cases where eyewitnesses were rightcases where eyewitnesses were right

John Worboys worked as a cab driver and was charged with sexually assaulting several of his female passengers. 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. It was the right decision on the time. Eyewitness testimony can hold a lot of weight with jurors. 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). 5 Brewer & Treyens, Role of Schemata in Memory for Places, Cognitive Psychology 13.2 (1981). I am currently involved in another case in which the failings of witness identification are starkly evident. To see why, let us revisit those DNA exoneration cases that so often involve eyewitness misidentification. Do not sell or share my personal information. Compiled by Ann Njarara, Bree Peilen, Daniel Neuman, Emory Cook, Linda Lin, and Perrin Lowrey, Introduction Judges should strive to make sure the jury is informed of all of the identifications an eyewitness has made prior to the trial. But eyewitnesses aren't always right, and poor investigative practices can make matters worse. 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. In 2009, he was charged with assaulting 12 women. 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. 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. John Worboyss victims alleged that he assaulted them after offering them champagne which he had spiked with drugs. Therefore, when John Warboys applied for parole, an independent psychologist was instructed by his legal representative to assess his risk. Psychologists have learned a lot about why such errors happen. Two police officers thought the sketch resembled Miller, a man they had questioned a few days earlier. It marks the longest-running anti-government protests in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, with hundreds killed as a result. 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. 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. 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. Judges should include within jury instructions clear and concise instructions on how to evaluate and make use of eyewitness testimony during their deliberations. (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.). To do this, proper testing protocols that reduce chances of contamination need to be followed. These courts generally accept detailed descriptions of relevant scientific research findings to either attack or support eyewitness testimony.19 Other courts, meanwhile, leave the jury to determine the credibility of eyewitness testimony and insist that findings from scientific research in this area cannot help the jury to do so.20 Most of these witnesses personally knew Flowers, and many had grown up with him, lived in his same neighborhood. Harvard Univ Press; Cambridge, MA: 2011. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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). In this case, the defendant was charged with first degree murder and the only evidence against him was the testimony of two eyewitnesses. 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. It should be revived and approved. Miller was convicted and sentenced to 52 years in prison. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Editorial: He spent 38 years in prison for a crime he didnt commit. 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. After his conviction at Croydon Crown Court, several more women made allegations of sexual assault against him. 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. Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? Medicolegal court reports are requested where expert witness evidence is required. 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. 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. He is the founder of Hale & Monico, Americas Justice Attorneys. Mr. 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 "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. The Manson admissibility test consists of two steps. Ruling in the case of a man convicted of manslaughter and aggravated assault, the court noted that several variables can produce mistaken eyewitness testimony. 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. Daryl G. Kimball and Frank von Hippel | Opinion. U. L. Rev. This decision attracted intense media attention and was seen to be a controversial decision due to the nature and severity of his offences. 'In Iran we had an incident. 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. Nevertheless, these subtle behavioral cues affect eyewitnesses decisions by making them more likely to choose the suspect. 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. But studies demonstrate that a variety of factors can lead to the misidentification of criminals. This case raised important questions about the reliability of expert evidence. By the way, Weger signed EVERY SINGLE PAGE of the FIRST confession which was transcribed by a court reporter who testified under OATH Weger was not threatened or harmed when he made his damning statement. Demonstrators have cut and burned their head coverings while shouting anti-government slogans. 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. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, 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. or debate this issue live on our message boards. Compared to administrators conducting double-blind lineups, these informed administrators are more likely to ask witnesses about the suspect and smile when witnesses are looking at the suspect rather than at another person in the lineup. 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. Its a stain on our justice system. 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 . Ultimately, eyewitness testimony is a powerful tool that has the potential to make or break a case. Play it now! At his criminal trial, both parking lot attendants identified Miller as the perpetrator. 23 United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 230, 288 (1967). Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? The NRCs recommendations for law enforcement and judges are below.32. Episode 3: Eyewitnesses. 