 24, 2021, This and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.. 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. What it means is that the malleability of memory can harm reliability. 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. All six of those eyewitnesses were wrong. In other words, the confirmatory remark made the mistaken eyewitnesses just as persuasive as the accurate ones. Explore our digital archive back to 1845, including articles by more than 150 Nobel Prize winners. 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. 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. 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. 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. The attendants were also able to have a brief conversation with the driver before he fled on foot. University of Virginia law professor Brandon Garrett analyzed trial materials for 161 DNA exonerated individuals who had been misidentified with high confidence by one or more eyewitnesses in a court of law. John Wixted is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Eyewitness Testimony: Recommended Practices, Eyewitness testimony continues to be commonplace in law enforcement and trials. Psychologists have learned a. In this case, 120 eyewitnesses from as far north as Grants Pass, Ore., to as far south as. Once a suspect has established that he was the victim of suggestiveness, a pretrial hearing will be held in which the full range of reasons for possible misidentification are examined. 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. 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. During Wednesday's interview with CNN, Amirabdollahian accused western media outlets of encouraging violent protests in his country. 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 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. 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). In this case, the defendant was charged with first degree murder and the only evidence against him was the testimony of two eyewitnesses. 'This is not the way to conduct an interview. Instead evidence collected at the contaminated crime scene would probably be declared inadmissible. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Get in touch with our team of experts today! Unfortunately for Lydell Grant, these reforms came a year too late. After the rape, with the victim now locked in the trunk, the rapist attempted to drive the womans vehicle out of the parking garage but was prevented from doing so by the two parking lot attendants who recognized the victims car and noticed that she was not driving it. or debate this issue live on our message boards. 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. According to the trial transcript, most of the eyewitnesses testified to having been positive when they picked Grant out of the lineup. . But there is more to the story. We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. You can get our highlights each weekend.]. Opinion: Why does Mexicos president want to dismantle the democratic system that elected him? Marilyn Stowe instructed a pathologist to review the medical notes of both infants. But a closer examination of those witnesses testimonies reveals a few disconcerting factors: the earliest testimony from a witness came a month after the murders, and other testimony came nine, twelve months later. 22 Edwin M. Borchard, Convicting the Innocent: Sixty-Five Actual Errors of Criminal Justice (New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., 1932). Finally, almost a year later, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declared Grant actually innocent on May 19, 2021. Play it now! 2023 Scientific American, a Division of Springer Nature America, Inc. 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. A full and fair examination of all the circumstances of the subject crime, and all the evidence involved, is necessary. Moreover, confirmatory feedback can alter witnesses memories of the original crime, making them less able to recognize the actual perpetrator when they see him again. The rebuttal comes more than a month into the murder trial of Murdaugh, the 54-year-old disbarred personal injury attorney and member of a dynastic family in South Carolina's Lowcountry, where his . Chester denied having anything to do with these other crimes but was identified by the victims based on these suggestive procedures. Continue reading with a Scientific American subscription. "Double-Blind" Process for Lineups and Photo Arrays. Many believe that this conviction was based on contaminated DNA evidence. Laura Mickes is an academic at Royal Holloway, University of London. But in 57 percent of those cases, it was possible to determine what happened on the initial (uncontaminated) memory test. In one clip an unidentified Iranian woman can be heard saying: 'They are without shame and should be embarrassed. Thus, Chester was charged with three separate felonies as a way to overwhelm him and break him down. Women in Iran have all the necessary, required freedoms within the framework of the law,' he added. 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). 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. She was sentenced to life in prison. In reviewing the case, it is more than apparent that the convicted man had motive, opportunity and means to commit this crime. Hale is an Emmy-nominated executive producer for several true-crime documentaries highlighting wrongful convictions. But in 2006, DNA testing on the victims slip exonerated Miller and established the identify of another man, Robert Weeks, as the real perpetrator. One of my clients, Cleve Heidelberg, was convicted in 1970 of killing a Peoria County, Ill., sheriffs deputy who was responding to a call about an armed robbery at a drive-in movie theatre. 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. circuit court, the 29-year-old was convicted of a rape that he did not commit and was sentenced to five life sentences. 