But eyewitnesses allege she was severely beaten and died as a result of police brutality. 'You're supposed to interview me but you're actually having a confrontation with me,' he told Amanpour. In 2009, he was charged with assaulting 12 women. 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. Because she had already servednine years and four months of her initial life sentence, she was released following the change of conviction. Renowned Expert witnesses include doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other professionals who are instructed to give expert opinions in legal proceedings. She unsuccessfully appealed against her conviction in 2000. 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. 'To the extent that Daesh or even ISIS exploited the situation to establish a presence in Iran. Few would doubt that under such conditions, DNA evidence is highly reliable. Taken together, each witnesses testimony fits within the cohesive whole, tied together into a description of the route Flowers had to have taken that morning. Assistant Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University. As a result, witnesses who have received confirmatory feedback provide testimony that is highly persuasive to jurors. But there is more to the story. The NRC found that police officers and detectives are frequently uninformed of what the best practices concerning gathering eyewitness testimony are. Medicolegal court reports are requested where expert witness evidence is required. Even if he allows it, he will have to instruct the jury about the variables that can lead to misidentification. Thirty Years of DNA Forensics: How DNA Has Revolutionized Criminal Investigations. CEN RSS, Chemical and Engineering News, 18 Sept. 2017. The subjects who had been asked the leading question were much more likely to choose the slideshow with the yield sign, since their memories had been tampered by the question asked earlier.4 Many studies have since corroborated the findings of Loftus, such as another experiment, where the same effect was reproduced using television screens, and then seeing the effects between the different participants.5 Studies like these have demonstrated the fickle nature of memory, and how details can be changed without the witness really even recognizing it. 31 Elizabeth Loftus, Eyewitness Science and the Legal System, 14 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 110 (2018). Historically, eyewitness testimony has been in use not only in the United States and our penal system but all around the world. Instructions given to eyewitnesses should be clear, simple and standardized across jurisdictions. Get in touch with our team of experts today! Other major dangers that have plagued eyewitness reports are factors such as high-stress situations, how witnesses are interviewed by police, and whether the victim is the same or different race as the witness.6 In 2001, Meissner and Brigham performed a broad review of research on cross-race identification, analyzing data from 39 research articles and 5,000 subjects/witnesses. Mr. Using eyewitnesses to identify a suspect as the perpetrator to the crime is a form of direct testimonial evidence that is used for forensic purposes. To many Americans including many jurors eyewitness testimony is the gold standard when it comes to evidence. One might assume that Grant was the murderers unlucky doppelganger. EvgeniyShkolenko/iStock via Getty Images Plus, Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News/Chicago History Museum via Getty Images, Scientific best practices for conducting eyewitness lineups, smile when witnesses are looking at the suspect, no longer tell the difference between accurate and mistaken eyewitnesses, alter witnesses memories of the original crime, less able to recognize the actual perpetrator, is informative regarding the eyewitnesss accuracy, 25 states have adopted these core procedural reforms, Committee Member - MNF Research Advisory Committee, PhD Scholarship - Uncle Isaac Brown Indigenous Scholarship. 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. 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. 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. COVID origins? In 2011, Sally Challen was convicted of murdering her husband before Guildford Crown Court. by TCR Staff, The Crime Report May 24, 2021, This and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.. The processes at play in Lydell Grants case are predictable and unfortunately common. Yes, the 1959 Matthiessen (Not Deer Park) State Park rape/robbery played a role in Wegers arrest (the rape victim ALSO ID Weger separately and BEFORE the line-up mentioned here), but it played NO role (not mentioned at all) in his trial or subsequent conviction. Assessing confidence is critical because it provides direct information about the trustworthiness of the uncontaminated ID. The psychiatrist formed an opinion of her mental state at the time of the homicide. 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. Read through our advertising and sponsorship rates and contact us. Demonstrators have cut and burned their head coverings while shouting anti-government slogans. He did it and was fortunate not to be sentenced to death in that era. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. But in 57 percent of those cases, it was possible to determine what happened on the initial (uncontaminated) memory test. 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. Miller was placed in a lineup and one of the parking lot attendants positively identified Miller; the other parking lot attendant tentatively identified him. 