Misidentification Case Study Examples

Eyewitness identification are considered to be the most powerful evidence against a suspect. There are numerous reasons for this to occur which includes stress, human memory, and the focus on weapons which leads for the eyewitness to focus less on the perpetrator. When an individual is in a position with high stress, their ability of remembering what actually occurred won't be easy to prove. It leaves the eyewitness unable to recall what occurred at the tie of the scene. This has been a huge problem over the years. According to “Carla Stenzel” eyewitness misidentification will occur because our memory is dynamic. It is very impossible for our brains to perform everything we see. Our memories take in pieces of information and processes the most important information. When a witness is asked by a police officer to give certain details of a suspect, they won't be able to remember how exactly they looked like but will be able to give out certain details like their height, race, and hair color. When a crime is being committed witnesses usually testify that there focus was more on the perpetrator's weapon. All they can focus on would be the size and shape of the weapon and focus less on the actual suspect. Another contribution would be the way the investigator presents the operator to the witness. The investigator prepares a lineup which includes a six pack of people. The use of a six pack lineup has

Steven Avery of Manitowoc County in Wisconsin was accused of the rape and assault of Penny Beerntsen in 1985. Avery however didn’t commit this crime and spent 18 years in prison as an innocent man. Until in 2003 when new DNA evidence led to another suspect, meaning that he was innocent. The police of Manitowoc County when they heard about this crime immediately thought Steven was to blame. They thought it was Steven because of his past crimes and family history. Even though no evidence connected Steven to the crime no other suspects were even mentioned.

To explain the crime, the criminal involved in the crime tricked the woman into getting in her car by impersonating a parking attendant. He stole the woman’s purse and car keys and drove off with the woman’s vehicle. During the carjacking, the man tried to attack the woman with a screwdriver which resulted in the criminal being stabbed. (“Antonio Beaver”). The victim gave a very vague description of the criminal, mentioning that he was african american, was wearing a baseball cap, was 5’10, had crooked teeth, and had facial hair.

Christopher was identified in a crime line-up and two of the women-mother and sister of the rape victim was in court and identified Coleman as the offender. They didn’t find any physical evidence to show that Coleman committed this crime. The victim's mother told the prosecutor that she had know Coleman years earlier and she had not seen him recently, but recognized his voice and distinctive walk. Another sister told the court that she knew Christopher by the nickname “Fat” and that he had removed his mask during the crime when it was occurring. Nevertheless, these women had identified Coleman to responding during the grand jury hearing, and the other sister had incorrectly identified at least two other alleged

Your discussion was a great read! I agree with the points that you included in your discussion referencing the Ronald Cotton case and that misidentifications are unfair to the innocent. The decisions made in a court room can truly impact an innocent individual's life. Harsh penalties and sentences can truly affect the individual that was imprisoned for being chosen by the victim. Victim's generally have a high level of confidence when they are attempting to recall what they have experienced; however taking into consideration that our memory is not a video tape recorder and that it can fill in any gaps in memory with evidence or construct it to what "seems" logical. Our memory still holds valuable information that can play a

In 2001 this theory was first empirically tested using actual police cases. Behrman and Davey found that there was a statistically significant difference in identification rates between same race and different race cases. James Stephens saw a black man shoot his wife three feet in front of him. However, because James was white and the shooter was a different race, there was a significant chance he might misidentify the shooter. This is exactly what happened when he identified Brenton Butler, even though the two were standing fifty feet apart. If the police had taken due care, they could have eliminated, or at least mitigated the effect. Witnesses are much more likely to make a false identification if they see one suspect rather than a lineup. As was discovered a year later when a second black suspect was arrested, James Stephens was clearly impacted by the cross-race

In Rhode Island v Innis 446 U.S. 291 (1980), Rhode Island police respond to a call from, Gerald Aubin, a taxicab driver, reporting he had been robbed by an assailant brandishing a sawed-off shotgun. While at the police station, waiting to give his statement, Mr. Aubin identified his assailant, a suspect in the murder of John Mulvaney, from a photograph on a bulletin board.

Research supports that there is a concern for false recognition and profiling. According to Bennell, Mugford, Taylor, Bloomfield, and Wilson (2008),

Miscarriages of justices occur due to many variables including faulty or wrong confessions, faulty identifications, wrongful DNA evidence, and the police’s overreach of power. On February 9, 1978, a student from the College of William and Mary, located in Williamsburg, Virginia was sexually assaulted at gunpoint. When the police arrived at the scene, she described her assailant as an African-American male about 5’6 in height and weighing around 145. Having gathered this information, the victim agreed to identify her assailant through photo arrays at the police station. Bennett Barbour was identified arrested and in the span of about two months was charged with rape on April 14, 1978. Despite having an alibi, not matching the victim’s description, and having brittle bone disease Barbour was declared guilty by a jury. Barbour’s case is representative of the many cases in which wrongful eyewitness testimony produces miscarriages of justice. Bennett Barbour served 5 years in prison and 29 years of parole until he was cleared of his charges due to DNA evidence when the Virginia Supreme Court cleared his charges.

