This case raised important questions about the reliability of expert evidence. Speak to our experts today for advice. To see why, let us revisit those DNA exoneration cases that so often involve eyewitness misidentification. 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. COVID origins? He served 61 years in prison before being released on parole in February 2020. Mugshots of Lydell Grant (left, in 2010) and Jermarico Carter (right, in 2007) show the men dont look very similar. One estimate based on a 1989 survey of prosecutors suggests that at least 80,000 eyewitnesses make identifications of suspects in criminal investigations each year.25 Juries should also be informed as to the manner of the identification, the eyewitnesss confidence and other factors that might influence reliability. 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. 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. Arizona State University provides funding as a member of The Conversation US. At the time of his release, Jerry Miller had served over 26 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. 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. Ernest Saunders, along with three other men, were part of the Guinness Four who were accused of being involved in ascheme to fraudulently increasethe price of Guinness shares. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, 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. 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. 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. Any evidence can potentially be contaminated, including what is considered to be the gold standard of forensic evidence: DNA. Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? This decision attracted intense media attention and was seen to be a controversial decision due to the nature and severity of his offences. After . What would that mean for the reliability of the blood or fingerprint evidence, for example, collected at that scene? Several police officers reported and later testified at Heidelbergs criminal trial that they observed him driving the subject vehicle as it sped past them at various points during the chase. The perpetrator had a brief conversation with the parking lot attendants and then fled the scene. While his potential release faced intense scrutiny, it demonstrates how influential an expert witness report can be. Thirty Years of DNA Forensics: How DNA Has Revolutionized Criminal Investigations. CEN RSS, Chemical and Engineering News, 18 Sept. 2017. Why are we still having these debates? Thanks for reading Scientific American. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. Letters to the Editor: Yes, L.A. drivers are getting worse. 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. It is used to establish facts in a criminal investigation or prosecution. Continue reading with a Scientific American subscription. It comes just two days after diplomats walked out of a speech given by the Iranian minister to the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva. They were then asked a leading question about how fast the car was going when it passed the yield sign. Psychological scientists, however, have challenged many of the assumptions of the legal system and the general public regarding the. During Wednesday's interview with CNN, Amirabdollahian accused western media outlets of encouraging violent protests in his country. Until he was released on parole, the 81-year-old Weger ranked as the second longest-held inmate in Illinois prison system. Police in some California counties use some of the methods recommended by the New Jersey court and by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice. (2017). One eyewitness couldnt recall whether the detective had told him anything after he identified Grant, but the detective acknowledged telling that particular eyewitness good job following the identification. If the contaminated evidence is relied on to establish guilt versus innocence at a trial, the risk of a wrongful conviction is high. 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. Chester denied having anything to do with these other crimes but was identified by the victims based on these suggestive procedures. This section will focus on the courts current treatment of eyewitness testimony. 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. 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. It should be revived and approved. After his conviction at Croydon Crown Court, several more women made allegations of sexual assault against him. Prosecutors, though, have no murder weapon, bloody clothes or eyewitnesses, leaving them to build their case about Murdaugh's murky timeline of his whereabouts when the crime happened in 2021 . Nationally, more than 75% of convictions that have been overturned because of DNA evidence involved erroneous eyewitness testimony. One reported that he had identified Grant without doubt or hesitation. 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. 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. 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. Expert witness evidence is not needed in all legal proceedings but it plays an important part in many cases. Mr. They found that when showing violent and non-violent crimes on videotape to subjects and then prompting them with questions later, the witnesses had more and more difficulty remembering certain details as the violence in the video went up.8. U. L. Rev. Marilyn Stowe instructed a pathologist to review the medical notes of both infants. But a comparison of the pairs mugshots reveals that they bear little physical resemblance to one another beyond both being Black men. