Nationally, more than 75% of convictions that have been overturned because of DNA evidence involved erroneous eyewitness testimony. One might assume that Grant was the murderers unlucky doppelganger. 23 United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 230, 288 (1967). The chance of a lifetime: Five friends ski the tallest mountain in Los Angeles, Shocking, impossible gas bills push restaurants to the brink of closures, Best coffee city in the world? What would that mean for the reliability of the blood or fingerprint evidence, for example, collected at that scene? To many Americans including many jurors eyewitness testimony is the gold standard when it comes to evidence. Before crime shows like CSI and the scientific advancements which ushered in modern forensics such as fingerprinting and DNA, eyewitnesses were often the only form of proof of a guilty person or act. Instead evidence collected at the contaminated crime scene would probably be declared inadmissible. 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. 2023 Scientific American, a Division of Springer Nature America, Inc. For example, in cases where a mental disorder is an issue, the evidence of a psychiatrist may influence the conduct of legal proceedings, it may help to adduce medical evidence relevant to trial and may be the deciding factor between imprisonment and mental health treatment. 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. At his criminal trial, both parking lot attendants identified Miller as the perpetrator. 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. Daryl G. Kimball and Frank von Hippel | Opinion. One eyewitness couldnt recall whether the detective had told him anything after he identified Grant, but the detective acknowledged telling that particular eyewitness good job following the identification. Instructions given to eyewitnesses should be clear, simple and standardized across jurisdictions. As with DNA evidence, eyewitness evidence needs to be safeguarded against contamination. Additional Reading: Truth, Lies and Police Lineups, The Crime Report, May 5, 2021. Despite the frequency of use, we have been confronted as a country with many incredible failures of eyewitness testimony such as misidentifications that led to convictions and sentences of people who were later discovered innocent.1 Science has played no small role: post-conviction DNA profiling made possible by the development of the polymerase chain reaction, which enables amplification of crime-scene DNA to quantities sufficient for forensic analysis have meant that DNA identification is becoming increasingly used even in cases where it was previously not viable: those where we have smaller samples.2 As of now, almost 350 people, many serving long prison sentences, have been exonerated because their own DNA was discovered to be incompatible with evidence long ago collected from the crime scene. As with all indeterminate sentences, decisions around release are the sole responsibility of the Parole Board. 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. Few would doubt that under such conditions, DNA evidence is highly reliable. 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. Incredibly, prior to Heidelbergs sentencing, the real shooter, James Clark, confessed to the crime, but the confession fell on deaf ears and Heidelberg was sentenced to 99 to 175 years in prison. 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. Well ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. This created an inherent bias that made the lineup unfair, and likely affected the victims subsequent identification. 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. Thanks for reading Scientific American. 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. It does make sure that photos in a lineup resemble one another.) 3 Eyewitness Misidentification. 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. This section will focus on the courts current treatment of eyewitness testimony. 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). Women in Iran have all the necessary, required freedoms within the framework of the law,' he added. 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. 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. Sally Challen claimed she experienced years of emotional abuse before killing him with a hammer. Last updated: 27 February 2023. Retrieved March, 2019. The appeal was successful and the conviction was quashed. In one study, people playing the role of jurors were able to reliably distinguish between accurate and mistaken eyewitnesses when the witnesses had not received any confirmatory feedback. Assessing confidence is critical because it provides direct information about the trustworthiness of the uncontaminated ID. Most witnesses didnt come forward of their own accord, and often enough it was the lead investigator for the district attorneys office, John Johnson, who found the witnesses, and brought them in to testify. John Worboys worked as a cab driver and was charged with sexually assaulting several of his female passengers. My review of the transcripts from Grants trial suggests a simple explanation for these high-confidence mistakes: The police did not use scientific best practices for collecting the eyewitness identification evidence. During the meeting Amirabdollahian said Irans government was committed to upholding human rights. The testimony of an eyewitness could make up for many shortcomings in a case, such as the lack of any actual physical evidence. She was sentenced to life in prison. 1 Garrett B. Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong. Police lineups have evolved over time, but some states still need to catch up. 