For example, on June 25, the California Innocence Project announced that DNA testing recently exonerated a San Diego resident who was wrongfully convicted of rape. The victim in the case misidentified him as her perpetrator. Studies show that this type of mistake is common in criminal cases. When witnesses are shown a photo lineup of possible suspects, they tend to choose the one who most closely resembles the person they saw. When they look at a live police lineup, they tend to choose the person they identified in the photo lineup. During the trial, they see the

On the other hand, there are many situations where criminals go free because eyewitnesses were unable to identify them. With Dr. Brewer he had a different idea knowing that strong memory traces are easier to access than weak and mistaken ones, which is why he only gives his witnesses two seconds to make up their minds. Once they make up their mind he also asks them to estimate how confident they are about the suspects they identified, rather than insisting on a simple yes or no answer. With this version of the lineup he had a large boost in accuracy and the eyewitness performance ranged from 21%-66%. Dr. brewer learned that when it comes to the human mind that more discussion is often dangerous. Instead of simply evaluating our familiarity with a suspect’s face, we begin searching for clues and guidance. Sometimes this involves picking the person who looks the most suspicious, even if we’ve never seen him before, or being persuaded by the indirect hints of police officers and lawyers. As a result, we talk ourselves into having a memory that doesn’t actually exist. (Jonah Lehrer

Criminal profiling is designed to help police spot criminals by developing a set of personal and behavioral characteristics associated with particular offences, with a better “profiles” it is easier to treat whoever as a suspect. (Harris,11). But while using this tactic, it can quickly become into harsh racial profiling, only because they both share the same techniques. But many law enforcements might argue back that it makes perfect sense in using these specific traits due to that fact that certain races have larger involvement in certain crimes (Harris,17). By saying this, the officials basically have a free pass at detaining anybody, only on the basis of a suspicion which is concidently related to their skin color. There have been countless situations where innocent people who are automatically assumed to criminals and were discriminated against. One example dating back to 1998, happened to Sergeant First Class Rossano Gerald, an African American who had devoted his life to the United States Army, was on the way to a family reunion in Oklahoma. During the roadtrip Gerald noticed several patrol cars who followed him for a little bits of times. Then, he was pulled over six times and the seventh time after being wrongfully accused of going over the speed limit and even after providing a valid licence, proof of insurance and a army identification, was detained inside a police vehicle. The police then said that he has smelled drugs and called the dogs to look for

Despite the efforts of the courts and law enforcement agencies to improve the handling of eyewitness testimony, misidentifications continue to be a major contributing factor to false convictions. The Innocence Project is a national litigation and public policy organization that has been dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing. Since their inception in 1992, they have helped overturn 311 wrongful convictions in the United States, as of the date of this paper. Of those 311 cases, they have determined that misidentification has contributed to approximately 73% of those wrongful convictions ("The Innocence Project"). That is an extremely high percentage, and something needs to be done about this.

Eyewitness misidentification can pose a serious threat in forensic evidence. Eye witness testimony can easily be tampered with due to words or phrases used. Bias is a major issue in identification especially if the police officer uses suggestive tones to portray whom they believe is the suspect. Some witnesses will change their opinion when they hear new information of the suspect. A study has shown that words can play a major impact in the witness' mind and cause them to recall false information. False information can also stem from human memory, age, distance, and how long it took before a witness could recall the information. It has been shown that due to the confidence that a witness may have, it could impact the court systems' reliability on the witness; however, there are several solutions that can be done to prevent misidentification in the court of law. Some examples that can be done are blind administration, lineup composition, instructions, confidence statements, and

When it comes to critiquing how the identification information was obtained, several things are considered unreliable. The first mistake of the use of eyewitness testimonies in the Thompson & Cotton case was Jennifer was in a state of shock when identifying her assailant. Jennifer was in a deep slumber as a stranger at knifepoint awakened her causing adrenaline rush and high stress as she was fearing for her life. “My body was terrified although my mind hadn’t caught up yet” (Cannino et al. 12). This type of state of mind causes the brain to cloud its judgment when high stress occurs during the process of identifying a criminal. Although, Jennifer was able to study her attacker to the best ability possible, stress can alter the memory process clouding exact description especially held at knifepoint.