In about 70% of these cases, misidentification by one or more eyewitnesses contributed significantly as evidence for conviction.3, Eyewitness Testimony: General Social Science Findings, Throughout history, eyewitness testimony was held up as the golden nugget of evidence. 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 . Questions were raised about the outcome after Ernest Saunders made a recovery following his release. 'But foreign interference and the Persian-language media that are based in the United States and Britain focused their activities on encouraging and instigating the riots and acts of terror. This case raised important questions about the reliability of expert evidence. Given the prevalence and impact eyewitness testimony can have within a criminal case, it is important to take steps to make it a more reliable practice. Witnesses arent able to tell whether their testimony was influenced in this way. 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. Out on his porch and saw Flowers walking by that morning. During the meeting Amirabdollahian said Irans government was committed to upholding human rights. Delta agrees 34% pay rise for pilots - worth up to $90k - with other major airlines set to follow suit, Plastic surgeon reveals the one exercise that makes you AGE FASTER - saying he tells his patients to stop the popular workout if they want to avoid a 'gaunt, old face', Trans teacher with prosthetic Z-cup breasts is FINALLY put on leave after it was revealed they don't wear the fake boobs outside of school - as parents line up to criticize school board at meeting, Robert F. Kennedy's assassin Sirhan Sirhan, 78, is DENIED parole because he still refuses to reveal reason for 1968 murder of the senator and then-presidential candidate, More than a DOZEN whistleblowers came forward to claim Hunter Biden was involved in criminal activity, Republican Senator reveals for the first time during grilling of AG Merrick Garland, Senators slam Biden official after two senior hires were discovered to have been forced out of previous jobs for sexual harassment - with one paying $89,500 settlement to victim, I'm a Feng Shui expert and these are the three things I will never allow in a bedroom - and you're likely to be guilty of having at least one, REVEALED: 'Bomb' almost smuggled onto passenger plane in Pennsylvania was a commercial grade FIREWORK stitched into suitcase lining - arrested man, 40, has long rap sheet, 'He played Muhammad Ali, I played Pookie! Type above and press Enter to search. 22 Edwin M. Borchard, Convicting the Innocent: Sixty-Five Actual Errors of Criminal Justice (New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., 1932). This opinion differed from the opinions formed by the other professionals, who concluded that John Worboys should remain in prison. Years later, in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court highlighted the danger of erroneous eyewitness identification in United States v. Wade, stating, The vagaries of eyewitness identification are well-known; the annals of criminal law are rife with instances of mistaken identification.23 The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimates that U.S. law enforcement made 12,196,959 arrests in 2012. Speak to our experts today for advice. 1 Garrett B. Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong. 5 Brewer & Treyens, Role of Schemata in Memory for Places, Cognitive Psychology 13.2 (1981). It does make sure that photos in a lineup resemble one another.) 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.22
After his conviction at Croydon Crown Court, several more women made allegations of sexual assault against him. Standardized instructions regarding best practices should be given, including such tips as the importance of minimizing contact between witnesses at the scene, and how gathering eyewitness testimony as early as possible tends to increase its accuracy. In Perry v. New Hampshire, the Supreme Court barred the defendant from challenging the eyewitness testimony proffered by the state, even though the circumstances surrounding the eyewitnesss identification of the defendant were decidedly suggestive. As of 2014, 44 states and all federal circuits, with the possible exception of the 11th Circuit, allow such expert testimony at the discretion of the trial judge.21, Eyewitness Testimony: Application in Court, The Manson v. Brathwaite test under the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution for assessing eyewitness identification evidence was established in 1977, before much applied research on eyewitness identification had been conducted. 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. 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 the Miller case, a. Alex Murdaugh's defense attorneys will deliver their closing arguments in his murder trial on Thursday as they seek to raise reasonable doubt about whether he killed his wife and son in 2021. Albright explains that witness misidentifications are essentially failures of visual perception (seeing things accurately) or failures of memory (lack of precision in storage and recall). Scientific best practices for conducting eyewitness lineups require that the person administering the lineup not know who the police suspect. According to the trial transcript, most of the eyewitnesses testified to having been positive when they picked Grant out of the lineup. Two police officers thought the sketch resembled Miller, a man they had questioned a few days earlier. Chester Weger was convicted in 1961 of the notorious Starved Rock Murders, in which three women were brutally killed and their bodies left in a park located in LaSalle County, Illinois about two hours southwest of Chicago. What law enforcementand the publicneeds to know. Later two slideshows were shown, one with a stop sign and the other with a yield sign and they asked the subjects which was the one they had previously seen. See here: Innocence Project, Eyewitness misidentification accessed on March 9, 2019. Editorial: Los Angeles County bus riders get no shelter from the storm, Before and after photos from space show storms effect on California reservoirs, Dramatic before and after photos from space show epic snow blanketing SoCal mountains, Yet more rain expected to hit California in March. In 2011, Sally Challen was convicted of murdering her husband before Guildford Crown Court. Readers speculate why, Letters to the Editor: Serious about the drought? Yet, based on, among other things, this powerful purported eyewitness evidence, Heidelberg was convicted. My Blog cases where eyewitnesses were right. This can be true even in situations where the witness has an ample opportunity to observe the offender. Play it now! Psychologists have learned a lot about why such errors happen. 