Do not sell or share my personal information. Assistant Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University. In the sad case of the 1960 Starved Rock murders, there were EIGHT confessions by Chester Weger made to different people at different times, including a re-enactment of the crime at the scene covered by more than a dozen reporters/photographers. According to the Innocence Project, mistaken identifications are the leading factor in wrongful convictions, accounting for almost 70 percent of the wrongful convictions overturned by post-conviction DNA evidence. Out on his porch and saw Flowers walking by that morning. This helps to safeguard against overly eager police officers who might implicitly encourage eyewitnesses (with tone of voice, body language, etc.) Scientific best practices for conducting eyewitness lineups require that the person administering the lineup not know who the police suspect. There are a few ways in which eyewitness testimony can be inaccurate. We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To many Americans including many jurors eyewitness testimony is the gold standard when it comes to evidence. He was 19 at the time of that attack. A meta-analytic review of the effects of high stress on eyewitness memory, Law and Human Behavior 28.6 (2004), 687-706. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, Officers of the law should be instructed by their superiors about the potential inaccuracies and dangers of witness testimony. For example, in cases where a mental disorder is an issue, the evidence of a psychiatrist may influence the conduct of legal proceedings, it may help to adduce medical evidence relevant to trial and may be the deciding factor between imprisonment and mental health treatment. Yet, based on, among other things, this powerful purported eyewitness evidence, Heidelberg was convicted. Judges should include within jury instructions clear and concise instructions on how to evaluate and make use of eyewitness testimony during their deliberations. 'To the extent that Daesh or even ISIS exploited the situation to establish a presence in Iran. Another stated that the killers face was burned into [her] memory immediately.. The Law Enforcement Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran claimed she had a heart attack at a police station, collapsed, and fell into a coma before being transferred to a hospital. In assessing the reliability of eyewitness identification, federal and state courts are still divided on (1) whether expert testimony on eyewitness identification should be allowed under either Daubert or Frye and (2) the proper exercise of trial court discretion when deciding whether to admit such expert testimony.18 Before crime shows like CSI and the scientific advancements which ushered in modern forensics such as fingerprinting and DNA, eyewitnesses were often the only form of proof of a guilty person or act. In response to this issue, the National Research Council (NRC) formed a research committee in 2013 chaired by Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District of New York and cognitive scientist, Thomas Albright of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.31 The group released their findings in 2014 in a report titled Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification. 'In Iran we had an incident. The psychiatrist found that she had an adjustment disorder at the time she killed her husband, enabling her solicitors to challenge her conviction for murder. In an effort to overwhelm Chester and break him down, he was placed in a lineup regarding two incidents that took place in 1959 in a nearby State Park called Deer Park, one of which was that rape case and the other was a purse snatching. 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. The modern test for the admissibility of eyewitness testimony at a criminal trial under the Due Process Clause was established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Manson v. Brathwaite in 1977. 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. What would that mean for the reliability of the blood or fingerprint evidence, for example, collected at that scene? 109, 10910 (2006). It marks the longest-running anti-government protests in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, with hundreds killed as a result. The chance of a lifetime: Five friends ski the tallest mountain in Los Angeles, Shocking, impossible gas bills push restaurants to the brink of closures, Best coffee city in the world? Just because memory is malleablefor example, it can be contaminated with the trace of an innocent persondoes not mean that it has to be unreliable. She questioned the statistical basis of Professor Meadows evidence, which had led to Sally Clark being sentenced to life in prison. But in 57 percent of those cases, it was possible to determine what happened on the initial (uncontaminated) memory test. There have been hundreds of cases in which mistaken eyewitness identification testimony led to the conviction of innocent people. 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. At the time of his release, Jerry Miller had served over 26 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Last updated: 27 February 2023. In Winona, Mississippi on July 16, 1996, four people were shot and killed at Tardy furniture store. Explore our digital archive back to 1845, including articles by more than 150 Nobel Prize winners. However, there has yet to be research showing what ideal instructions would look like, as each case involving eyewitness testimony varies from each other. COVID origins? 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. And third, the confidence expressed by the eyewitness following an identification of someone from the lineup must be recorded. In this case, the defendant was charged with first degree murder and the only evidence against him was the testimony of two eyewitnesses. Videotaping allows for review of eyewitness testimony later on in the trial if the reliability of eyewitness testimony is called into question. 31 Elizabeth Loftus, Eyewitness Science and the Legal System, 14 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 110 (2018). 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. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation that, among other things, would have set up a task force to examine eyewitness testimony and establish voluntary guidelines to ensure that it was accurate. No comments have so far been submitted. 