Many more sit in prisons who have not had the opportunity to have their cases re-investigated or samples re-tested. When proper procedures are not followed, the potential for error exists. His offences led to him being named the black cab rapist by the UK press. Additional Reading: Truth, Lies and Police Lineups, The Crime Report, May 5, 2021. 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? 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. An Iranian girl passed away and we were all very sorry about that. 2 Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, For every one of those tests, the eyewitnesses were, at best, uncertain. In the Miller case, a. Jurors trust a confident eyewitness and believe they are telling the truth and that their testimony is accurate [1]. To date, 25 states have adopted these core procedural reforms, including Texas in 2011, one year after the investigation of Aaron Scheerhoorns murder. (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.). Nevertheless, these subtle behavioral cues affect eyewitnesses decisions by making them more likely to choose the suspect. Why are we still having these debates? 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. In the Miller case, a woman was raped in her car in a parking garage in downtown Chicago. What the cases of Miller and Heidelberg highlight is that witnesses are often wrong. At the time of his release, Jerry Miller had served over 26 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. 'In Iran we had an incident. But eyewitnesses aren't always right, and poor investigative practices can make matters worse. To do this, proper testing protocols that reduce chances of contamination need to be followed. 31 Elizabeth Loftus, Eyewitness Science and the Legal System, 14 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 110 (2018). In this case, the defendant was charged with first degree murder and the only evidence against him was the testimony of two eyewitnesses. Last updated: 27 February 2023. [Youre smart and curious about the world. 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? or debate this issue live on our message boards. Expert Evidence In Family Cases Where Spouse Is Unable To Return To Work Due To Illness, The revised psychopathy checklist (PCL-R), Proving Automatism Defences In Criminal Cases, Understanding the Value of an Occupational Therapist Expert Witness, Causation in personal injury or medical negligence, Assessments of sexual offending, violent behaviour offending, arson, and stalking. 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. Harvard Univ Press; Cambridge, MA: 2011. 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. Miller was ultimately charged with rape, robbery and kidnapping. Having served 10 years in prison, the psychologist recommended his release from prison. Kendall Taggart BuzzFeed News Reporter Blood and fingerprint evidence, per se, would not be deemed unreliable. A new version of that legislation, AB 308, is pending in the state Senate, though passage in this session is unlikely. to select the person they believe to be a prime suspect. Prosecutors, though, have no murder weapon, bloody clothes or eyewitnesses, leaving them to build their case about Murdaugh's murky timeline of his whereabouts when the crime happened in 2021 . John Worboys was given an indeterminate prison sentence. 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! Mahsa Amini, 22, died on September 16, three days after falling into a coma following her arrest, After the death of Mahsa Amini, Anti Iran protests have been held in many parts of the world. The psychiatrist formed an opinion of her mental state at the time of the homicide. The NRC found that police officers and detectives are frequently uninformed of what the best practices concerning gathering eyewitness testimony are. Andy Hale is a civil rights attorney, specializing in wrongful convictions in Chicago, Illinois. Readers speculate why, Letters to the Editor: Serious about the drought? 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. His subsequent return to business raised further questions about the evidence that led to his early release. 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. 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 have been hundreds of cases in which mistaken eyewitness identification testimony led to the conviction of innocent people. Even where a judge determines that a given identification procedure is unnecessarily suggestive, the judge may nonetheless admit the results of the procedure if they are deemed reliable based on these factors.13 In his dissenting opinion, Justice Marshall criticized the Court for ignoring studies showing that unnecessarily suggestive eyewitness identifications had led to erroneous convictions even where such identifications had been deemed reliable.14 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. Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Farm Heroes Saga, the #4 Game on iTunes. In this case, 120 eyewitnesses from as far north as Grants Pass, Ore., to as far south as. "Double-Blind" Process for Lineups and Photo Arrays. 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 9 According to the innocence project, mistaken identification is a leading factor in wrongful convictions. After his conviction at Croydon Crown Court, several more women made allegations of sexual assault against him. Renowned Expert witnesses include doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other professionals who are instructed to give expert opinions in legal proceedings. 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. Witness misidentifications can affect both plaintiffs and defendants. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? As a result, witnesses who have received confirmatory feedback provide testimony that is highly persuasive to jurors. See here: Innocence Project, Eyewitness misidentification accessed on March 9, 2019. Imagine if police let unauthorized people have willy-nilly access to a crime scene that is under investigation. 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. This section will focus on the courts current treatment of eyewitness testimony. Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Overall, an issue plaguing both courts and law enforcement is the lack of standard procedures to safeguard defendants against unreliable eyewitness testimony. 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. Continue reading with a Scientific American subscription. Even if he allows it, he will have to instruct the jury about the variables that can lead to misidentification. This is not always the case. Unfortunately for Lydell Grant, these reforms came a year too late. (2017). It comes just two days after diplomats walked out of a speech given by the Iranian minister to the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva. They are child killers.'. I believe the remaining 25 states should act swiftly to prevent additional miscarriages of justice. Claimed to have called out to Flowers that day. 21 Commonwealth v. Walker, 625 Pa. 450, 47678 (2014). The transcript from Lydell Grants trial revealed that the homicide detective in charge of investigating the case administered the lineup to the eyewitnesses. Warmer storms could cause problems, Column: Supreme Court conservatives may want to block student loan forgiveness. Many eyewitnesses testified with high confidence despite earlier expressions of uncertainty.28. 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. 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There are a few ways in which eyewitness testimony can be inaccurate. circuit court, the 29-year-old was convicted of a rape that he did not commit and was sentenced to five life sentences. 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. The Innocence Project found that out of 138 cases, two-thirds of the DNA exonerated cases were due to an eyewitness testimony (Howitt, 2012). And third, the confidence expressed by the eyewitness following an identification of someone from the lineup must be recorded. Specifically, the eyewitness had identified the defendant from her window, as the defendant was standing in the dark next to a police officer; however, the eyewitness had pointed to the defendant spontaneously, without the police asking her to do so.16 The Court ruled that, because the police had not induced the identification under suggestive circumstances, the trial judge had not erred in admitting the eyewitness testimony without assessing its reliability under the second step of the Manson test.17 Yet, based on, among other things, this powerful purported eyewitness evidence, Heidelberg was convicted. 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. 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. Research has repeatedly demonstrated that simple confirming comments such as these have dramatic effects on eyewitnesses testimony. 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. 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). 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. Play it now! This opinion differed from the opinions formed by the other professionals, who concluded that John Worboys should remain in prison. No comments have so far been submitted. 'This is not the way to conduct an interview. Gov. Scientific best practices for conducting eyewitness lineups require that the person administering the lineup not know who the police suspect. the time between the crime and the identification procedure. Ruling in the case of a man convicted of manslaughter and aggravated assault, the court noted that several variables can produce mistaken eyewitness testimony. cases where eyewitnesses were rightammo donation to ukraine. Second, the police lineup has to be fair (that is, the suspect should not stand out). 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. 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. Confidence collected at the time of an identification during a double-blind lineup procedure is informative regarding the eyewitnesss accuracy. A witness may mistakenly identify a criminal suspect. The pathologist discovered that one of the babies had in fact died from a viral infection, not cot death. 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. 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. Psychologists have learned a. Ultimately, eyewitness testimony is a powerful tool that has the potential to make or break a case. Noxious fumes wafted into their classrooms, causing some to need hospital treatment after complaining of headaches, heart palpitations, lethargy and being unable to move. Juries are particularly prone to being swayed by eyewitness testimony, as evidenced in the Curtis Flowers case. Consider the important, and often overlooked, distinction between malleability and reliability. 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. You can get our highlights each weekend.]. Pay farmers handsomely to give up their water rights. 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. This helps to safeguard against overly eager police officers who might implicitly encourage eyewitnesses (with tone of voice, body language, etc.) 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 much the same way, an eyewitness can be led to falsely remember someone committing a crime that was actually committed by someone else. Marilyn Stowe instructed a pathologist to review the medical notes of both infants. Similarly, a witness may mistakenly perceive the circumstances of a crime or event, such as a car accident. 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. 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