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. Another stated that the killers face was burned into [her] memory immediately.. The other individuals placed in a lineup with the suspect (known as fillers) are supposed to reasonably resemble the suspect in terms of age, height and weight so that the suspect does not stand out. A full and fair examination of all the circumstances of the subject crime, and all the evidence involved, is necessary. Judges should include within jury instructions clear and concise instructions on how to evaluate and make use of eyewitness testimony during their deliberations. He claimed police did not have the power to use firearms in the riots. 'And that's why peaceful protests ended up becoming violent - because of the foreign intervention. But there is more to the story. John Worboyss victims alleged that he assaulted them after offering them champagne which he had spiked with drugs. Psychologists have learned a lot about why such errors happen. This can be true even in situations where the witness has an ample opportunity to observe the offender. Thanks for reading Scientific American. The shooter wound up crashing the car and escaping on foot. 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. Blood and fingerprint evidence, per se, would not be deemed unreliable. 70 percent of the 349 wrongful convictions. 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. Carter has now been indicted for the murder by a grand jury, and Lydell Grant was released from prison. In addition to implementing double-blind lineup procedures, its essential that lineup administrators document eyewitnesses confidence immediately following an identification. Column: 15 minutes of fame flies by. 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? 'To the extent that Daesh or even ISIS exploited the situation to establish a presence in Iran. After the rape, with the victim now locked in the trunk, the rapist attempted to drive the womans vehicle out of the parking garage but was prevented from doing so by the two parking lot attendants who recognized the victims car and noticed that she was not driving it. His doctors maintained that he was suffering from pre-senile dementia, and he couldnt remember three numbers backwards or the name of the US president. A neurologist also claimed that Saunders brain was small for a man his age and showed evidence of shrinking. Thanks to the work of the Innocence Project of Texas, new DNA testing on biological material collected from underneath the victims fingernails cleared Grant and implicated another man, Jermarico Carter, who police said confessed to the killing. Subsequent memory tests, including the dramatic one that occurs in court in front of the jury, constitute contaminated evidence. The pathologist discovered that one of the babies had in fact died from a viral infection, not cot death. 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. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Instructing an expert witness is not unusualthere are many much-publicised cases where the role of expert evidence has been significant. 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. In 2011, Sally Challen was convicted of murdering her husband before Guildford Crown Court. A new version of that legislation, AB 308, is pending in the state Senate, though passage in this session is unlikely. Hossein Amirabdollahian told the host 'this is not the way to conduct an interview' after he insisting women in Iran had 'all the necessary, required freedoms' and accused Western media of fueling protests there. She questioned the statistical basis of Professor Meadows evidence, which had led to Sally Clark being sentenced to life in prison. 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. Advertise to our national and international criminal justice audience at The Crime Report and support our mission. He was 19 at the time of that attack. Most of these witnesses personally knew Flowers, and many had grown up with him, lived in his same neighborhood. 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. Recently, post-conviction DNA exonerations of innocent persons have dramatically highlighted the problems with eyewitness identifications. or debate this issue live on our message boards. The variables include: viewing conditions (lighting-distance-duration), distracting stimuli (weapons-loud noises) and internal states of the observer (attention-motivation-skill-prejudice). 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. In recent years, more and more jurisdictions have come to accept expert testimony on the reliability of eyewitness identification. Videos circulating on Twitter appeared to show dozens of UN diplomats walking out as he started to speak. He served 61 years in prison before being released on parole in February 2020. Iran's foreign minister could not stop smirking as he was grilled about his country's record on women's rights in a combative interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday. Thus, Chester was charged with three separate felonies as a way to overwhelm him and break him down. Law enforcement officers, prosecutors, attorneys, and jurors need to realize that just because a witness says so does not make it so. Improper lineup procedures can also lead to witness misidentifications. 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. 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. Similarly, a witness may mistakenly perceive the circumstances of a crime or event, such as a car accident. 'Do you ask other countries? The Manson admissibility test consists of two steps. Jurors trust a confident eyewitness and believe they are telling the truth and that their testimony is accurate [1]. The psychiatrist formed an opinion of her mental state at the time of the homicide. Two police officers thought the sketch resembled Miller, a man they had questioned a few days earlier. Discover world-changing science. 