cases where eyewitnesses were rightMarch 2023
The shooter wound up crashing the car and escaping on foot. 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. The NRC found that police officers and detectives are frequently uninformed of what the best practices concerning gathering eyewitness testimony are. Only radical intervention can save juvenile justice. 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. Specifically, the eyewitness had identified the defendant from her window, as the defendant was standing in the dark next to a police officer; however, the eyewitness had pointed to the defendant spontaneously, without the police asking her to do so.16 The Court ruled that, because the police had not induced the identification under suggestive circumstances, the trial judge had not erred in admitting the eyewitness testimony without assessing its reliability under the second step of the Manson test.17 Research has repeatedly demonstrated that simple confirming comments such as these have dramatic effects on eyewitnesses testimony. 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. Two other eyewitnesses, a couple, remembered discussing their selection with one another and confirming each others decisions. Additional Reading: Truth, Lies and Police Lineups, The Crime Report, May 5, 2021. Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? 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). Finally, almost a year later, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declared Grant actually innocent on May 19, 2021. Column: 15 minutes of fame flies by. He added: 'I can tell you this in full confidence that our police and the security forces in Iran have not killed anyone with bullets or any other means in these riots.'. Many eyewitnesses testified with high confidence despite earlier expressions of uncertainty.28. 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. In Winona, Mississippi on July 16, 1996, four people were shot and killed at Tardy furniture store. This section will focus on the courts current treatment of eyewitness testimony. The perpetrator had a brief conversation with the parking lot attendants and then fled the scene. Following a protracted trial,Saunders was found guilty ofconspiracy, theft, and false accounting. 'To the extent that Daesh or even ISIS exploited the situation to establish a presence in Iran. In 2009, he was charged with assaulting 12 women. the time between the crime and the identification procedure. 9 According to the innocence project, mistaken identification is a leading factor in wrongful convictions. 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. 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. They found that when showing violent and non-violent crimes on videotape to subjects and then prompting them with questions later, the witnesses had more and more difficulty remembering certain details as the violence in the video went up.8. 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 Eyewitness testimony can hold a lot of weight with jurors. Gareth, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, is the series editor of Best American Infographics and can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter@garethideas. Thirty Years of DNA Forensics: How DNA Has Revolutionized Criminal Investigations. CEN RSS, Chemical and Engineering News, 18 Sept. 2017. Explore our digital archive back to 1845, including articles by more than 150 Nobel Prize winners. 5 Brewer & Treyens, Role of Schemata in Memory for Places, Cognitive Psychology 13.2 (1981). This opinion differed from the opinions formed by the other professionals, who concluded that John Worboys should remain in prison. 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? 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? Improper lineup procedures can also lead to witness misidentifications. Most of these witnesses personally knew Flowers, and many had grown up with him, lived in his same neighborhood. Mr. Incredibly, prior to Heidelbergs sentencing, the real shooter, James Clark, confessed to the crime, but the confession fell on deaf ears and Heidelberg was sentenced to 99 to 175 years in prison. Having served 10 years in prison, the psychologist recommended his release from prison. Warmer storms could cause problems, Column: Supreme Court conservatives may want to block student loan forgiveness. However, there has yet to be research showing what ideal instructions would look like, as each case involving eyewitness testimony varies from each other. 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. After his conviction at Croydon Crown Court, several more women made allegations of sexual assault against him. Instructions given to eyewitnesses should be clear, simple and standardized across jurisdictions. 28 Brandon L. Garrett, Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong 6368 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). Nonetheless, the attendants mistakenly identified Miller in a subsequent police lineup. Assessing confidence is critical because it provides direct information about the trustworthiness of the uncontaminated ID. But when the witnesses had received a simple reinforcing comment following their identification (Good job, you got the guy), the mock jurors could no longer tell the difference between accurate and mistaken eyewitnesses. cases where eyewitnesses were rightammo donation to ukraine. 