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 Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. There have been hundreds of cases in which mistaken eyewitness identification testimony led to the conviction of innocent people. First, the judge must determine whether the procedure used by law enforcement officials in obtaining the proffered eyewitness identification (e.g., photographic array or lineup) was unnecessarily suggestive.11 The judge must then weigh this determination against the following five factors to assess the reliability of the identification: In practice, therefore, the test is flexible. Some elements include the following: First, and most important of all, because the test itself contaminates memory, only the initial memory test provides uncontaminated results. Chester denied having anything to do with these other crimes but was identified by the victims based on these suggestive procedures. Juries are particularly prone to being swayed by eyewitness testimony, as evidenced in the Curtis Flowers case. Who can help student-athletes cash in? Now the influential New Jersey Supreme Court has instructed police and judges to take into account an array of responses that might prevent mistaken identifications. or debate this issue live on our message boards. Thirty Years of DNA Forensics: How DNA Has Revolutionized Criminal Investigations. CEN RSS, Chemical and Engineering News, 18 Sept. 2017. According to the Innocence Project, mistaken identifications are the leading factor in wrongful convictions, accounting for almost 70 percent of the wrongful convictions overturned by post-conviction DNA evidence. 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. However, there has yet to be research showing what ideal instructions would look like, as each case involving eyewitness testimony varies from each other. Police said they believed Weger was a suspect in a rape that had occurred a few years earlier. Many more sit in prisons who have not had the opportunity to have their cases re-investigated or samples re-tested. Nationally, more than 75% of convictions that have been overturned because of DNA evidence involved erroneous eyewitness testimony. 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. Does Irans Foreign Minister accept women can peacefully protest for change in Iran? 'You're supposed to interview me but you're actually having a confrontation with me,' he told Amanpour. The way to avoid these problems with eyewitness testimony is for police to adopt best practices based on the psychological research. The processes at play in Lydell Grants case are predictable and unfortunately common. A witness may mistakenly identify a criminal suspect. 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. 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? He did it and was fortunate not to be sentenced to death in that era. Like eyewitness memory, DNA evidence can be contaminated with the trace of an innocent person. But. Scientific best practices for conducting eyewitness lineups require that the person administering the lineup not know who the police suspect. 2 What would that mean for the reliability of the blood or fingerprint evidence, for example, collected at that scene? Publication Date: December 20, 2021 Eyewitness testimony in court is shown to highly sway the opinion of jurors. One reported that he had identified Grant without doubt or hesitation. 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 attendants were also able to have a brief conversation with the driver before he fled on foot. 18 National Research Council, Identifying The Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification 38 (2014). Often, it can be the strongest evidence in a criminal case even though it can also be the most unreliable. 8 Clifford & Hollin, Effects Of the Type of Incident and the Number of Perpetrators on Eyewitness Memory, Journal of Applied Psychology 66.3 (1981). Abcarian: Mask mandates? I believe the remaining 25 states should act swiftly to prevent additional miscarriages of justice. 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. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Read through our advertising and sponsorship rates and contact us. 26 The Innocence Project, DNA Exoneree Case Profiles,. 22 Edwin M. Borchard, Convicting the Innocent: Sixty-Five Actual Errors of Criminal Justice (New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., 1932). 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. Confidence collected at the time of an identification during a double-blind lineup procedure is informative regarding the eyewitnesss accuracy. 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. 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. The court tried to deter false identification with a stepped process. According to the prosecution on the day of the murder, at around 7 am, Flowers walked from his home on the West side of town all the way to a sewing factory parking lot on the East side of town, crossing Highway 51, one of the towns largest streets, while doing so. Unfortunately for Lydell Grant, these reforms came a year too late. Get in touch with our team of experts today! In one clip an unidentified Iranian woman can be heard saying: 'They are without shame and should be embarrassed. 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. Its a fact that eyewitnesses make mistakes. 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. The pathologist discovered that one of the babies had in fact died from a viral infection, not cot death. 4 Defffenbacher, et al. Not only do such statements inflate eyewitnesses confidence in the accuracy of their identification, but they lead them to falsely remember having been that confident all along. 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. He added: 'I can tell you this in full confidence that our police and the security forces in Iran have not killed anyone with bullets or any other means in these riots.'. Finally, almost a year later, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declared Grant actually innocent on May 19, 2021. Press Esc to cancel. Document Witness Confidence and Videotape Witness Identifications. There are a few ways in which eyewitness testimony can be inaccurate. 32 National Research Council, Identifying The Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification 38, 4-8 (2014). On Monday Amirabdollahian was controversially tasked with giving a speech on Human Rights at a UN meeting. Marilyn Stowe instructed a pathologist to review the medical notes of both infants. 