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. While 30+ years of research is too much to summarize in a few paragraphs, we will outline the general problems with eyewitness testimony as well as some of them more major research that has been performed on the subject. Expert witness evidence is not needed in all legal proceedings but it plays an important part in many cases. 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. 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. The Innocence Project found that out of 138 cases, two-thirds of the DNA exonerated cases were due to an eyewitness testimony (Howitt, 2012). To see why, let us revisit those DNA exoneration cases that so often involve eyewitness misidentification. 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. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. After . Kendall Taggart BuzzFeed News Reporter Some courts have held it as an abuse of discretion for a trial judge to bar the defense from admitting expert testimony on eyewitness identification. Family weapons were used to kill the victims in the Murdaugh case, prosecutor says Prosecutor Creighton Waters speaks during closing arguments on Wednesday, March 1. Nonetheless, the attendants mistakenly identified Miller in a subsequent police lineup. You can get our highlights each weekend.]. Attributing that error to the unreliability of eyewitness memory is, in our view, pointing the finger of blame in the wrong direction. The transcript from Lydell Grants trial revealed that the homicide detective in charge of investigating the case administered the lineup to the eyewitnesses. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Editorial: He spent 38 years in prison for a crime he didnt commit. Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? 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. 21 Commonwealth v. Walker, 625 Pa. 450, 47678 (2014). Not so with eyewitness memory. 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. An Iranian girl passed away and we were all very sorry about that. 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. Thanks for reading The Crime Report! Chester denied having anything to do with these other crimes but was identified by the victims based on these suggestive procedures. In one clip an unidentified Iranian woman can be heard saying: 'They are without shame and should be embarrassed. But a comparison of the pairs mugshots reveals that they bear little physical resemblance to one another beyond both being Black men. Examples of when an expert witness may be needed include: To hire an expert witness, you may make contact with us via our simple online contact form, call us on 01865 587 865 or by requesting a call back from our team via the link below. Instrumental to the prosecutions theory was the testimony of at least twelve witnesses, each placing Flowers along a discrete portion of the route he was supposed to have traveled that day. His subsequent return to business raised further questions about the evidence that led to his early release. Having served 10 years in prison, the psychologist recommended his release from prison. Confidence collected at the time of an identification during a double-blind lineup procedure is informative regarding the eyewitnesss accuracy. Readers speculate why, Letters to the Editor: Serious about the drought? Create your free account or Sign in to continue. What law enforcementand the publicneeds to know. Arnaud, Celia Henry. 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. 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. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? 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. 32 National Research Council, Identifying The Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification 38, 4-8 (2014). Renowned Expert witnesses include doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other professionals who are instructed to give expert opinions in legal proceedings. Even though no connection between Leiterman and Ruelas was ever established, the prosecution theorized that all three must have been together after midnight at the murder scene in 1969, with the preschooler bleeding on the victim for some unknown reason while Leiterman killed her. Gov. My Blog cases where eyewitnesses were right. 22 Edwin M. Borchard, Convicting the Innocent: Sixty-Five Actual Errors of Criminal Justice (New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., 1932). 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. A "double-blind" lineup or photo-array is when the person interviewing the potential eyewitness does not which of the persons in a photo array or lineup is the actual suspect. Miller was ultimately charged with rape, robbery and kidnapping. 26 The Innocence Project, DNA Exoneree Case Profiles,. 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? She unsuccessfully appealed against her conviction in 2000. More and more research has come out in the last few decades indicating that there are many dangers to relying on eyewitnesses, from the uncertainty of relying on a persons memory all the way to how they are questioned at the police station. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, 28 Brandon L. Garrett, Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong 6368 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). The perpetrator had a brief conversation with the parking lot attendants and then fled the scene. Document Witness Confidence and Videotape Witness Identifications. Age and showed evidence of shrinking with eyewitness identifications do with these crimes! Of convictions that have been overturned because of DNA evidence, which had led to early! Lineup to the eyewitnesses, eyewitness evidence needs to be safeguarded against contamination diplomats walking out as started! Probably be declared inadmissible 26 the Innocence Project, DNA Exoneree case Profiles,,. 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