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. During Wednesday's interview with CNN, Amirabdollahian accused western media outlets of encouraging violent protests in his country. Widespread civil unrest broke out in Iran following the suspicious death of Amini on September 16, 2022. 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. Guidance can help jurors who might not know what to make of conflicting testimony. Expert Evidence In Family Cases Where Spouse Is Unable To Return To Work Due To Illness, The revised psychopathy checklist (PCL-R), Proving Automatism Defences In Criminal Cases, Understanding the Value of an Occupational Therapist Expert Witness, Causation in personal injury or medical negligence, Assessments of sexual offending, violent behaviour offending, arson, and stalking. This allows jurors to make more informed decisions while evaluating particular eyewitness testimony. Such behaviors are often inadvertent; neither lineup administrators nor eyewitnesses may be consciously aware that theyre happening. 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. Second, the police lineup has to be fair (that is, the suspect should not stand out). Juries should also be informed as to the manner of the identification, the eyewitnesss confidence and other factors that might influence reliability. In recent years, more and more jurisdictions have come to accept expert testimony on the reliability of eyewitness identification. Medicolegal court reports are requested where expert witness evidence is required. 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. 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. After she had spent several years in prison, an independent consultant psychiatrist was instructed as an expert witness. Psychological experiments have shown that lineup administrators who know who the suspect is end up cuing witnesses toward that person. The psychiatrist formed an opinion of her mental state at the time of the homicide. Do not sell or share my personal information. This is not always the case. Knowledge awaits. Harvard Univ Press; Cambridge, MA: 2011. Who can help student-athletes cash in? He is the founder of Hale & Monico, Americas Justice Attorneys. John Worboys was given an indeterminate prison sentence. You have, Witnesses are Often Wrong: The Case Against Eyewitness ID, Florida City Creates Youth Curfew to Deter Juvenile Crime, Legislator Introduces Laws to Protect Law Enforcement After Temple University Cop is Killed in the Line of Duty, Oversight Report Shows Issues with DOJ Collection of Deaths in Policy Custody Data, Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, New York-Based Chinese Gang Steals 3,000 Texas IDs in Cyber Fraud Case, Murdaugh Murder Trial Jurors to Visit Crime Scene, Heartbreakingly Evil: DOJ Strengthens Fight Against Elder Fraud, Sex Abuse of Athletes: Dont Tell is No Longer an Option, Criminal Justice Journalism Wins Pulitzer Prizes, View from the Trauma Center: Why Gun Violence Persists. was a video tape, and his presence and the time of the event were confirmed by two athletic directors, his coach, and members of the opposing team. Type above and press Enter to search. Like eyewitness memory, DNA evidence can be contaminated with the trace of an innocent person. Out on his porch and saw Flowers walking by that morning. But a comparison of the pairs mugshots reveals that they bear little physical resemblance to one another beyond both being Black men. 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. A judge can review the footage to see if claims of witness tampering are true, or if the witness shows significant doubt while identifying the suspect. 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. Miller was ultimately charged with rape, robbery and kidnapping. Abcarian: Mask mandates? 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! 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. After killing the officer, the shooter fled the scene and a high-speed car chase ensued. Nevertheless, these subtle behavioral cues affect eyewitnesses decisions by making them more likely to choose the suspect. 32 National Research Council, Identifying The Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification 38, 4-8 (2014). 109, 10910 (2006). Blood and fingerprint evidence, per se, would not be deemed unreliable. According to the trial transcript, most of the eyewitnesses testified to having been positive when they picked Grant out of the lineup. 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. Its a stain on our justice system. Claimed to have called out to Flowers that day. Often, it can be the strongest evidence in a criminal case even though it can also be the most unreliable. 2 In 1999, Sally Clark, a solicitor, was convicted of murdering her two infant sons (one in 1996 and the other in 1998) at Chester Crown Court. Expert evidence may be important in determining the right outcome. To see why, let us revisit those DNA exoneration cases that so often involve eyewitness misidentification. Today, he remains in prison. The modern test for the admissibility of eyewitness testimony at a criminal trial under the Due Process Clause was established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Manson v. Brathwaite in 1977. 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