Mistaken Eyewitness Identification Essay

Eyewitness evidence has always been considering critical information when it comes to court trials and convictions. But how reliable are eyewitnesses? Scientific research has shown that eyewitness’s memories are often not accurate or reliable. Human memory is very malleable and is easily changed by suggestion. Relying on eyewitness evidence instead of scientific data often leads to wrongful convictions. Scientific evidence is much more reliable, and should be more important in court cases than eyewitness evidence.

According to “The Science Behind Eyewitness Identification Reform” there are two main variables that affect eyewitness testimonies “Estimator variables: are those that cannot be controlled by the criminal justice system. They include simple factors like the lighting when the crime took place or the distance from which the witness saw the perpetrator, and the degree of stress or trauma a witness experienced while seeing the perpetrator” and “System variables: are those that the criminal justice system can and should control. They include all of the ways that law enforcement agencies retrieve and record witness memory, such as lineups, photo arrays, and other identification procedures”. Eyewitness misidentification has led to 75% of false convictions that were overruled by modern DNA testing according to “The Innocence

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.

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

Information is the lifeblood of a criminal investigation. The ability of investigators to obtain useful and accurate information from eyewitnesses of crimes is crucial to effective law enforcement, yet full and accurate recall is difficult to achieve (Stewart, 1985). Such elicitation of complete and accurate recall from people is important in many aspects of life; specifically, eyewitness recall may determine whether a case is solved. Principle advocates of the cognitive interview (Fisher, Geiselman, Holland & MacKinnon,

There has been considerable interest and study in the accuracy or inaccuracy of the use of eyewitness testimonies in the current criminal justice system. Results collated by several studies add to the bulk of literature suggesting that the current usage of eyewitness testimony by the legal system is far from ideal. Currently, high emphasis is being placed on reviewing and reconsidering eyewitness accounts (Leinfelt, 2004). In particular, recent DNA exoneration cases have substantiated the warnings of eyewitness identification researchers by showing that mistaken eyewitness identification was the largest single factor contributing to the conviction of innocent people (Wells & Olson, 2003). In this essay, the use of eyewitness testimony in the criminal justice system will be explored, with a particular focus on the impreciseness of this practice.

In the past decade, eyewitness testimonies have cast a shadow on what is wrong with the justice system in today’s society. Before we had the advanced technology, we have today, eyewitness testimonies were solid cold-hard facts when it came to proving the defendant was guilty. However, time has changed and eyewitness testimonies have proven to be the leading causes of wrongful convictions due to misidentification. The Thompson and Cotton case is a perfect example of how eyewitness testimonies can put an innocent man behind bars.

This method is appropriate to observe one’s false memory since it is designed bias the participants to recall particular words that was not in the sequence that they were presented with. These particular distractor words were sleep, needle, sweet, chair, mountain, and rough and they were presented one at a time. The sequence of words When the participants report that one of these particular distractor words was in the sequence, then that is the evidence that the participants have created false memories.

Abstract: Over the past twenty years, advancement in DNA technology has directly led to the exoneration of nearly 300 people in the United States. In addition to these scientific advancements, a growing body of literature has focused on the significant roles eyewitness misidentification, so-called “jailhouse snitches,” and false confessions have played in contributing to wrongful convictions in U.S. courts. The aim of this paper is to examine the

“Wrongful convictions happen every week in every state in this country. And they happen for all the same reasons. Sloppy police work. Eyewitness identification is the most- is the worst type almost. Because it is wrong about half the time. Think about that.” (Grisham). Wrongful convictions can happen to anyone, at anytime. Grisham implies wrongful convictions happen for the same reasons, careless police work as well as eyewitness identification. An eyewitness identification is a crucial aspect in detective work because it essentially locates the person at the crime scene. This is the worst cause of wrongful convictions because it is wrong half the time.

False confessions have been a leading factor in destroying the lives of many innocent people. Since the advances of technology, victims of false confessions have been exonerated from the charges previously placed on them while others are still fighting for innocence or died a criminal. One technological advance that has exonerated many individuals is DNA testing. According to Randy James, DNA testing was discovered in 1985 and was first used in court to convict Tommie Lee Andrews (Time, 2009). Today many Americans are convicted because of false confessions that have not yet been overturned with new evidence (Kassin, 2014). Although DNA testing has led to freedom for many innocent Americans, there are still many innocent people who are locked

With the number of DNA exonerations growing in the recent years, wrongful convictions reveal disturbing trends and fissures in the justice system. It shows how broken the system is, and why it needs urgent fixing. According to Huff (1996), over ten thousand people are convicted wrongfully for serious crimes each year. This study established that factors leading to wrongful convictions are false eyewitnesses, a prejudiced jury, incompetent prosecutors, and suspects’ ignorance. Where DNA evidence clears a suspect, array of reasons emerge; misconduct, mistakes, to race and class factors. It is important to make DNA data available to attorneys in order to enable them mount a strong

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

Every time an innocent person is exonerated based on DNA testing, law enforcement agencies look at what caused the wrongful convictions. There are many issues that contribute to putting guiltless lives behind bars including: eyewitness misidentification, false confessions, imperfect forensic science, and more (Gould and Leo 18). When a witness is taken into a police station to identify a suspect, it is easy for their memories to be blurred and their judgment influenced. This can lead the witness to identify a suspect who is actually innocent. Flawed forensic science practice also contributes to wrongful imprisonments. In the past, analysts have been inaccurate due to carelessness, testified in court presenting evidence that was not based

Eyewitness identification and testimony play a huge role in the criminal justice system today, but skepticism of eyewitnesses has been growing. Forensic evidence has been used to undermine the reliability of eyewitness testimony, and the leading cause of false convictions in the United States is due to misidentifications by eyewitnesses. The role of eyewitness testimony in producing false confessions and the factors that contribute to the unreliability of these eyewitness testimonies are sending innocent people to prison, and changes are being made in order to reform these faulty identification procedures.