“Most cases don’t turn on DNA evidence. Most turn on eyewitness testimony and admissions by defendants.”<\/i><\/p>\n
—-District Attorney General of U.S.\u2014Barry P. Staubus<\/p>\n
It\u2019s often said that seeing is believing, but many times our memories can be \u00a0misleading or even completely inaccurate. It might be no big deal in our daily life to mistakenly remember something, but in a courtroom, it could possibly send an innocent man to prison or even to the electric chair. One of the most frequently used and widely accepted pieces of evidence in today\u2019s trials is eyewitness testimony, in which a witness is asked to pick the potential suspect out of a lineup, or to describe the characteristics of the perpetrator so that the police could run it through the data base and come up with an ID. However, as our memories could potentially be inaccurate, eyewitness testimonies are not always 100 percent true. In a significant number of criminal trials, the identification could be completely wrong and because the witness is \u201cvery confident\u201d about the identification, an innocent man would wind up in jail.<\/p>\n
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A funny but sad case in California can help us understand how eyewitness testimonies can be proved wrong in courtrooms. In this trial, a lawyer was trying to use inaccurate\u00a0eyewitness testimony to get his client out of a traffic violation. In this trial, the\u00a0defendant\u00a0was accused of a traffic violation and the police officer that ticketed him was summoned to the court to confront the driver. Surprisingly, when the judge called the\u00a0driver to the defendant seat, the lawyer instead approached to the bench and pretended to be the\u00a0defendant. The judge then assumed that he (the lawyer) was the defendant and started the trial. The police officer was brought up to the stand and the lawyer, who pretended to be the defendant, asked the officer a bunch of questions such as “Am I the driver?” “What was I wearing?”… As the police\u00a0officer\u00a0confidently testified that he saw the “defendant” that night violating the traffic rule and ticketed him, the lawyer revealed his true identity and used it as evidence to show how inaccurate the officer’s testimony could be–how could he be certain of what the driver had done if he couldn’t even remember which person is the driver! Even though the ploy was brilliant and creative, the lawyer lost his license to practice law in CA because lawyers shouldn’t be misleading the court. His approach might have been not appropriate, but this trial case\u00a0definitely\u00a0showed us that eyewitness testimonies could be faulty.<\/p>\n
Psychologists have done quite a number of studies on the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies. There are powerful evidences showing that eyewitness identifications are sometimes far less reliable than many people may think. From the report of\u00a0Gary L. Wells and Elizabeth A. Olsen, we know that there are several key factors for inaccurate eyewitness testimony to:<\/p>\n
Knowing how much eyewitness testimony can fail us and can result wrongful charges, there are more and more efforts put in our society today try to put a stop to this– Since 1992, the\u00a0Innocence Project<\/a>\u00a0has accomplished to exonerate over 246 prisoners nationwide by presenting the DNA evidence to appeal and\u00a0overrule\u00a0the eyewitness testimonies. The jury and the judge should consider how much eyewitness testimony should weigh in court trials. May there be less and less wrongfully charged men and women in prison in the future!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are some other really interesting articles about the accuracy\u00a0of \u00a0eyewitness testimonies on this blog:<\/p>\n http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2013\/04\/30\/innocent-criminal-the-science-behind-inaccurate-eye-witness-testimony\/<\/a><\/p>\n http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2013\/04\/30\/remembering-the-deceitful-in-one-glance\/<\/a><\/p>\n