...Hatchett's case relied heavily on the misconduct of Gerard Williams' sole eyewitness testimony which overlooked evidence that initially identified the true perpetrator (Innocence Project). Using the works of Loftus’s (2015) and Rattner’s (1983), I will examine how the primarily causes for cases of wrongful convictions consist of faulty eyewitness testimony and the exposure of the false memories. To begin, Loftus suggested that the identification of defendants from criminal cases were predominantly determined by witnesses (2015). In fact, studies have established that the possibility of misidentifying an individual tends to be increasingly high due to...
Words: 636 - Pages: 3
...Munroe Misidentification can be defined as making a falsely or inaccurate identification. Witness can be defined as one who can give a firsthand account of something seen, heard, or experienced. (American Heritage Dictionary) When you put these two words together, you get witness misidentification which has been referred to as the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, with nearly 75% of the convictions overturned through DNA testing. There have been 260 exonerations across the country based on forensic DNA testing with 3 out of 4 involving cases of eyewitness misidentification. (Innocence Project 1999) In 1907 or 1908, Hugo Munsterberg published “On the Witness Stand”; he questioned the reliability of eyewitness identification. As recent as 30 or 40 years ago, the Supreme Court acknowledged that eyewitness identification is problematic and can lead to wrongful convictions. The Supreme Court instructed lower courts to determine the validity of eyewitness testimony based on irrelevant factors, like the certainty of the witness, the certainty you express in court during the trial has nothing to do with how certain you feel two days after the event when you pick a photograph out of a set or pick the suspect out of a lineup. It has been said that you become more certain over time. (The Confidential Resource September 15, 2010) An eyewitness viewing a simultaneous lineup tends to make a judgment about which individual in the lineup looks...
Words: 2970 - Pages: 12
...“Eyewitness evidence is one of the earliest and widely studied topics in forensic psychology” (Pozzulo, Bennell, & Forth, 2015, p. 123). Eyewitness testimony is very diverse and is becoming increasingly influential during court proceedings, which leads to many wrongful convictions. A specific topic that will be investigated during this paper will be the use of independent variables aiding eyewitness testimonies. In 1978, Wells divided those independent eyewitness cues into estimator and system variables (Leach, Cutler, & Van Wallendael, 2009, p.160). Estimator variables occur at the crime scene while the eyewitness is encoding the event into their memory; these are not controlled by the criminal justice system (Leach, Cutler, & Van Wallendael,...
Words: 1794 - Pages: 8
...There have been many people convicted of crimes that they did not commit just because inaccurate eyewitness. Eyewitness memory is not always accurate It does have its downfalls. People should be careful when doing eyewitness because they can chose the wrong person, that person can be convicted of a crime they did not commit and the criminal can be out in the street committing others serious crime. People can have errors while conducting eyewitness because of confusions and/or fault memory, government misconduct by police and prosecution, mishandled evidence and use of unqualified...
Words: 1018 - Pages: 5
...of eyewitness identifications. Under the new guidelines, a hearing must be held when a defendant presents evidence that the identification of a suspect by a witness may have been influenced. The influence could be any number of factors including police behavior, level of stress during the event, lighting and length of time between the event and the identification. If the evidence is admitted, the jury must be given an explanation giving details of the factors that could contribute to misidentification. Two articles discuss this decision, “Court Raises Bar for IDs by Witnesses” written by Caitlin Dineen for The Press of Atlantic City (October 8, 2011) and “In New Jersey, Rules Are Changed on Witness IDs” by Benjamin Weiser for The New York Times (August 24, 2011), and offer interesting viewpoints on the issue. This paper will discuss those viewpoints. The Press of Atlantic City article did not go into extensive detail as to what the new ruling entailed, instead, it chose to interview local attorneys to get their views. James Leonard Jr. states, “I think it’s going to be a valuable tool for defense attorneys.” While on the surface this new guideline would appear to make prosecution more difficult, Ocean County executive assistant prosecutor Michael Paulhus states that, “It gives both sides an opportunity to address a critical factor in their case…. Anything that’s well-grounded, as this appears to be, enhances the confidence of the eyewitness identification.” Attorney...
Words: 838 - Pages: 4
...Jennifer Thompson should have been the perfect eyewitness, unfortunately, there were a couple of faulty system variables at play which leads to falsely identifying Ronald Cotton as her rapist and subsequently leading to his wrongful conviction. While the way a witness views a crime cannot be controlled, there are measures that can be taken to improve system variables. System variables are variables in which the legal system has control over (Costanzo & Krauss, 2015, p. 144). For example, the way the investigative interview is conducted can be improved and suggestive and/or leading comments can be reduced. Another element to take into consideration when an eyewitness is identifying the culprit is witness confidence. Furthermore, the way lineups...
