8 Clifford & Hollin, Effects Of the Type of Incident and the Number of Perpetrators on Eyewitness Memory, Journal of Applied Psychology 66.3 (1981). Law enforcement officers, prosecutors, attorneys, and jurors need to realize that just because a witness says so does not make it so. If the contaminated evidence is relied on to establish guilt versus innocence at a trial, the risk of a wrongful conviction is high. I believe the remaining 25 states should act swiftly to prevent additional miscarriages of justice. Press Esc to cancel. 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. In the Miller case, a. Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. 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. Two police officers thought the sketch resembled Miller, a man they had questioned a few days earlier. In this case, the defendant was charged with first degree murder and the only evidence against him was the testimony of two eyewitnesses. 21 Commonwealth v. Walker, 625 Pa. 450, 47678 (2014). 4 Defffenbacher, et al. 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. 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. 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. There have been hundreds of cases in which mistaken eyewitness identification testimony led to the conviction of innocent people. 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. 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. 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. 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. 10 Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 114 (1977). In addition to implementing double-blind lineup procedures, its essential that lineup administrators document eyewitnesses confidence immediately following an identification. Having served 10 years in prison, the psychologist recommended his release from prison. For every one of those tests, the eyewitnesses were, at best, uncertain. 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. 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. Overall, an issue plaguing both courts and law enforcement is the lack of standard procedures to safeguard defendants against unreliable eyewitness testimony. Continue reading with a Scientific American subscription. 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. Until he was released on parole, the 81-year-old Weger ranked as the second longest-held inmate in Illinois prison system. to select the person they believe to be a prime suspect. The person they think was the perpetrator in fact had nothing to do with the crime. by TCR Staff, The Crime Report May 24, 2021, This and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
. 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. Daryl G. Kimball and Frank von Hippel | Opinion. Finally, a witness may have more difficulty making a correct identification when he and the suspect are of different races. [Youre smart and curious about the world. The variables include: viewing conditions (lighting-distance-duration), distracting stimuli (weapons-loud noises) and internal states of the observer (attention-motivation-skill-prejudice). 2
Often, it can be the strongest evidence in a criminal case even though it can also be the most unreliable. 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. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. 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. But studies demonstrate that a variety of factors can lead to the misidentification of criminals. The Manson admissibility test consists of two steps. Such behaviors are often inadvertent; neither lineup administrators nor eyewitnesses may be consciously aware that theyre happening. 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. 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. 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. 14 Manson, 432 U.S. 98, 12526 (Marshall, J., dissenting). This helps to safeguard against overly eager police officers who might implicitly encourage eyewitnesses (with tone of voice, body language, etc.) Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy. To see why, let us revisit those DNA exoneration cases that so often involve eyewitness misidentification. 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. John Wixted is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Like eyewitness memory, DNA evidence can be contaminated with the trace of an innocent person. They were then asked a leading question about how fast the car was going when it passed the yield sign. Therefore, it is important that the individuals allowed to testify are accurate in their recollections. But when the witnesses had received a simple reinforcing comment following their identification (Good job, you got the guy), the mock jurors could no longer tell the difference between accurate and mistaken eyewitnesses. Marilyn Stowe instructed a pathologist to review the medical notes of both infants. Police said they believed Weger was a suspect in a rape that had occurred a few years earlier. (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.). 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. 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. 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Witnesses arent able to tell whether their testimony was influenced in this way. John Worboys was given an indeterminate prison sentence. 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. Pay farmers handsomely to give up their water rights. Not so with eyewitness memory. 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. She unsuccessfully appealed against her conviction in 2000. 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. 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. According to the same theory, 33 years later, in 2002, in an almost inconceivable coincidence, evidence samples from Mixer, Ruelas and Leiterman just happened to be together again in the Michigan State Police Laboratory. The ability of a person who witnesses a crime to later pick the perpetrator out of a lineup is atrociousright? (The Los Angeles Police Department does not conduct blind photo lineups, nor does it follow the commissions related recommendation that witnesses be shown photos one at a time. 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. Compiled by Ann Njarara, Bree Peilen, Daniel Neuman, Emory Cook, Linda Lin, and Perrin Lowrey, Introduction
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