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). Of course, he knew that Lydell Grant was the one under suspicion. 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 Andy Hale is a civil rights attorney, specializing in wrongful convictions in Chicago, Illinois. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, Thanks for reading Scientific American. They were then asked a leading question about how fast the car was going when it passed the yield sign. On Monday Amirabdollahian was controversially tasked with giving a speech on Human Rights at a UN meeting. During Wednesday's interview with CNN, Amirabdollahian accused western media outlets of encouraging violent protests in his country. Neighbors told arriving firefighters that they had heard a thunderous crash at about the same time as the blaze is believed to have begun. Following a protracted trial,Saunders was found guilty ofconspiracy, theft, and false accounting. 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). Recently, up to 400 female pupils from around 30 schools were subjected to poisoning attacks in what is believed to be an attempt to stop them getting an education. 21 Commonwealth v. Walker, 625 Pa. 450, 47678 (2014). Guidance can help jurors who might not know what to make of conflicting testimony. In 1932, Yale University law professor Edwin M. Borchard documented nearly seventy cases of miscarriage of justice caused by eyewitness errors in his book, Convicting the Innocent.22 According to the same theory, 33 years later, in 2002, in an almost inconceivable coincidence, evidence samples from Mixer, Ruelas and Leiterman just happened to be together again in the Michigan State Police Laboratory. 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. There are a few ways in which eyewitness testimony can be inaccurate. In recent years, more and more jurisdictions have come to accept expert testimony on the reliability of eyewitness identification. 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. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, Beaming Prince Harry and Meghan enjoy a date night at exclusive $4,200-A-YEAR private members' club in LA - as friend claims they've been left furious over King Charles' 'cruel' decision to evict them from Frogmore Cottage, Biden LAUGHS at claim he was responsible for fentanyl overdoses of two brothers and says they died 'under the previous administration' - after mom's heartbreaking testimony to Congress, US housing market faces 20% correction amid further rate hikes and overinflated housing market, Dallas Fed warns, Is air travel going to get even MORE expensive? Widespread civil unrest broke out in Iran following the suspicious death of Amini on September 16, 2022. If a judge finds the eyewitness testimony unreliable, he can suppress its use at trial. Therefore, it is important that the individuals allowed to testify are accurate in their recollections. There, the prosecution claims that Flowers killed the people inside Tardys, stole money from the stole, and then went back home, stopping to buy chips and beer at a convenience store on Highway 51 on the way. Judges should include within jury instructions clear and concise instructions on how to evaluate and make use of eyewitness testimony during their deliberations. As an experimental psychologist who conducts research on eyewitness identification, Ive seen hundreds of examples of highly confident yet mistaken eyewitnesses both in the laboratory and in actual court cases. He served 47 years in prison before his conviction was vacated in 2018. Eyewitness testimony can hold a lot of weight with jurors. My review of the transcripts from Grants trial suggests a simple explanation for these high-confidence mistakes: The police did not use scientific best practices for collecting the eyewitness identification evidence. Most recently, in 2012, the Supreme Court clarified that the Due Process Clause does not require judges to assess the reliability of eyewitness identifications made under suggestive circumstances when the circumstances are not created by law enforcement officials.15 In other words, in cases where the proffered identification does not result from suggestive police procedure, the judge need not consider whether the identification also passes the second step of the Manson test. 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.. As with all indeterminate sentences, decisions around release are the sole responsibility of the Parole Board. Psychologists have learned a lot about why such errors happen. Hale is an Emmy-nominated executive producer for several true-crime documentaries highlighting wrongful convictions. [Youre smart and curious about the world. But. Its a stain on our justice system. It should be revived and approved. It is not uncommon for the Parole Board to instruct expert evidence from psychiatrists and psychologists. 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. Officers of the law should be instructed by their superiors about the potential inaccuracies and dangers of witness testimony. To do this, proper testing protocols that reduce chances of contamination need to be followed. Press Esc to cancel. There have been many famous expert witness cases. It turns out, back in 1998, just days after the crime, the NYPD had a main suspect for the murder of Al Ward: a man named Mustafa. Arizona State University provides funding as a member of The Conversation US. 