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. If the contaminated evidence is relied on to establish guilt versus innocence at a trial, the risk of a wrongful conviction is high. If New Jersey can have statewide guidelines, so can California. 14 Manson, 432 U.S. 98, 12526 (Marshall, J., dissenting). Alex Murdaugh's defense attorneys will deliver their closing arguments in his murder trial on Thursday as they seek to raise reasonable doubt about whether he killed his wife and son in 2021. 27 The Innocence Project, Eyewitness Identification,. Another way is through the misinformation effect, where something occurs between the event and the reporting of the event to muddy or confuse the witness. Demonstrators have cut and burned their head coverings while shouting anti-government slogans. Having served 10 years in prison, the psychologist recommended his release from prison. There, the prosecution claims that Flowers killed the people inside Tardys, stole money from the stole, and then went back home, stopping to buy chips and beer at a convenience store on Highway 51 on the way. 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. 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. Finally, almost a year later, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declared Grant actually innocent on May 19, 2021. 'To the extent that Daesh or even ISIS exploited the situation to establish a presence in Iran. 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. 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. Miller was ultimately charged with rape, robbery and kidnapping. Videotaping allows for review of eyewitness testimony later on in the trial if the reliability of eyewitness testimony is called into question. But studies demonstrate that a variety of factors can lead to the misidentification of criminals. In response to this issue, the National Research Council (NRC) formed a research committee in 2013 chaired by Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District of New York and cognitive scientist, Thomas Albright of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.31 The group released their findings in 2014 in a report titled Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification. Carter has now been indicted for the murder by a grand jury, and Lydell Grant was released from prison. Explore our digital archive back to 1845, including articles by more than 150 Nobel Prize winners. Hale is an Emmy-nominated executive producer for several true-crime documentaries highlighting wrongful convictions. She unsuccessfully appealed against her conviction in 2000. Videos circulating on Twitter appeared to show dozens of UN diplomats walking out as he started to speak. 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. This allows jurors to make more informed decisions while evaluating particular eyewitness testimony. The testimony of an eyewitness could make up for many shortcomings in a case, such as the lack of any actual physical evidence. 'You're supposed to interview me but you're actually having a confrontation with me,' he told Amanpour. The NRC found that police officers and detectives are frequently uninformed of what the best practices concerning gathering eyewitness testimony are. In the Miller case, a woman was raped in her car in a parking garage in downtown Chicago. Psychological scientists, however, have challenged many of the assumptions of the legal system and the general public regarding the. 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. At the time of his release, Jerry Miller had served over 26 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Working closely with our specialist human resource colleagues, we offer a holistic advisory and support service for employers encompassing both the legal and people risks of workforce management. Andy Hale is a civil rights attorney, specializing in wrongful convictions in Chicago, Illinois. After she had spent several years in prison, an independent consultant psychiatrist was instructed as an expert witness. 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. Women in Iran have all the necessary required freedoms within the framework of the law, he claims, but says our interview is a confrontation: This is not the way to conduct an interview. pic.twitter.com/XKkC5uWYyj, Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian smiled as he chastised CNN host Christiane Amanpour, telling her 'this is not the way to conduct an interview', CNN host Amanpour laid into the Iranian foreign minister over his country's record on women's rights. Following criticism of the decision, the high court ordered the parole board to re-examine Worboys case. 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. So are The Conversations authors and editors. What facts gave rise to the belief that Leiterman may have been wrongfully convicted based on contaminated evidence? 'In Iran we had an incident. A cornerstone of the state's case is the video at or near the kennels filmed on Paul's phone starting at 8:44 p.m. in which Murdaugh's voice can be heard in the background. A witness may mistakenly identify a criminal suspect. Jurors trust a confident eyewitness and believe they are telling the truth and that their testimony is accurate [1]. Instead evidence collected at the contaminated crime scene would probably be declared inadmissible. Police officers should avoid leading questioning while interviewing potential eyewitnesses, since eyewitnesses might be eager to say what they think will help the investigation, rather than the unblemished version of their memory. On the strength of six eyewitnesses lineup identifications, Lydell Grant was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for the murder of a young Texas man, Aaron Scheerhoorn, who was stabbed to death outside a Houston nightclub in 2010. 