Words: 1565 - Pages: 7
...then forcefully raped by him. Throughout the incident, Jennifer continued to analyze the man raping her in hopes of guaranteeing he was brought to justice. She looked at his facial features and clothing and body type. When it came time to chose someone out of the lineup, she was 100% sure that she had chosen the correct perpetrator- Ronald Cotton. After Ronald is convicted and sent to jail, Jennifer begins to rebuild her life while Ronald’s life begins to fall apart. The story then switches to the point of view of Ronald, who explains his side of the story and emphasizes his innocence. It was not until DNA testing came around that Ronald was able to truly prove his innocence. The overlaying theme of this story is that Jennifer’s eyewitness account was so strong that a jury believed, without a doubt, that Ronald Cotton was the man responsible for the rape of Jennifer Thompson. This certainty was quickly dispelled by DNA testing and brings about the problem of misconceptions. Jennifer thoroughly believed that Ronald was her rapist and this proves how easily it is for people to misidentify features of different races. It also helps to disprove eye witness accounts (Thompson-Cannino & Cotton, 2009, p.1-287). Keywords: rape, conviction, innocence, misidentification The People Behind Picking Cotton Each day something will come about that two people can perceive differently. This differentiation in the perception a person has can be related to a misconception. Most...
Words: 1283 - Pages: 6
...Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony Eyewitness testimonies have played a major role in many wrongful court convictions. There is a great difficulty faced by many eyewitnesses when identifying perpetrators of crimes. Additionally, existing procedural safeguards are insufficient to put off erroneous convictions caused by eyewitness errors. It is therefore important to have a scientific method that can enhance reliability on eyewitness testimony when making a judgement in a court of law. Based on thirty years of broad scientific study on eyewitness testimony, this article delineates a tripartite solution to eyewitness error. This is necessitated by the fact that criminal justice system mainly relies on eyewitness evidence to convict suspects. Often, eyewitness evidence happens to be the only evidence available and if appropriately handled it can be very reliable. The proposed solution maintains accessibility of eyewitness substantiation, while at the same time providing safeguards to uphold its accuracy and reliability. Court of laws and criminal justice system can rely on eyewitness Testimony. This is the hypothesis that will be tested through research on the internet, books and other relevant sources. The expected outcome of this research paper, it will be easy to tell whether or not jurors can rely on eyewitness testimony. In this tripartite solution, the first component is allowing experts testimonies when the sole or primary evidence against the...
Words: 1136 - Pages: 5
...down into its subspecialties and describe where psychological knowledge can be applied. There are five subspecialties of forensic psychology, namely police psychology, psychology of crime and delinquency, victimology and victim services, legal psychology and correctional psychology. I will discuss legal psychology and correctional psychology. · Legal psychology Legal psychology is the study of human behavior relevant to the law. This subspecialty of forensic psychology consists of those theories that describe, explain and predict human behavior by reference to the law. Bartol & Bartol (2012) described that early in a case when attorneys are preparing for a trial and gathering information psychologist can be called in to testify. Main roles of a forensic psychologist in the USA includes, acting as a consultant to law enforcement, acting as trial consultants (jury selection, case preparation and pre-trial publicity), presenting psychology to appeal courts, doing forensic assessment and acting as an expert witness (insanity defense, competence to stand trial, sentencing, eyewitness identification and child custody etc.) Expert witness as a role in legal psychologist A major role for forensic psychologist is to serve as an expert witness in both the criminal and civil court. They are more commonly involve at the pretrial and post-trial proceedings, but may also serve as an expert witness at trial (Bartol & Bartol, 2012:151). Genis (2008) defines an expert witness as...
Words: 1988 - Pages: 8
...Implications: There are many factors that lead to miscarriages of criminal justice. Few wrongful convictions are caused by eyewitness identification, forensic science errors, and false confessions. Mistaken eyewitness identification is the number one cause of wrongful convictions. Eyewitness “was a factor in 72% of post-conviction DNA exoneration cases in the U.S.” (Innocence Project, 2007). Studies show that the human mind does not record or obtain information like a video recorder; it does not keep the information as a short-term memory, but keeps the information in long-term memory. For this reason, witnesses cannot fully recall facial details, especially when they are under stress by the events of the crime. Also, memory is very flexible...
Words: 1294 - Pages: 6
...Retrospective Eyewitness Reports as Functions of Feedback and Delay’ by Gary L. Wells, Elizabeth A. Olson, and Steve D. Charman. Iowa State University Journal of Experimental Psychology This article was mainly about eye witnesses and the many errors they make in recalling a situation or describing a culprit whether they are asked immediately or after a period of time. In this study, witnesses viewed a crime video and attempted to identify the culprit from a group line-up that did not actually have the culprit present. 253 mistaken-identification eyewitnesses were randomly given confirming, disconfirming, or no feedback regarding their description of the culprit or the culprit’s identification. The feedback process was either immediate or delayed for 48 hours, and measures were also immediate or delayed for 48 hours. It was shown that those who were given confirming feedback gave more distorted information. They had increased confidence in remembering what had happened, were able to make out facial details and their length of time to identify the culprit changed. There was also no difference in their statements when they were asked immediately or after 48 hours. Those who received disconfirming feedback were not so confident and took longer time to identify the culprit. The writers argue that the focus on identification itself, especially in court cases, does not factor in the influence that postidentification suggestions have on the testimony of the eyewitness that...
