{"id":641,"date":"2013-11-26T23:36:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-27T04:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=641"},"modified":"2013-12-15T21:39:20","modified_gmt":"2013-12-16T02:39:20","slug":"exonerate-the-innocent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2013\/11\/26\/exonerate-the-innocent\/","title":{"rendered":"Exonerate the Innocent!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many innocent people are wrongly convicted of crimes every year, and many of these wrongful convictions are due to a mistaken identification during eyewitness testimony. In many criminal investigations, eyewitness identification can be a deciding factor in the case. The Innocence Project (2012) has exonerated 289 people in the U.S. based on DNA evidence. About 75% of those wrongfully imprisoned were people mistakenly identified in a line-up. (To learn more about the Innocence Project, click here<\/a>.) Surprisingly, recent data have shown that approximately a third of witnesses for line-ups are children younger than 16 years old. The data also show that about a third of these children under 16 are likely to make a false identification of an innocent person as the culprit. It goes without saying that there can be very serious and severe outcomes for people as a result of false identification. For these reasons, research on eyewitness testimony has become more important and prominent in recent times.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Because children are more likely than adults to make false identifications, researchers have been interested in why this problem occurs in children. \u00a0Eyewitnesses are shown a sequential line-up that either has the suspect or target present (TP) or a line-up with the target absent (TA). Studies contain this TA option to portray the fact that sometimes police place the focus of a crime on an innocent suspect.\u00a0An example of a sequential line-up is as follows: a child is presented with the line-up members one at a time, he makes a decision on each line-up member (yes, no, or not sure) before he is shown the next person in the line-up. In a TP line-up, the child (over the age of 5) is as likely as an adult to correctly identify the suspect. However in a TA line-up, the child often mistakenly identifies an innocent suspect. This is because they either pick the person that looks most like the suspect that they had previously seen, or because they are unsure and would rather give a wrong answer than no answer because of an\u00a0implicit\u00a0pressure to respond and to give a positive, favorable response.<\/p>\n

This study by Harvard and Memon (2013) included the presentation of a short film in which a young Caucasian man committed a crime. The culprit was seen in different angles in the duration of the film: full-face frontal and both profile views. The witnesses (children ages 5-11) were presented with a line-up 1 or 2 days after having seen the film at their school. Half of the line-ups were TP and half were TA. The witnesses were presented with a 15-second clip of the person looking straight, left, right, and back to full face. The “mystery man” line-up was created with a computer program so that it could move as well. See Figure 1 below.<\/p>\n

\"Mystery<\/a><\/p>\n

As expected, with the addition of the “mystery man”, false identifications were reduced from 75% to 40%. This “mystery man” provides the child with an option of giving a positive response and not falsely identifying a person just because of the pressure put on the witness to make a selection.<\/p>\n

These results can be largely beneficial in real criminal investigations. With no adverse effect on correct identifications, there seems to be no reason to not always include the “mystery man” in a line-up. Because the potential punishments and consequences can be so severe for people wrongly imprisoned, this simple implementation of a “mystery man” into line-ups can make a world of difference. Providing this extra option of a “mystery man” reduces chances of falsely identifying an innocent person, as well as giving witnesses who are not completely confident in their suspicions a way of not falsely identifying someone. This small option created by a computer program could change the course of a person’s life, in that an innocent person might not be wrongly identified as a criminal, and so I feel that all police forces should be required to include the “mystery man” in future line-ups that include children as eyewitnesses.<\/p>\n

To read the original article, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To read more blogs on eyewitness testimony, click any of the following links:<\/p>\n

How to Steal an Exit Sign<\/a><\/p>\n

Innocent Criminal<\/a><\/p>\n

Remembering the Deceitful\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Faulty Eyewitness Testimony<\/a><\/p>\n

Reference:<\/p>\n

Havard, C., & Memon, A. (2013). The mystery man can help reduce false identification for child witnesses: Evidence from video line-ups.\u00a0Applied Cognitive Psychology,\u00a0<\/i>27<\/i>(1), 50-59. doi:10.1002\/acp.2870<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many innocent people are wrongly convicted of crimes every year, and many of these wrongful convictions are due to a mistaken identification during eyewitness testimony. In many criminal investigations, eyewitness identification can be a deciding factor in the case. The Innocence Project (2012) has exonerated 289 people in the U.S. based on DNA evidence. About […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3802,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[313,80215],"tags":[130349,130400],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3802"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":877,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions\/877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}