You are walking to your car after attending your evening class and suddenly out of nowhere a person appears and physically assaults you. You make brief eye contact with the individual but the suspect scurries off with your wallet in their possession. Stunned at what just happened – you call the police and file an incident report. Several days later, you are asked to come down to the police station to identify the suspect from a police lineup. You ID the individual and the person is handcuffed and sent to jail. Easy enough, right? No – not really. Few months later, just when you think you are putting the whole thing behind you, the police officer notifies you and states that a camera installed near the location captured the whole event on tape and the person you identified was not the person who committed the crime against you.
Now let’s look at it from another angle.
You are driving to your new job after dropping off your daughter at daycare. After working several minimum wage positions, you are so happy that you have finally secured employment in a job that pays a decent salary. As you drive, you think wonderful thoughts about the future of your family and how this new job is going to change your current living situation. Before you know it, police sirens behind you damper the mood and you pull over. Darn- you didn’t come to a complete stop at the stop sign. While being asked for your license and registration, the police officer begins to question you about an assault and robbery incident that happened a few days ago at the college campus. You insist that you have no idea what the officer is referring to but he asks that you come by the police station for questioning. So you cooperate. At the police station, you are identified by the victim as the suspect who committed the crime. You insist on your innocence and provide an alibi but because you have a criminal record, you are held without bail till your trial begins. You are placed in a 6 by 8 feet jail cell and lose your job and your apartment. Your daughter moves in with her grandmother who is unable to provide for her or take her to daycare. You sit in jail hopelessly for months agonizing over how you lost everything. The video tape surfaces and the officers release you with no more than a simple apology. Back in society, you are forced to start from scratch. Damage done.
What I have outlined above is a simulated scenario whereby an eyewitness testimony sent an innocent person to jail and damaged his life. I wish I could say that these sorts of mistakes are uncommon, but that’s just not the case. Misidentification is the “single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in 72% of convictions overturned through DNA testing” (Innocence Project, 2014). With numbers such as this, how reliable are eyewitness testimonies anyway? How well does our memory actually serve us? What type of ways can we counteract this problem? With this blog, I will shed light on all these questions as I detail the problems surrounding eyewitness testimonies with the hope that if you are ever on a jury or even the victim/witness of a crime, that you take into account science in the courtroom.
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I agree, Wrongful conviction might be a challenge to eliminate but recently it becoming evident that convicting someone not the end of the story. How eyewitness, police, jury as well as the lawyers and the court get their facts wrong this big? It is troubling to send someone to prison or hang for crimes the person has not committed.
ReplyDeleteJury retains big burden on this matter. Since prosecutors will bring all types of evidences to support and convict the individual in questions, jury need to examine the evidence provided very carefully and understand what the consequences are when the chose one way or the other.
Hi Tesfay - I agree, the jury definitely needs to be mindful when convicting someone based on eyewitness testimony.
DeleteThis topic is very interesting and relevant. It has been shown that eyewitnesses are better at accurately identifying suspects when they are shown pictures of each individual, rather than identifying the perpetrator in a line-up. This is because witnesses are able to compare the picture of the person to their memory, where as in a line-up, the witness is merely comparing each suspect to the next one. I think this opens us up to racial profiling as well, as many would ask "Which person looks like a criminal?" The truly troubling part of all this to me is that this has been proven by psychologists but not implemented by the criminal justice system. It is necessary to inform people, as you are, in the hopes that they keep these things in mind. But I am also wondering how we can force the system to change. When will police officers, lawyers and judges change their policies and what will persuade them to do so? Why haven't they already?
ReplyDeleteHi Amanda,
DeleteYes - it certainly does open the doors up to racial profiling and I think this goes along with implicit bias which you discussed in your blog. Each one of the questions you posed here are very important and I hope to discuss them in detail in my future posts. Please check back and let's continue the conversation.
The topic is very interesting. Immense importance is given to the eye witness without looking into the case further. I think eye witness statements should be just used as a source in the investigation rather than a judgment. Relying only on an eye witness can also lead them to misuse this power and in some cases provide wrong information. A law should be made to first interrogate the eye witness and go in depth with investigation before handcuffing some innocent person. This seems like a simple issue to comprehend but why is it so difficult for our system to understand and take try to change it.
