Bruce MacFarlane, a Canadian lawyer said that the single most important factor leading to wrongful convictions is eyewitness misidentification. …show more content…
Similar claims have been made by American authors, although recent research has shown there are different patterns of wrongful convictions for different types of offenses here in the United States. The criminal justice system depends on eyewitness evidence. Eyewitness testimony is often the only available evidence ina criminal case, and where properly handled, can be very reliable. In 2002, over one million adults were convicted of felonies in the United States. One survey of Ohio criminal justice officials estimates that wrongful convictions occur in about 1 of every 200 felony criminal cases, meaning 5000 innocent persons being convicted of serious crimes in 2002. Misidentification being most common in rape cases, but deliberate false evidence and false confessions being the principal factors in murder cases.
Psychologists often defend courtroom testimony on eyewitness-misidentification issues on the grounds of a deep concern for protecting the innocent from being convicted.
The misidentification of culprits by eyewitnesses is the number one leading cause of wrongful convictions. Eyewitness misidentification plays a role in 72% of convictions overturned, those of which are from DNA testing. (INNOCENCE PROJECT) In 1999, it was noted that many of the suspects now exonerated by DNA testing would have been indicted prior to its use. This implies that there may have been a false conviction rate in the past of more than 10% for criminal cases where DNA testing is now possible. According to the Innocence Project even after thirty years of social science eyewitness identification is often reliable. Research shows that the human mind is not at all like a tape recorder. People neither record events exactly as they see them, nor recall them like a tape that has been rewound. Witness memory is comparable to other evidence in case in that it must be preserved carefully and retrieved very meticulously or else it can become …show more content…
contaminated.
Eyewitness misidentification can happen in several ways, lineups, show-ups, A line up is a procedure in which a criminal suspect (or picture of the suspect) is placed among other people and shown to an eyewitness to see if the witness will identify the suspect as the culprit in question. (WEUSTWALD) Police stations can also throw in fillers which are people in the lineup who are not suspects. Witnesses who make accurate identifications from a lineup reach their decision faster than do witnesses who make mistaken identifications; this is called the 10-12 second rule. The different types of lineups include: culprit-absent, culprit-present, simultaneous, and sequential. For example, the culprit-absent one might help prevent a person being wrongfully convicted if they culprit is not even in the lineup but yet the witness says they are. Sometimes police even place a mock witness to choose a person from a lineup based on the actual eyewitness’ verbal description of the culprit. This method is used to test the functional size of the lineup.
According to Wells and Olson differences in ability of females and males in eyewitness identification is insignificant. They also say very young children and the elderly are significantly worse at identifying people. People are often better at recognizing people of their own race. Many characteristics according to Wells and Olson affect the accuracy of eyewitnesses, such as lighting conditions, presence of a weapon, whether a disguise was worn by the culprit, etc. There is such a thing called the weapon-focus effect, which is the presence of a weapon reducing the chances that the eyewitness can identify the holder of the weapon.
For example, in the case of Brenton Butler, a fifteen year old African American boy, who was charged with murder.
Brenton was simply walking to a local block buster to fill out a job application when he was stopped by police and question about a murder that happen miles away from his house. The victim was a tourist visiting the city of Jacksonville with her husband. Mary Ann and James Stephens, an older couple, were staying at a local Ramada Inn and had just taken advantage of the hotel’s free breakfast. When they were heading back to their room they were confronted by an African American man that was demanding Mary Ann’s purse with a gun held to her face. Mr. Stephens had a very small amount of time to try and remember the culprit’s face before he shot his wife and ran off with her purse. Brenton Butler was brought to Mr. Stevens who automatically said he was the culprit. James Stephens said he was certain Brenton was the killer. Although Brenton had an alibi he was taken down to the station and the nine hour interrogation
began.
According to Ann Finnel, one of Brenton’s public defenders, there were many flaws in this case There was no physical evidence linking Brenton to the crime, no blood on his clothes, no gunpowder residue on his hands and no gun. Mary Ann’s purse was found in a dumpster miles away from the scene of the crime by a homeless man. The purse did not have Butler’s prints on it, but did still have the cash that Mary Ann had in it. The only money found on Butler was from his paycheck from Burger King.
The only thing that prosecutors had on Butler was an eyewitness, James Stephens. However, Butler did not match the initial description Stephens gave police. James said the culprit was six feet tall and 20-25 years old. There were of course many flaws in this case, one being James Stephens had about five seconds in which to take notice of the gun and the killer. Him identifying the killer in such a short amount of time makes it a very difficult cross racial identification. Fortunately the jury found Brenton not guilty, and the real killer admitted soon after. Brenton was one of the lucky ones who only had to spend six months in jail due to eyewitness misidentification. The weapons effect was present in this case in that James Stephens was more focused on the weapon than the person wielding the weapon.
Some of the wrongfully convicted get what some would call luck. Some of them get exonerated mostly due to new tests that are available. Getting exonerated does not mean it is off their record, just means that are absolved from blame. Life of an “exoneree” most of the time is very difficult. They might have spent a good portion of their life in prison and not know how to adapt back out in the free world. Also, they will most likely have trouble finding a job due to the charge still being on there record, and many people not understanding what exoneration is.
DNA exonerations have grown across the country in recent years. Yet not all of those people who have been exonerated have been exonerated due to DNA testing. Only a fraction of criminal cases involve biological evidence that can be subjected to DNA testing, and even when such evidence exists, it is often lost or destroyed after a conviction. Since they don’t have access to a definitive test like DNA, many wrongfully convicted people have a slim chance of ever proving their innocence.