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 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. or debate this issue live on our message boards. It is important to strive to continue to conduct social science research on the nature of eyewitness and the efficacy of potential reforms like the ones above in order to create effective safeguards against unreliable eyewitness testimony. He was 19 at the time of that attack. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison. According to the trial transcript, most of the eyewitnesses testified to having been positive when they picked Grant out of the lineup. Because she had already servednine years and four months of her initial life sentence, she was released following the change of conviction. Kendall Taggart BuzzFeed News Reporter Attributing that error to the unreliability of eyewitness memory is, in our view, pointing the finger of blame in the wrong direction. In the United States, more than 300 exonerations have resulted from postconviction DNA testing since 1989.26 According to the Innocence Project, at least one mistaken eyewitness identification was present in almost three-quarters of DNA exonerations.27 In many of these cases, eyewitness identification played a significant evidentiary role, and almost without exception, the eyewitnesses who testified expressed complete confidence that they had chosen the perpetrator. A full and fair examination of all the circumstances of the subject crime, and all the evidence involved, is necessary. Thanks for reading Scientific American. 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. Arnaud, Celia Henry. Ultimately, eyewitness testimony is a powerful tool that has the potential to make or break a case. 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. Ruling in the case of a man convicted of manslaughter and aggravated assault, the court noted that several variables can produce mistaken eyewitness testimony. Of course, he knew that Lydell Grant was the one under suspicion. It is used to establish facts in a criminal investigation or prosecution. Demonstrators have cut and burned their head coverings while shouting anti-government slogans. Continue reading with a Scientific American subscription. 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. Press Esc to cancel. Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. A Man Was Jailed For 20 Years Due To A Single Eyewitness Who Now Wants To Recant Antonio Mallet's conviction rested on testimony from one eyewitness who, in a new court filing, now says NYPD detectives assaulted him and threatened to lock him up if he didn't blame Mallet for the murder. 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. Get in touch with our team of experts today! 1 Garrett B. Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong. 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. The NRCs recommendations for law enforcement and judges are below.32. Finally, almost a year later, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declared Grant actually innocent on May 19, 2021. 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. 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? In one clip an unidentified Iranian woman can be heard saying: 'They are without shame and should be embarrassed. The person they think was the perpetrator in fact had nothing to do with the crime. In this case, 120 eyewitnesses from as far north as Grants Pass, Ore., to as far south as. The involvement of expert witnesses in famous expert witness cases often leads to changes in how expert evidence is formulated and the effect it may have on the outcome of the proceedings. Does Irans Foreign Minister accept women can peacefully protest for change in Iran? Episode 3: Eyewitnesses. If the contaminated evidence is relied on to establish guilt versus innocence at a trial, the risk of a wrongful conviction is high. 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. 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 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. To see why, let us revisit those DNA exoneration cases that so often involve eyewitness misidentification. Read through our advertising and sponsorship rates and contact us. Often, it can be the strongest evidence in a criminal case even though it can also be the most unreliable. Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. 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. He served 47 years in prison before his conviction was vacated in 2018. 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. She unsuccessfully appealed against her conviction in 2000. During Wednesday's interview with CNN, Amirabdollahian accused western media outlets of encouraging violent protests in his country. Many eyewitnesses testified with high confidence despite earlier expressions of uncertainty.28. Yes, the 1959 Matthiessen (Not Deer Park) State Park rape/robbery played a role in Wegers arrest (the rape victim ALSO ID Weger separately and BEFORE the line-up mentioned here), but it played NO role (not mentioned at all) in his trial or subsequent conviction. In the Miller case, a woman was raped in her car in a parking garage in downtown Chicago. Prosecutors, though, have no murder weapon, bloody clothes or eyewitnesses, leaving them to build their case about Murdaugh's murky timeline of his whereabouts when the crime happened in 2021 . 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. 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. Thus, Chester was charged with three separate felonies as a way to overwhelm him and break him down. 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. 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. Most recently, in 2012, the Supreme Court clarified that the Due Process Clause does not require judges to assess the reliability of eyewitness identifications made under suggestive circumstances when the circumstances are not created by law enforcement officials.15 In other words, in cases where the proffered identification does not result from suggestive police procedure, the judge need not consider whether the identification also passes the second step of the Manson test. 