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. Tells other tales: ISIS in Winona, the river flowed backwards one day, the microphone might be tapped into by the Russians, Saw Flowers walking on the sidewalk on that day heading in the direction, Approached by police chief at McDonalds where she worked, In 1977 gave a detailed statement to DA Investigator John Johnson, Picked up and gave statement to John Johnson, Another unnamed witness said she would not testify at another trial and in fact did not see Flowers, saw Curtis walking by his house the day of the murders, Law enforcement sought him 1 month after murders John Johnson, He said I wasnt even really sure [that I saw Flowers on that exact date] in podcast, Claimed John Johnson gave him the statement, he told Johnson at some point he saw Flowers pass by his house that summer and Johnson gave him the date, Didnt feel like he had a choice but to testify subpoenaed every time, Roy was driving, Clemy was riding in passenger seat, Clemy asked Roy Harris for a ride to Tardys to pay off a furniture bill right about the time of the murders but Clemy decided not to get out of the car because even though she drove all the way down, because she didnt feel well (5 mo. In Perry v. New Hampshire, the Supreme Court barred the defendant from challenging the eyewitness testimony proffered by the state, even though the circumstances surrounding the eyewitnesss identification of the defendant were decidedly suggestive. The Louisiana Supreme Court remanded the case based on prosecutorial and police misconduct, including improper argument at the trial and failure to disclose the existence of exculpatory witnesses. But theyve hit a snag. As with DNA evidence, eyewitness evidence needs to be safeguarded against contamination. But faith in eyewitnesses runs so deep that despite the overwhelming proof of Grants innocence, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals initially refused his exoneration request. This opinion differed from the opinions formed by the other professionals, who concluded that John Worboys should remain in prison. Miller was placed in a lineup and one of the parking lot attendants positively identified Miller; the other parking lot attendant tentatively identified him. The way to avoid these problems with eyewitness testimony is for police to adopt best practices based on the psychological research. She was sentenced to life in prison. 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. The person they think was the perpetrator in fact had nothing to do with the crime. 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. But eyewitnesses aren't always right, and poor investigative practices can make matters worse. Renowned Expert witnesses include doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other professionals who are instructed to give expert opinions in legal proceedings. 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. 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. 'And that's why peaceful protests ended up becoming violent - because of the foreign intervention. Daryl G. Kimball and Frank von Hippel | Opinion. (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. At his criminal trial, both parking lot attendants identified Miller as the perpetrator. His subsequent return to business raised further questions about the evidence that led to his early release. After his conviction at Croydon Crown Court, several more women made allegations of sexual assault against him. Most of these witnesses personally knew Flowers, and many had grown up with him, lived in his same neighborhood. First, the judge must determine whether the procedure used by law enforcement officials in obtaining the proffered eyewitness identification (e.g., photographic array or lineup) was unnecessarily suggestive.11 The judge must then weigh this determination against the following five factors to assess the reliability of the identification: In practice, therefore, the test is flexible. 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. Subsequent memory tests, including the dramatic one that occurs in court in front of the jury, constitute contaminated evidence. 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. Episode 3: Eyewitnesses. To do this, proper testing protocols that reduce chances of contamination need to be followed. In 2009, he was charged with assaulting 12 women. 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 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. 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). 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 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. 18 National Research Council, Identifying The Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification 38 (2014). The Manson admissibility test consists of two steps. Does Irans Foreign Minister accept women can peacefully protest for change in Iran? 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. Two police officers thought the sketch resembled Miller, a man they had questioned a few days earlier. Nevertheless, these subtle behavioral cues affect eyewitnesses decisions by making them more likely to choose the suspect. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. The variables include: viewing conditions (lighting-distance-duration), distracting stimuli (weapons-loud noises) and internal states of the observer (attention-motivation-skill-prejudice). Additional Reading: Truth, Lies and Police Lineups, The Crime Report, May 5, 2021. 6 Wells, Memon, Penrod, Eyewitness Evidence: Improving Its Probative Value, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, (2006). A letter by UN Watch - a Geneva-based organization monitoring activities of the UN - urged all 193 members to leave the meeting. He claimed police did not have the power to use firearms in the riots. 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. Finally, a witness may have more difficulty making a correct identification when he and the suspect are of different races. Another way is through the misinformation effect, where something occurs between the event and the reporting of the event to muddy or confuse the witness. Read through our advertising and sponsorship rates and contact us. This case raised important questions about the reliability of expert evidence. Psychologists have learned a lot about why such errors happen. Some elements include the following: First, and most important of all, because the test itself contaminates memory, only the initial memory test provides uncontaminated results. 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 . Document Witness Confidence and Videotape Witness Identifications. The same is true of eyewitness memory: memory can be contaminated with the trace of an innocent person, but under proper testing conditions, eyewitness evidence is highly reliable. 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. 27 The Innocence Project, Eyewitness Identification,. 25 A. G. Goldstein, J. E. Chance, and G. R. Schneller, Frequency of Eyewitness Identification in Criminal Cases: A Survey of Prosecutors, 27(1) Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society: 71, 73 (January 1989). 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