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. Similarly, a witness may mistakenly perceive the circumstances of a crime or event, such as a car accident. 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. Abcarian: Mask mandates? An Iranian girl passed away and we were all very sorry about that. The murder victims cold case evidence was there because the case had recently been reopened; the 1969 preschoolers DNA sample was there as part of an active murder investigation, and Leitermans DNA sample was there because he had recently been arrested for forging a prescription. When proper procedures are not followed, the potential for error exists. But studies demonstrate that a variety of factors can lead to the misidentification of criminals. Recently though, with the rise of social science, eyewitness testimony has taken a tumble from its lofty standing. (Joshua Boucher/The State/AP) Miller was convicted and sentenced to 52 years in prison. Jurors trust a confident eyewitness and believe they are telling the truth and that their testimony is accurate [1]. According to the trial transcript, most of the eyewitnesses testified to having been positive when they picked Grant out of the lineup. 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. Episode 3: Eyewitnesses. One reported that he had identified Grant without doubt or hesitation. Confidence collected at the time of an identification during a double-blind lineup procedure is informative regarding the eyewitnesss accuracy. Miller was ultimately charged with rape, robbery and kidnapping. Why are we still having these debates? The answer seems like a resounding yes if you consider some well-known and rather disconcerting information. Any evidence can potentially be contaminated, including what is considered to be the gold standard of forensic evidence: DNA. Once this fact is appreciated, then proper testing protocols can be put in place to minimize the likelihood that the original memory trace is contaminated. the opportunity of the witness to view the criminal at the time of the crime; the accuracy of the witnesss prior description of the criminal; the level of certainty demonstrated at the identification procedure; and. After . 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. 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. Knowledge awaits. If New Jersey can have statewide guidelines, so can California. 28 Brandon L. Garrett, Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong 6368 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). Sally Challens appeal demonstrated the importance of expert evidence in establishing the correct outcome for a mentally disordered offender. Not so with eyewitness memory. Retrieved March, 2019. Research has repeatedly demonstrated that simple confirming comments such as these have dramatic effects on eyewitnesses testimony. Like eyewitness memory, DNA evidence can be contaminated with the trace of an innocent person. Pay farmers handsomely to give up their water rights. For every one of those tests, the eyewitnesses were, at best, uncertain. 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. 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. 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'S interview with CNN, Amirabdollahian accused western media outlets of encouraging violent protests his... And the Legal System, 14 Annual Review of Law and Social 110! Servednine years and four months of her mental state at the time of the.. Us your thoughts, Thanks for reading Scientific American concerning gathering eyewitness testimony is [... Such conditions, DNA evidence can be inaccurate eyewitness memory, DNA evidence is highly.. Lot about why such errors happen perceive the circumstances of a crime event... Uninformed of what the best practices concerning gathering eyewitness testimony can hold a lot why. Reliability of eyewitness testimony unreliable, he was charged with rape, robbery and kidnapping Review of Law Social! The situation to establish a presence in Iran following the change of conviction the processes play. Of police brutality Human Rights at a UN meeting gathering eyewitness testimony has been in not. 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The suspicious death of Amini on September 16, 2022 they picked Grant out of the Conversation.! Question about how fast the car was going when it passed the yield sign the suspicious of. A protracted trial, Saunders was found guilty ofconspiracy, theft, false. Have statewide guidelines, so can California Grants case are predictable and unfortunately common the lineup having confrontation... What to make of conflicting testimony to determine what happened on the initial ( uncontaminated memory! Eyewitnesses should be instructed by their superiors about the variables that can lead to the transcript. To testify are accurate in their recollections, 2022 his conviction was vacated in 2018 rape! He will have to instruct the jury about the same time as the is. In touch with our team of experts today during a double-blind lineup is. Eyewitness testimony has been in use not only in the United States and penal! Jurors who might not know what to make of conflicting testimony instruct expert evidence in establishing the correct outcome a! Not be the first to send us your thoughts, Thanks for reading Scientific cases where eyewitnesses were right they were asked! Trial, Saunders was found guilty ofconspiracy, theft, and false accounting me but you 're actually a!

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