ReplyDeleteHi Ayesha - thanks for your comment. I certainly hope that our system does try and understand the problem and work towards fixing it.
DeleteThis has been a huge problem with the justice system and even bigger when it involves counseling and false memories. Eye witness accounts should only be used if the person has a photographic memory but no one really has this.
ReplyDeleteThere was an experiment done by the Sydney-based University of South Wales school of psychology on eyewitness accounts, the put subjects into either a positive mood or a negative mood and had them recall a person stealing a purse. The results showed that the subjects in a positive mood were less likely to have good recall of the situation and had poor judgement. The subjects with negative moods were shown to have really good memories of the situation. The link to the article http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-08/uons-era082004.php
I still think eyewitness accounts are very damaging and should not be used in court or in a line up. Police can also alter the memories of what the person looked like, helping the problem with wrongful convictions.
Therapy can also trigger false memories and could cause a person to make false allegations, like child abuse or molestation.
I still think the percentage of eyewitness accounts are wrong and we really need to look into using different methods to convict.
Hi Crystal - thank you so much for providing the link. This will be helpful when creating my future posts. Also - thanks for bringing up false memories. Most people don't realize that it is a real mental experience.
DeleteHmm! What a topic Marwa, quite interesting. I like the scenarios you opened this blog with and the fact that you allowed your readers to look at it in two different ways is quite a technique. Your blog has managed to make me look at my own blog from a different angle. Ex-convicts Re-entry into the society is quite something and people never seem to really care about it because well, it has never happened to them. However, there are people out there, who made some bad choices but are really trying to turn their lives around but the current system seems to be a standing block for these people and yet we are surprise or easy to judge when these people turn to their old ways in order to survive. It's a bigger issue indeed and it will definitely take time to change.
ReplyDeleteHi John,
DeleteI read your blog and your topic is very near and dear to my heart. You are absolutely correct that the current system is blocking the positive re-assimilation of these ex-offenders, yet people get mad when the person turns to illegal methods to earn a living. It's completely crazy how society works! It must be changed. Anyhow, thanks for your comment, John.
Your topic is very interesting and blog title is very persuasive. I like how you start your blog by providing the scenarios and the captions that you used for your blog is very creative to me. This issue is new for me to know and I like that you have bring this topic up. I also think that police should not take eye witnesses reports seriously. They should include their reports in the investigations but not take final decisions on eye witnesses’ statements. Also, they should do complete investigations on the issues first because this can help to save an innocent people lives from damage.
ReplyDeleteHi Sarah,
DeleteI'm glad you found the topic interesting! Please come back to learn more about how science can help with eyewitness testimony.
Very interesting topic. I love the way you introduced it as well. You definitely made me want to continue reading. The story and unexpected results really put into perspective what can happen based on a simple misidentification. There is always the idea that someone who was a victim picks someone out of a lineup they may think was the offender but is it always a clear image to them? I look forward to reading the rest of your blogs.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Brandon! Glad you liked the intro. I know you are a criminology major and I look forward to reading your comments on this topic.
DeleteThis is an interesting topic. I watch a lot of shows on Investigation Discovery, so I've seen material on this subject before. I forget what the proper name is, but there's a scientific reason why it's even more likely to be misidentified by someone who is of a different race! I am grateful for the Innocence Project and all of the good work they've done.
ReplyDeleteI loved your post! I think that this topic goes a long way in showing how human error can affect someone's life forever. I remember a the Cotton case where it took her a while to actually to prove he was innocent. It's also seen with cases that have been reopened when DNA testing started to become available and prove that these 'felons' that people put behind bars, actually innocents. Eye witness testimony in my opinion could be used as an aid but not sole evidence to put someone away.
ReplyDeleteMarwa, I think that your topic is dead on and so relevant with everything that is happening in the US right now. I also think that in general every American should have some kind of knowledge of the reality of our correction & law system so that if selected to be part of a jury one is conscience of misidentification vs. evidence, in order to make ones cast: guilty vs. not guilty.
ReplyDelete