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. The case shed renewed light on the country's treatment of women, with a growing number of female Iranians choosing to flout the Sharia-based law to wear the hijab. What the cases of Miller and Heidelberg highlight is that witnesses are often wrong. Discover world-changing science. by TCR Staff, The Crime Report May 24, 2021, This and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.. In much the same way, an eyewitness can be led to falsely remember someone committing a crime that was actually committed by someone else. However, Solicitor, Marilyn Stowe, had concerns about the expert evidence of Professor Meadow. Daryl G. Kimball and Frank von Hippel | Opinion. As a result, witnesses who have received confirmatory feedback provide testimony that is highly persuasive to jurors. Recently though, with the rise of social science, eyewitness testimony has taken a tumble from its lofty standing. 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. Most of these witnesses personally knew Flowers, and many had grown up with him, lived in his same neighborhood. cases where eyewitnesses were rightammo donation to ukraine. To date, 25 states have adopted these core procedural reforms, including Texas in 2011, one year after the investigation of Aaron Scheerhoorns murder. Gov. Mugshots of Lydell Grant (left, in 2010) and Jermarico Carter (right, in 2007) show the men dont look very similar. To see why, let us revisit those DNA exoneration cases that so often involve eyewitness misidentification. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, bn. Eyewitness testimony can hold a lot of weight with jurors. We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. 31 Elizabeth Loftus, Eyewitness Science and the Legal System, 14 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 110 (2018). 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. Just as double-blind clinical trials in medical studies are intended to prevent patients and doctors expectations from affecting outcomes of the clinical trial, double-blind lineups aim to prevent witnesses and administrators expectations from influencing the outcomes of the identification procedure. 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. 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. What would that mean for the reliability of the blood or fingerprint evidence, for example, collected at that scene? A new version of that legislation, AB 308, is pending in the state Senate, though passage in this session is unlikely. An initial eyewitness identification made with low confidence indicates that even though memory was not contaminated, the ID is untrustworthy (that is, by indicating low confidence, the eyewitness is effectively saying, Theres a good chance that Im making an error). 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. 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. Historically, eyewitness testimony has been in use not only in the United States and our penal system but all around the world. Advertise to our national and international criminal justice audience at The Crime Report and support our mission. It should be revived and approved. They found that the odds of a false identification were 1.56 times greater in cases where the race was different than the witness, thus highlighting how bias can affect how somebody remembers an event.7 With regard to stress, studies such as those run by Clifford & Hollin have looked at how memory is affected under a high-stress situation. Judges should include within jury instructions clear and concise instructions on how to evaluate and make use of eyewitness testimony during their deliberations. Three of the eyewitnesses reported that the detective told them that they had picked the same person other people had, though the detective himself denied having made such statements. Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? I must also add that Chester Weger also CONFESSED to the 1959 Matthiessen State Park rape/robbery but was never brought to trial (he already had received a life sentence for murder) to avoid putting the TEENAGED female victim on the witness stand. Instructions given to eyewitnesses should be clear, simple and standardized across jurisdictions. Thanks for reading The Crime Report! 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 parking lot attendants provided a description of the driver to a police sketch artist and the sketch was published in a daily police bulletin. 9 According to the innocence project, mistaken identification is a leading factor in wrongful convictions. Because she had already servednine years and four months of her initial life sentence, she was released following the change of conviction. 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. Today, he remains in prison. After . Additional Reading: Truth, Lies and Police Lineups, The Crime Report, May 5, 2021. 2
I am currently involved in another case in which the failings of witness identification are starkly evident. Nevertheless, these subtle behavioral cues affect eyewitnesses decisions by making them more likely to choose the suspect. In other words, the confirmatory remark made the mistaken eyewitnesses just as persuasive as the accurate ones. The case shed renewed light on the country's treatment of women, with a growing number of female Iranians choosing to flout the Sharia-based law to wear the hijab. To do this, proper testing protocols that reduce chances of contamination need to be followed. Of course, he knew that Lydell Grant was the one under suspicion. My Blog cases where eyewitnesses were right. It gathered more than 100 signatures from prominent lawmakers, human rights campaigners and celebrities. Any evidence can potentially be contaminated, including what is considered to be the gold standard of forensic evidence: DNA. Recently, post-conviction DNA exonerations of innocent persons have dramatically highlighted the problems with eyewitness identifications. 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. There have been many famous expert witness cases. This is not always the case. 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
3 Eyewitness Misidentification. By itself, that fact only shows that contaminated memory is unreliable (just as contaminated DNA evidence is). 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. 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! Compiled by Ann Njarara, Bree Peilen, Daniel Neuman, Emory Cook, Linda Lin, and Perrin Lowrey, Introduction
You can get our highlights each weekend.]. The murder victims cold case evidence was there because the case had recently been reopened; the 1969 preschoolers DNA sample was there as part of an active murder investigation, and Leitermans DNA sample was there because he had recently been arrested for forging a prescription. 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