Words: 555 - Pages: 3
...Knowing that many innocent people are convicted or even sentenced to death for crimes they did not commit shows that as a society we have to fix a broken legal system. If not, we all are vulnerable to be wrongfully identified as a criminal. There are many reasons why eyewitness identification are dangerous. First of all, memory is not accurate. Second, memory can be altered by other environmental factors and contaminated by new memories. And last but not least they have a tremendous power on the outcome of a trial. Some of the steps that the legal system can take to fix the problem are: to accept the fact that there is a problem, get informed and make changes to fix this problem that is affecting the life of many innocent victims. In North Carolina, Ronald Cotton was convicted for one count of rape and two more for burglary and sentenced to life and 54 years in the year of 1987. He was Identified by Jennifer Thomson as the man who entered her apartment, searched through her belongings, cut the phone cables, sexually assaulted her , fled away, and raped another women half a mile away. During the assault Jennifer try to study the face of her aggressor, in her mind, she was 100% sure of how the assailant would look like if she just had him in front of her. She worked with a detective to create a composite sketch and a few days later, she was informed they had a suspect. Her accuracy to identify the picture of her aggressor was low at choosing one picture out of five , she...
Words: 894 - Pages: 4
...Picking Cotton In the past decade, eyewitness testimonies have cast a shadow on what is wrong with the justice system in today’s society. Before we had the advanced technology, we have today, eyewitness testimonies were solid cold-hard facts when it came to proving the defendant was guilty. However, time has changed and eyewitness testimonies have proven to be the leading causes of wrongful convictions due to misidentification. The Thompson and Cotton case is a perfect example of how eyewitness testimonies can put an innocent man behind bars. Jennifer Thompson was your average young independent adult trying to earn a degree at Elon College in Burlington, North Carolina. She had a boyfriend, Paul, who commuted from Burlington to Chapel Hill, where he was a first year business student at University of North Carolina. Only being twenty-two years, she had her life ahead of her until one late July night in 1984. Jennifer Thompson was sleeping alone in her apartment, when she suddenly woke up by a strange noise that turned out to be a stranger breaking into her apartment. The intruder held her a knife to her throat and proceeded to rape her. With no chance of escaping the attacker, she did the only thing she thought she could do and that was to analyze the intruder’s physical characteristics and facial features to her best ability so authorities could catch the perpetrator. Jennifer outwits the attacker and lives to tell about the night she can never forget. When Jennifer was able...
Words: 1659 - Pages: 7
...that a witness of a crime remembers fewer details about the perpetrator’s appearance when the perpetrator has a gun. To date, there are no studies of older adults and the WFE. The present study measures the WFE in older adults (60-70) compared to young adults (20-40) and children (8-12). The study consisted of 180 participants, randomly selected to watch one of three videos. The three videos were the same, with the exception of an object being manipulated. Conclusions were based on how much detail participants were able to recall about the target. Older adults remembered fewer details about the target’s appearance than children and young adults. The results suggest that older adults would take longer focusing on an object that is out of context, therefore, not focusing on the perpetrator, resulting in fewer details remembered. Eyewitness and the Weapon Focus Effect in children compared to the elderly Many people have been convicted of crimes that they did not commit. Eyewitness testimony is one of the major causes for these wrong convictions. At least 75% of wrongful convictions are the result of inaccurate eyewitness identification (Innocent Project, 2009). Before the public became aware of the large amount of wrongful convictions, psychology researchers were already aware of the problem of memory and eyewitness testimony (Douglas, & Steblay, 2006). DNA testing has helped innocent people that have been convicted, proved their innocence and at the same...
Words: 5169 - Pages: 21
...When we think of someone going to prison for a crime, we do not think about whether or not they are actually guilty. That is the job of the court to decide that. When evidence is presented to the jury, we like to think that they research all pieces of evidence thoroughly before rendering a judgment. That is not always the case unfortunately. There are more times than most people are aware of, of people being wrongfully convicted. The issue of this, is that DNA evidence is not always present in these cases. With the implantation of DNA in these criminal cases, there would be more innocent people walking the streets instead of behind bars. There are many reasons that a person is wrongfully convicted. Some reasons are due to eyewitness identification errors, inadequate evidence or lack thereof. There are so many more factors that play into this issue. The number one reason that someone is wrongfully convicted, is due to Eyewitness misidentification. In fact, that was that factor played in 72 percent of the post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States. At least forty percent of the eyewitness misidentifications involve cross racial identification. Studies show that people are less likely to be able to recognize the faces of a different race, rather than that of their own. (search.proquest.lib.kaplan.edu/docview) ( innocenceproject.com) The first DNA exoneration took place in 1989. Thirty eight states have won the implementation of DNA exonerations, and just since the year...
Words: 796 - Pages: 4