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. Confidence reported at trial after the eyewitness has received confirmatory feedback is not. cases where eyewitnesses were rightammo donation to ukraine. Renowned Expert witnesses include doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other professionals who are instructed to give expert opinions in legal proceedings. Today, he remains in prison. Press Esc to cancel. Well ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. to select the person they believe to be a prime suspect. But if the six eyewitnesses chose Lydell Grant from the lineup only because they were cued to do so by the case detective, why were they so confident in their identifications? Eyewitness Testimony: Recommended Practices, Eyewitness testimony continues to be commonplace in law enforcement and trials. 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. 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. Pay farmers handsomely to give up their water rights. The puzzling question in this case, though, is why did six eyewitnesses independently identify Lydell Grant as the killer and then confidently testify in court? Last updated: 27 February 2023. Thirty Years of DNA Forensics: How DNA Has Revolutionized Criminal Investigations., See here: Innocence Project, Eyewitness misidentification, Crime in the United States 2012: Persons Arrested,. Videos circulating on Twitter appeared to show dozens of UN diplomats walking out as he started to speak. She questioned the statistical basis of Professor Meadows evidence, which had led to Sally Clark being sentenced to life in prison. Judges should include within jury instructions clear and concise instructions on how to evaluate and make use of eyewitness testimony during their deliberations. The detective also admitted making a similar comment to at least one other witness. 18 National Research Council, Identifying The Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification 38 (2014). Who can help student-athletes cash in? bn. He did it and was fortunate not to be sentenced to death in that era. 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. Therefore, when John Warboys applied for parole, an independent psychologist was instructed by his legal representative to assess his risk. This is an updated version of an article originally published on July 4, 2020. Examples of when an expert witness may be needed include: To hire an expert witness, you may make contact with us via our simple online contact form, call us on 01865 587 865 or by requesting a call back from our team via the link below. Although the high accuracy of an initial ID made with high confidence is important to appreciate, the low accuracy of an ID made with low confidence may be even more important to appreciate. Law enforcement officers, prosecutors, attorneys, and jurors need to realize that just because a witness says so does not make it so. By itself, that fact only shows that contaminated memory is unreliable (just as contaminated DNA evidence is). Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Editorial: He spent 38 years in prison for a crime he didnt commit. 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. Thus, Chester was charged with three separate felonies as a way to overwhelm him and break him down. The shooter wound up crashing the car and escaping on foot. 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. Gov. 8 Clifford & Hollin, Effects Of the Type of Incident and the Number of Perpetrators on Eyewitness Memory, Journal of Applied Psychology 66.3 (1981). A judge can review the footage to see if claims of witness tampering are true, or if the witness shows significant doubt while identifying the suspect. Kendall Taggart BuzzFeed News Reporter Similarly, a witness may mistakenly perceive the circumstances of a crime or event, such as a car accident. Jurors trust a confident eyewitness and believe they are telling the truth and that their testimony is accurate [1]. The first is in the classic My Cousin Vinny situation, where eyewitnesses simply believe they see something, despite not actually being capable of truly witnessing the event accurately. Psychologists have learned a. In other cases, the circumstances of a purported witness identification may be flimsy; yet the prosecutors still rely on that identification, which is then presented as rock-solid evidence at trial. Officers of the law should be instructed by their superiors about the potential inaccuracies and dangers of witness testimony. He added: 'I can tell you this in full confidence that our police and the security forces in Iran have not killed anyone with bullets or any other means in these riots.'. [Youre smart and curious about the world. In contrast, a high-confidence ID is highly accurate, a surprising fact that has only recently come to be appreciated by experimental psychologists. But a closer examination of those witnesses testimonies reveals a few disconcerting factors: the earliest testimony from a witness came a month after the murders, and other testimony came nine, twelve months later. Judges should continue to allow expert testimony from social scientists on the general reliability of eyewitness testimony, so that jurors are informed about the strengths and weaknesses of eyewitness testimony as a practice. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? There have been hundreds of cases in which mistaken eyewitness identification testimony led to the conviction of innocent people. Not so with eyewitness memory. To date, 25 states have adopted these core procedural reforms, including Texas in 2011, one year after the investigation of Aaron Scheerhoorns murder. They found that the odds of a false identification were 1.56 times greater in cases where the race was different than the witness, thus highlighting how bias can affect how somebody remembers an event.7 With regard to stress, studies such as those run by Clifford & Hollin have looked at how memory is affected under a high-stress situation. But studies demonstrate that a variety of factors can lead to the misidentification of criminals. 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. Enforcement and trials one other witness more women made allegations of sexual assault against him years... 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