Thanks for reading The Crime Report! Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. But eyewitnesses aren't always right, and poor investigative practices can make matters worse. 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. One reported that he had identified Grant without doubt or hesitation. 6 Wells, Memon, Penrod, Eyewitness Evidence: Improving Its Probative Value, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, (2006). In 1999, Sally Clark, a solicitor, was convicted of murdering her two infant sons (one in 1996 and the other in 1998) at Chester Crown Court. Do you ask other countries who are in our region but are allies of the United States the same kinds of questions that you're asking me about the women's hijab? Advertise to our national and international criminal justice audience at The Crime Report and support our mission. 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. Speak to our experts today for advice. Another stated that the killers face was burned into [her] memory immediately.. 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. 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. Confidence reported at trial after the eyewitness has received confirmatory feedback is not. The shooter had borrowed Heidelbergs car, and when Heidelberg went to retrieve his car later that night he was arrested by officers at the scene. 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. 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. Dan tries to find out more about Mustafa . Nevertheless, these subtle behavioral cues affect eyewitnesses decisions by making them more likely to choose the suspect. What it means is that the malleability of memory can harm reliability. What would that mean for the reliability of the blood or fingerprint evidence, for example, collected at that scene? U. L. Rev. 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. 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. 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. Expert evidence may be important in determining the right outcome. It should be revived and approved. This helps to safeguard against overly eager police officers who might implicitly encourage eyewitnesses (with tone of voice, body language, etc.) It marks the longest-running anti-government protests in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, with hundreds killed as a result. Judges should strive to make sure the jury is informed of all of the identifications an eyewitness has made prior to the trial. Judges should include within jury instructions clear and concise instructions on how to evaluate and make use of eyewitness testimony during their deliberations. Arizona State University provides funding as a member of The Conversation US. But eyewitnesses allege she was severely beaten and died as a result of police brutality. Women in Iran have all the necessary, required freedoms within the framework of the law,' he added. Thomas D. Albright, director of the Vision Center Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, listed some of the many variables affecting eyewitness testimony in a 2017 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, entitled Why Eyewitnesses Fail.. Even if he allows it, he will have to instruct the jury about the variables that can lead to misidentification. They found that when showing violent and non-violent crimes on videotape to subjects and then prompting them with questions later, the witnesses had more and more difficulty remembering certain details as the violence in the video went up.8. You can get our highlights each weekend.]. 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. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Kendall Taggart BuzzFeed News Reporter She questioned the statistical basis of Professor Meadows evidence, which had led to Sally Clark being sentenced to life in prison. After his conviction at Croydon Crown Court, several more women made allegations of sexual assault against him. Police said they believed Weger was a suspect in a rape that had occurred a few years earlier. 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. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. 'To the extent that Daesh or even ISIS exploited the situation to establish a presence in Iran. Two other eyewitnesses, a couple, remembered discussing their selection with one another and confirming each others decisions. 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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. Retrieved March, 2019. Ruling in the case of a man convicted of manslaughter and aggravated assault, the court noted that several variables can produce mistaken eyewitness testimony. The processes at play in Lydell Grants case are predictable and unfortunately common. Miller was ultimately charged with rape, robbery and kidnapping. Assessing confidence is critical because it provides direct information about the trustworthiness of the uncontaminated ID. Here is a link to a general overview on eyewitness testimony from the National Science Foundation. Overall, an issue plaguing both courts and law enforcement is the lack of standard procedures to safeguard defendants against unreliable eyewitness testimony. First, another DNA profileone belonging to John Ruelas, who was just a four-year-old preschooler at the time of the murderwas found on a blood spot taken from the victims left hand. Psychological scientists, however, have challenged many of the assumptions of the legal system and the general public regarding the. [Youre smart and curious about the world. If a judge finds the eyewitness testimony unreliable, he can suppress its use at trial. Instead of concluding that DNA evidence is inherently unreliable because of the contamination that apparently occurred in this case, a more reasonable conclusion would be that for DNA testing to be reliable, proper protocols must be followed. 15 Perry v. New Hampshire, 565 U.S. 228, 248 (2012). Imagine if police let unauthorized people have willy-nilly access to a crime scene that is under investigation. 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. 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. 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. Having served 10 years in prison, the psychologist recommended his release from prison. 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. 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. In 2009, he was charged with assaulting 12 women. Instead evidence collected at the contaminated crime scene would probably be declared inadmissible. In addition to implementing double-blind lineup procedures, its essential that lineup administrators document eyewitnesses confidence immediately following an identification. 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. or debate this issue live on our message boards. 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. 5 Brewer & Treyens, Role of Schemata in Memory for Places, Cognitive Psychology 13.2 (1981). 'You're supposed to interview me but you're actually having a confrontation with me,' he told Amanpour. Similarly, a witness may mistakenly perceive the circumstances of a crime or event, such as a car accident. 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 . 9 According to the innocence project, mistaken identification is a leading factor in wrongful convictions. Guidance can help jurors who might not know what to make of conflicting testimony. Readers speculate why, Letters to the Editor: Serious about the drought? Type above and press Enter to search. So are The Conversations authors and editors. 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. Sally Challen claimed she experienced years of emotional abuse before killing him with a hammer. 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 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. 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. All six of those eyewitnesses were wrong. There have been hundreds of cases in which mistaken eyewitness identification testimony led to the conviction of innocent people. Los Angeles, Review: A reimagined Secret Garden fails to flower anew at the Ahmanson Theatre, Editorial: Ousting L.A. Countys chief probation officer isnt enough. According to the trial transcript, most of the eyewitnesses testified to having been positive when they picked Grant out of the lineup. Wegers attorneys, Celeste Stack and I, continue to seek to prove Chesters innocence and are seeking to review and analyze the physical evidence and are working to be able to conduct forensic testing on some of that evidence. One estimate based on a 1989 survey of prosecutors suggests that at least 80,000 eyewitnesses make identifications of suspects in criminal investigations each year.25 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). She was sentenced to life in prison. Letters to the Editor: Yes, L.A. drivers are getting worse. This is not always the case. In the Miller case, a. During the meeting Amirabdollahian said Irans government was committed to upholding human rights. In Winona, Mississippi on July 16, 1996, four people were shot and killed at Tardy furniture store. 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). Who can help student-athletes cash in? After . Well ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. 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. This evidence was not presented in the initial trial. 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 Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. I am currently involved in another case in which the failings of witness identification are starkly evident. The reliability of these alleged identifications was suspect, since the officers would have had only a fraction of a second to observe the driver whizz by them at a high rate of speed at night. Renowned Expert witnesses include doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other professionals who are instructed to give expert opinions in legal proceedings. In contrast, a high-confidence ID is highly accurate, a surprising fact that has only recently come to be appreciated by experimental psychologists. Press Esc to cancel. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Editorial: He spent 38 years in prison for a crime he didnt commit. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison. It was the right decision on the time. 28 Brandon L. Garrett, Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong 6368 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). Allows it, he will have to instruct the jury is informed of of. Having been positive when they picked Grant out of the law, ' he told.... Evidence, for example cases where eyewitnesses were right collected at the crime Report and support mission! He didnt commit he told Amanpour a link to a general overview on eyewitness testimony from the national Science.! Tardy furniture store right outcome, a high-confidence ID is highly accurate, a couple, remembered discussing their with. 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