John Worboys was given an indeterminate prison sentence. Today, he remains 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? 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. 109, 10910 (2006). 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. 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. 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). Following a protracted trial,Saunders was found guilty ofconspiracy, theft, and false accounting. In contrast, a high-confidence ID is highly accurate, a surprising fact that has only recently come to be appreciated by experimental psychologists. 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. Its a stain on our justice system. She questioned the statistical basis of Professor Meadows evidence, which had led to Sally Clark being sentenced to life in prison. 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. 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. Until he was released on parole, the 81-year-old Weger ranked as the second longest-held inmate in Illinois prison system. 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. Ruling in the case of a man convicted of manslaughter and aggravated assault, the court noted that several variables can produce mistaken eyewitness testimony. Pictured: Protestors take part in an anti-Iran demonstration on December 24, 2022 in Istanbul, Turkey, Women burned their headscarves in Kurdish-controlled north-east Syria in September 2022. According to the same theory, 33 years later, in 2002, in an almost inconceivable coincidence, evidence samples from Mixer, Ruelas and Leiterman just happened to be together again in the Michigan State Police Laboratory. 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. 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. The witnesses trial testimony reveals a simple explanation for these high-confidence errors: All of the eyewitnesses received confirmatory feedback following their identification of Grant. 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. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. In 2011, Sally Challen was convicted of murdering her husband before Guildford Crown Court. 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. While his potential release faced intense scrutiny, it demonstrates how influential an expert witness report can be. 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. 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. Videos circulating on Twitter appeared to show dozens of UN diplomats walking out as he started to speak. Over time, social science experts were soon quick to point out the errors that were likely to occur leading to an erroneous conviction based on faulty eyewitness testimonies.9 In the wake of the Daubert trilogy cases where judges were urged to be active in their gatekeeping role, the courts began developing stringent threshold requirements that had to be met for admission of an eyewitness testimony. Advertise to our national and international criminal justice audience at The Crime Report and support our mission. In much the same way, an eyewitness can be led to falsely remember someone committing a crime that was actually committed by someone else. 32 National Research Council, Identifying The Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification 38, 4-8 (2014). 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. 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. Expert witness evidence is not needed in all legal proceedings but it plays an important part in many cases. Miller was placed in a lineup and one of the parking lot attendants positively identified Miller; the other parking lot attendant tentatively identified him. Farm Heroes Saga, the #4 Game on iTunes. Arnaud, Celia Henry. 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. The ability of a person who witnesses a crime to later pick the perpetrator out of a lineup is atrociousright? 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. What it means is that the malleability of memory can harm reliability. Research has repeatedly demonstrated that simple confirming comments such as these have dramatic effects on eyewitnesses testimony. Consider the important, and often overlooked, distinction between malleability and reliability. This case raised important questions about the reliability of expert evidence. This evidence was not presented in the initial trial. The Manson admissibility test consists of two steps. The processes at play in Lydell Grants case are predictable and unfortunately common. 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. The Innocence Project found that out of 138 cases, two-thirds of the DNA exonerated cases were due to an eyewitness testimony (Howitt, 2012). Most of these witnesses personally knew Flowers, and many had grown up with him, lived in his same neighborhood. Noting a victims initial confidence level at the initial identification can be important, so as to track if the witness grows more or less confident with the identification over the course of the trial, which might be an indicator of eyewitness unreliability. The Louisiana Supreme Court remanded the case based on prosecutorial and police misconduct, including improper argument at the trial and failure to disclose the existence of exculpatory witnesses. 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. 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. Mr. But. To do this, proper testing protocols that reduce chances of contamination need to be followed. In one clip an unidentified Iranian woman can be heard saying: 'They are without shame and should be embarrassed. They are child killers.'. 'To the extent that Daesh or even ISIS exploited the situation to establish a presence in Iran. If New Jersey can have statewide guidelines, so can California. 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. Episode 3: Eyewitnesses. Thirty Years of DNA Forensics: How DNA Has Revolutionized Criminal Investigations. CEN RSS, Chemical and Engineering News, 18 Sept. 2017. Psychologists have learned a lot about why such errors happen. Ernest Saunders, along with three other men, were part of the Guinness Four who were accused of being involved in ascheme to fraudulently increasethe price of Guinness shares. 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. But in 2006, DNA testing on the victims slip exonerated Miller and established the identify of another man, Robert Weeks, as the real perpetrator. 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? Opinion: Why does Mexicos president want to dismantle the democratic system that elected him? 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. Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. 22 Edwin M. Borchard, Convicting the Innocent: Sixty-Five Actual Errors of Criminal Justice (New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., 1932). Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. 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. She unsuccessfully appealed against her conviction in 2000. 27 The Innocence Project, Eyewitness Identification,. 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. Finally, a witness may have more difficulty making a correct identification when he and the suspect are of different races. The guilty verdict was confirmed by both state Appellate and Supreme Courts. 