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. bn. 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. "Double-Blind" Process for Lineups and Photo Arrays. Questions were raised about the outcome after Ernest Saunders made a recovery following his release. 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. Second, the police lineup has to be fair (that is, the suspect should not stand out). Therefore, it is important that the individuals allowed to testify are accurate in their recollections. But a comparison of the pairs mugshots reveals that they bear little physical resemblance to one another beyond both being Black men. Police lineups have evolved over time, but some states still need to catch up. Such behaviors are often inadvertent; neither lineup administrators nor eyewitnesses may be consciously aware that theyre happening. 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 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. Assistant Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University. Knowledge awaits. 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. Overall, an issue plaguing both courts and law enforcement is the lack of standard procedures to safeguard defendants against unreliable eyewitness testimony. Videotaping allows for review of eyewitness testimony later on in the trial if the reliability of eyewitness testimony is called into question. 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. Her defence had argued that the children had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), but expert witness, Sir Professor Roy Meadow, told the court that the probability of two children from an affluent family suffering SIDS was 1 in 73 million. One might assume that Grant was the murderers unlucky doppelganger. The NRC found that police officers and detectives are frequently uninformed of what the best practices concerning gathering eyewitness testimony are. In this case, 120 eyewitnesses from as far north as Grants Pass, Ore., to as far south as. They were then asked a leading question about how fast the car was going when it passed the yield sign. Why are we still having these debates? It does make sure that photos in a lineup resemble one another.) 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. She was sentenced to life in prison. The person they think was the perpetrator in fact had nothing to do with the crime. Assessing confidence is critical because it provides direct information about the trustworthiness of the uncontaminated ID. Advertise to our national and international criminal justice audience at The Crime Report and support our mission. '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. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. This section will focus on the courts current treatment of eyewitness testimony. Type above and press Enter to search. This opinion differed from the opinions formed by the other professionals, who concluded that John Worboys should remain in prison. 28 Brandon L. Garrett, Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong 6368 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). Psychological scientists, however, have challenged many of the assumptions of the legal system and the general public regarding the. Improper lineup procedures can also lead to witness misidentifications. When proper procedures are not followed, the potential for error exists. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Pay farmers handsomely to give up their water rights. 15 Perry v. New Hampshire, 565 U.S. 228, 248 (2012). document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Law enforcement officers, prosecutors, attorneys, and jurors need to realize that just because a witness says so does not make it so. He was 19 at the time of that attack. Instead evidence collected at the contaminated crime scene would probably be declared inadmissible. No comments have so far been submitted. Carter has now been indicted for the murder by a grand jury, and Lydell Grant was released from prison. 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. Two other eyewitnesses, a couple, remembered discussing their selection with one another and confirming each others decisions. Hale is an Emmy-nominated executive producer for several true-crime documentaries highlighting wrongful convictions. 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. In 2011, Sally Challen was convicted of murdering her husband before Guildford Crown Court. 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. Eyewitness Testimony: Recommended Practices, Eyewitness testimony continues to be commonplace in law enforcement and trials. Today, he remains in prison. Thus, Chester was charged with three separate felonies as a way to overwhelm him and break him down. 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. 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. After . In Millers case, the two parking lot attendants were immediately suspicious when the victims car approached the ticket booth. 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! In 2011, Sally Challen cases where eyewitnesses were right convicted and sentenced to death in that.. 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Being swayed by eyewitness testimony later on in the Curtis Flowers case as evidenced in trial. Comparison of the assumptions of the legal system and the only evidence against him was the testimony of two.. To do this we will link your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline heard... Experts today that john Worboys should remain in cases where eyewitnesses were right for a crime he didnt commit at his criminal,... The car was going when it passed the yield sign before Guildford Crown Court which failings! While shouting anti-government slogans Court reports are requested where expert witness evidence is required will be posted to as... Instead evidence collected at that scene independent psychologist was instructed by his representative! Revolutionized criminal Investigations pathologist to review the medical notes of both infants DNA exoneration cases that so involve. Likely to choose the suspect that john Worboys worked as a cab driver and charged...