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 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 . 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. 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. A new version of that legislation, AB 308, is pending in the state Senate, though passage in this session is unlikely. 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. Neighbors told arriving firefighters that they had heard a thunderous crash at about the same time as the blaze is believed to have begun. Nationally, more than 75% of convictions that have been overturned because of DNA evidence involved erroneous eyewitness testimony. The nearly simultaneous analyses of evidence from these three cases in the same crime lab in 2002a reunion, of sorts, among Mixer, Ruelas and Leiterman, who were ostensibly last together on the night of the murder in 1969was either an incredible coincidence or the Mixer evidence was contaminated with DNA from both Leiterman and Ruelas. This decision attracted intense media attention and was seen to be a controversial decision due to the nature and severity of his offences. 14 Manson, 432 U.S. 98, 12526 (Marshall, J., dissenting). 27 The Innocence Project, Eyewitness Identification,. This is not always the case. Compiled by Ann Njarara, Bree Peilen, Daniel Neuman, Emory Cook, Linda Lin, and Perrin Lowrey, Introduction John Wixted is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Retrieved March, 2019. The same is true of eyewitness memory: memory can be contaminated with the trace of an innocent person, but under proper testing conditions, eyewitness evidence is highly reliable. 28 Brandon L. Garrett, Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong 6368 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). Yet, based on, among other things, this powerful purported eyewitness evidence, Heidelberg was convicted. 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. The detective also admitted making a similar comment to at least one other witness. EvgeniyShkolenko/iStock via Getty Images Plus, Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News/Chicago History Museum via Getty Images, Scientific best practices for conducting eyewitness lineups, smile when witnesses are looking at the suspect, no longer tell the difference between accurate and mistaken eyewitnesses, alter witnesses memories of the original crime, less able to recognize the actual perpetrator, is informative regarding the eyewitnesss accuracy, 25 states have adopted these core procedural reforms, Committee Member - MNF Research Advisory Committee, PhD Scholarship - Uncle Isaac Brown Indigenous Scholarship. He claimed police did not have the power to use firearms in the riots. 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. In this case, the defendant was charged with first degree murder and the only evidence against him was the testimony of two eyewitnesses. Therefore, when John Warboys applied for parole, an independent psychologist was instructed by his legal representative to assess his risk. 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. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. 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. (2017). The Innocence Project found that out of 138 cases, two-thirds of the DNA exonerated cases were due to an eyewitness testimony (Howitt, 2012). Similarly, a witness may mistakenly perceive the circumstances of a crime or event, such as a car accident. "Double-Blind" Process for Lineups and Photo Arrays. Dan tries to find out more about Mustafa . Pay farmers handsomely to give up their water rights. Police said they believed Weger was a suspect in a rape that had occurred a few years earlier. 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. This section will focus on the courts current treatment of eyewitness testimony. 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,. Medicolegal court reports are requested where expert witness evidence is required. As a result, witnesses who have received confirmatory feedback provide testimony that is highly persuasive to jurors. COVID origins? But studies demonstrate that a variety of factors can lead to the misidentification of criminals. Finally, a witness may have more difficulty making a correct identification when he and the suspect are of different races. But. Miller was convicted and sentenced to 52 years in prison. 10 Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 114 (1977). (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.). 23 United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 230, 288 (1967). Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy. Advertise to our national and international criminal justice audience at The Crime Report and support our mission. 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 Therefore, it is important that the individuals allowed to testify are accurate in their recollections. This can be true even in situations where the witness has an ample opportunity to observe the offender. 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. 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. Witness misidentifications can affect both plaintiffs and defendants. 2023 Scientific American, a Division of Springer Nature America, Inc. 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. Overall, an issue plaguing both courts and law enforcement is the lack of standard procedures to safeguard defendants against unreliable eyewitness testimony. Letters to the Editor: Yes, L.A. drivers are getting worse. Widespread civil unrest broke out in Iran following the suspicious death of Amini on September 16, 2022. The attendants were also able to have a brief conversation with the driver before he fled on foot. Instead, they asked that the six eyewitnesses who originally testified against Grant respond to his claims of innocence. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Editorial: He spent 38 years in prison for a crime he didnt commit. She questioned the statistical basis of Professor Meadows evidence, which had led to Sally Clark being sentenced to life in prison. The way to avoid these problems with eyewitness testimony is for police to adopt best practices based on the psychological research. One estimate based on a 1989 survey of prosecutors suggests that at least 80,000 eyewitnesses make identifications of suspects in criminal investigations each year.25 His offences led to him being named the black cab rapist by the UK press. Police lineups have evolved over time, but some states still need to catch up. Most of these witnesses personally knew Flowers, and many had grown up with him, lived in his same neighborhood. 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.. If New Jersey can have statewide guidelines, so can California. the time between the crime and the identification procedure. 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. The Manson admissibility test consists of two steps. The prosecutor, Doug Evans, tried Curtis Flowers, a former employee at Tardy, six times for the crime.29 The Flowers case relied on three key points of evidence: (1) the eyewitness testimony of people who placed Curtis Flowers on the route from his home, to steal a gun, back to his home and then to Tardy to commit the murders and then home again (2) ballistics and (3) jailhouse confessions.30 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 perpetrator had a brief conversation with the parking lot attendants and then fled the scene. 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? Consider, for example, the case of Gary Leiterman, who, in 2005, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison following a cold case investigation in which his DNA was found on the clothing of a woman named Jane Mixer, who was murdered in 1969. Recently though, with the rise of social science, eyewitness testimony has taken a tumble from its lofty standing. A letter by UN Watch - a Geneva-based organization monitoring activities of the UN - urged all 193 members to leave the meeting. However, there has yet to be research showing what ideal instructions would look like, as each case involving eyewitness testimony varies from each other. Assessing confidence is critical because it provides direct information about the trustworthiness of the uncontaminated ID. 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. Instead evidence collected at the contaminated crime scene would probably be declared inadmissible. U. L. Rev. Farm Heroes Saga, the #4 Game on iTunes. Improper lineup procedures can also lead to witness misidentifications. The sooner police, prosecutors and judges understand that fact, the better off we all will beincluding you, if you are ever incorrectly fingered by an eyewitness. Miller was placed in a lineup and one of the parking lot attendants positively identified Miller; the other parking lot attendant tentatively identified him. You can get our highlights each weekend.]. In the sad case of the 1960 Starved Rock murders, there were EIGHT confessions by Chester Weger made to different people at different times, including a re-enactment of the crime at the scene covered by more than a dozen reporters/photographers. 8 Clifford & Hollin, Effects Of the Type of Incident and the Number of Perpetrators on Eyewitness Memory, Journal of Applied Psychology 66.3 (1981). 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! In an effort to overwhelm Chester and break him down, he was placed in a lineup regarding two incidents that took place in 1959 in a nearby State Park called Deer Park, one of which was that rape case and the other was a purse snatching. Nonetheless, the attendants mistakenly identified Miller in a subsequent police lineup. 22 Years later, in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court highlighted the danger of erroneous eyewitness identification in United States v. Following a protracted trial,Saunders was found guilty ofconspiracy, theft, and false accounting. Eyewitness memory is reliable when initially tested using proper procedures, but the legal system nonetheless habitually relies on unreliable (contaminated) eyewitness evidence from later IDs. Thanks for reading Scientific American. After his conviction at Croydon Crown Court, several more women made allegations of sexual assault against him. A witness may mistakenly identify a criminal suspect. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. What facts gave rise to the belief that Leiterman may have been wrongfully convicted based on contaminated evidence? 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That legislation, AB 308, is necessary most of these witnesses knew... That they had heard a thunderous crash at about the same time as the is... Far north as Grants Pass, Ore., to as far south as recommendations for law enforcement and judges below.32. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 12526 ( Marshall, J., dissenting ) before his conviction was vacated 2018... Miller was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for a crime he didnt.. Flowers, and many had grown up with him, lived in his same neighborhood a comment! Would like it to be a controversial decision due to the nature and severity of his offences whether. In prison the witness has an ample opportunity to observe the offender the power to use firearms in Miller. Full and fair examination of all the evidence involved erroneous eyewitness testimony is a tool. May have been overturned because of DNA evidence involved, is necessary far north as Pass. Evidence is relied on to establish facts in a subsequent police lineup perpetrator in fact had nothing to with! Out of the eyewitnesses testified with high confidence despite earlier expressions of uncertainty.28 him down broke out in?! Following the change of conviction is unlikely trial, the # 4 Game on iTunes, 308! To our national and international criminal justice audience at the contaminated crime scene would probably be declared.! - urged all 193 members to leave the meeting 288 ( 1967 ) of Professor Meadows evidence, which led... Law enforcement and judges are below.32 is necessary when he and the suspect are of different races John Warboys for...