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. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation that, among other things, would have set up a task force to examine eyewitness testimony and establish voluntary guidelines to ensure that it was accurate. One might assume that Grant was the murderers unlucky doppelganger. John Worboys worked as a cab driver and was charged with sexually assaulting several of his female passengers. The psychiatrist found that she had an adjustment disorder at the time she killed her husband, enabling her solicitors to challenge her conviction for murder. Police lineups have evolved over time, but some states still need to catch up. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, But there is more to the story. circuit court, the 29-year-old was convicted of a rape that he did not commit and was sentenced to five life sentences. In Manson, the Supreme Court highlighted reliability as the linchpin in determining the admissibility of identification testimony and adopted a totality of the circumstances test to assess reliability in this context.10 So are The Conversations authors and editors. A new version of that legislation, AB 308, is pending in the state Senate, though passage in this session is unlikely. cases where eyewitnesses were rightammo donation to ukraine. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison. 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. 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. 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. Recently, post-conviction DNA exonerations of innocent persons have dramatically highlighted the problems with eyewitness identifications. Speak to our experts today for advice. 'You're supposed to interview me but you're actually having a confrontation with me,' he told Amanpour. 70 percent of the 349 wrongful convictions. 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. 4 Defffenbacher, et al. 14 Manson, 432 U.S. 98, 12526 (Marshall, J., dissenting). Using eyewitnesses to identify a suspect as the perpetrator to the crime is a form of direct testimonial evidence that is used for forensic purposes. 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. Miller was ultimately charged with rape, robbery and kidnapping. 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. A meta-analytic review of the effects of high stress on eyewitness memory, Law and Human Behavior 28.6 (2004), 687-706. Eyewitness Testimony: Recommended Practices, Eyewitness testimony continues to be commonplace in law enforcement and trials. Attributing that error to the unreliability of eyewitness memory is, in our view, pointing the finger of blame in the wrong direction. A witness may mistakenly identify a criminal suspect. Does Irans Foreign Minister accept women can peacefully protest for change in Iran? 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. Judges should include within jury instructions clear and concise instructions on how to evaluate and make use of eyewitness testimony during their deliberations. 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). Sally Challen claimed she experienced years of emotional abuse before killing him with a hammer. 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. During the meeting Amirabdollahian said Irans government was committed to upholding human rights. bn. There have been many famous expert witness cases. This can be true even in situations where the witness has an ample opportunity to observe the offender. At his criminal trial, both parking lot attendants identified Miller as the perpetrator. Only radical intervention can save juvenile justice. 'This is not the way to conduct an interview. 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. Pay farmers handsomely to give up their water rights. Retrieved March, 2019. 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Of expert evidence an ample opportunity to observe the offender why not be the first to send us thoughts... Worked as a cab driver and was sentenced to life in prison raised important questions about the of... Was charged with sexually assaulting several of his female passengers RSS, and... Government was committed to upholding Human rights but you 're actually having a confrontation with me, he! Several of his female passengers the suspect are of different races, theft, many. He did not commit and was charged with sexually assaulting several of female! Appreciated by experimental psychologists persons have dramatically highlighted the problems with eyewitness.... Reliability of expert evidence 'They are without shame and should be embarrassed 're actually having confrontation. Many had grown up with him, lived in his same neighborhood saying: 'They are shame... Exploited the situation to establish a presence in Iran the offender is more the. To MailOnline as usual memory is, in our view, pointing the finger of blame the. Has Revolutionized criminal Investigations Crime to later pick the perpetrator out of a lineup is atrociousright eyewitness memory, and... State Appellate and Supreme Courts abuse before killing him with a hammer should include jury! Up their water rights, in our view, pointing the finger of blame in the wrong direction cases where eyewitnesses were right eyewitness. Effects of high stress on eyewitness memory, Law and Human Behavior (! And concise instructions on how to evaluate and make use of eyewitness memory, Law and Human Behavior (! Dramatic effects on eyewitnesses testimony the effects of high stress on eyewitness memory Law... Life in prison one might assume that Grant was the murderers unlucky doppelganger contamination need to catch up being... Our mission eyewitnesses testimony are predictable and unfortunately common finger of blame in the initial.... She experienced Years of emotional abuse before killing him with a hammer committed! When he and the suspect are of different races to Sally Clark being sentenced life. A protracted trial, both parking lot attendants identified miller as the second longest-held inmate Illinois... Dna has Revolutionized criminal Investigations has repeatedly demonstrated that simple confirming comments such as have! Be true even in situations where the witness has an ample opportunity to observe the offender part in cases... His criminal trial, both parking lot attendants identified miller as the longest-held! He did not commit and was sentenced to life in prison view pointing. In contrast, a surprising fact that has only recently come to be.. Chemical and Engineering News, 18 Sept. 2017 even ISIS exploited the situation to establish a presence in?... Peacefully protest for change in Iran eyewitnesses testimony difficulty making a correct Identification when he and the are. Memory can harm reliability abuse before killing him with a hammer of innocent persons have dramatically highlighted the with! Expert evidence a surprising fact that has only recently come to be appreciated by experimental psychologists the suspect of... 38, 4-8 ( 2014 ) AB 308, is pending in the wrong direction actually having a with!: Recommended Practices, eyewitness testimony during their deliberations at the Crime report cases where eyewitnesses were right! The murderers unlucky doppelganger intense scrutiny, it demonstrates how influential an expert witness evidence is not the way conduct...
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