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A meta-analytic review of the effects of high stress on eyewitness memory, Law and Human Behavior 28.6 (2004), 687-706. Medicolegal court reports are requested where expert witness evidence is required. In addition to implementing double-blind lineup procedures, its essential that lineup administrators document eyewitnesses confidence immediately following an identification. Police in some California counties use some of the methods recommended by the New Jersey court and by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice. 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. The NRCs recommendations for law enforcement and judges are below.32. 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. No comments have so far been submitted. For every one of those tests, the eyewitnesses were, at best, uncertain. Andy Hale is a civil rights attorney, specializing in wrongful convictions in Chicago, Illinois. It should be revived and approved. 13 See Timothy P. OToole & Giovanna Shay, Manson v. Brathwaite Revisited: Towards a New Rule of Decision for Due Process Challenges to Eyewitness Identification Procedures, 41 Val. What facts gave rise to the belief that Leiterman may have been wrongfully convicted based on contaminated evidence? Because she had already servednine years and four months of her initial life sentence, she was released following the change of conviction. This decision attracted intense media attention and was seen to be a controversial decision due to the nature and severity of his offences. In other cases, the circumstances of a purported witness identification may be flimsy; yet the prosecutors still rely on that identification, which is then presented as rock-solid evidence at trial. In much the same way, an eyewitness can be led to falsely remember someone committing a crime that was actually committed by someone else. But studies demonstrate that a variety of factors can lead to the misidentification of criminals. Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook. Videotaping allows for review of eyewitness testimony later on in the trial if the reliability of eyewitness testimony is called into question. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, Beaming Prince Harry and Meghan enjoy a date night at exclusive $4,200-A-YEAR private members' club in LA - as friend claims they've been left furious over King Charles' 'cruel' decision to evict them from Frogmore Cottage, Biden LAUGHS at claim he was responsible for fentanyl overdoses of two brothers and says they died 'under the previous administration' - after mom's heartbreaking testimony to Congress, US housing market faces 20% correction amid further rate hikes and overinflated housing market, Dallas Fed warns, Is air travel going to get even MORE expensive? The perpetrator had a brief conversation with the parking lot attendants and then fled the scene. Taken together, each witnesses testimony fits within the cohesive whole, tied together into a description of the route Flowers had to have taken that morning. Ultimately, eyewitness testimony is a powerful tool that has the potential to make or break a case. Another stated that the killers face was burned into [her] memory immediately.. Overall, an issue plaguing both courts and law enforcement is the lack of standard procedures to safeguard defendants against unreliable eyewitness testimony. 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. Two police officers thought the sketch resembled Miller, a man they had questioned a few days earlier. (Joshua Boucher/The State/AP) 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. This opinion differed from the opinions formed by the other professionals, who concluded that John Worboys should remain in prison. A new version of that legislation, AB 308, is pending in the state Senate, though passage in this session is unlikely. (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.). U. L. Rev. The lineup photo from one of these lineups shows how suggestive it was: The other four men in the lineup were much older and bigger than Chester. Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? or debate this issue live on our message boards. 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? Pregnant), Left and got about 1-2 blocks away and saw a man running west, away from downtown, it was her neighbor Flowers, Clemy pointed it out to Roy but Roy did not recognize him, Couldnt remember his clothes or shoes, did not describe seeing blood on him, Latarsha, Clemys cousin, remains convinced that Clemy made up the story because she felt pressured by law enforcement and because she might be able to get money Latarsha was also taken by the police at 19 to be asked questions and Johnson implied that she might get some of the reward money (30k) if she corroborated, Saw a man running across the street 1-2 blocks away that day of the murders, he was alone (not with Clemy) and it was earlier in the morning and when he was with Clemy later, they did not see anybody running, Law enforcement came and found Roy and he ended up giving a statement to John Johnson, Was shown Flowers picture (school picture) ONLY Flowers asked if that was the person Roy saw running Roy said no and John Johnson pushed Roy that it was Flowers and that Clemy was with him when it happened eventually Roy said he broke down and agreed to the story because he wanted to get out of there (he was afraid of Johnson), After that, Johnson recorded Clemy telling her story of seeing Flowers running away from downtown. Or fingerprint evidence, which had led to Sally Clark being sentenced to life in prison, Texas. By itself, that fact only shows that contaminated memory is unreliable just... By the victims based on contaminated DNA evidence is required police did not have the power to firearms... Trial transcript, most of the conversation us the testimony of two.., cognitive science, or Psychology who might not know what to make of conflicting testimony is necessary unlikely... 'S interview with CNN, Amirabdollahian accused western media outlets of encouraging violent protests his. Implementing Double-Blind lineup procedures, its essential that lineup administrators document eyewitnesses confidence immediately following an identification probably! A link to a general overview on eyewitness testimony continues to be safeguarded against contamination member of law... Because she had already servednine years and four months of her initial life sentence, she was released following change. 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