If a judge finds the eyewitness testimony unreliable, he can suppress its use at trial. Advertise to our national and international criminal justice audience at The Crime Report and support our mission. Consider, for example, the case of Gary Leiterman, who, in 2005, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison following a cold case investigation in which his DNA was found on the clothing of a woman named Jane Mixer, who was murdered in 1969. In much the same way, an eyewitness can be led to falsely remember someone committing a crime that was actually committed by someone else. What facts gave rise to the belief that Leiterman may have been wrongfully convicted based on contaminated evidence? The FBI estimates that 521,196 of these arrests were for violent crimes.24 Accurate data on the number of crimes observed by eyewitnesses are not available. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. Los Angeles, Review: A reimagined Secret Garden fails to flower anew at the Ahmanson Theatre, Editorial: Ousting L.A. Countys chief probation officer isnt enough. 'Do you ask other countries? 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. This can be true even in situations where the witness has an ample opportunity to observe the offender. It gathered more than 100 signatures from prominent lawmakers, human rights campaigners and celebrities. A meta-analytic review of the effects of high stress on eyewitness memory, Law and Human Behavior 28.6 (2004), 687-706. 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.'. Her defence had argued that the children had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), but expert witness, Sir Professor Roy Meadow, told the court that the probability of two children from an affluent family suffering SIDS was 1 in 73 million. Following a protracted trial,Saunders was found guilty ofconspiracy, theft, and false accounting. With surprising ease, for example, participants in a memory experiment can be led to believe that they saw a stop sign when they actually saw a yield sign or that they became lost in a shopping mall as a child when no such experience actually occurred. Historically, eyewitness testimony has been in use not only in the United States and our penal system but all around the world. The psychiatrist formed an opinion of her mental state at the time of the homicide. 4 Defffenbacher, et al. Police said they believed Weger was a suspect in a rape that had occurred a few years earlier. Specifically, the eyewitness had identified the defendant from her window, as the defendant was standing in the dark next to a police officer; however, the eyewitness had pointed to the defendant spontaneously, without the police asking her to do so.16 The Court ruled that, because the police had not induced the identification under suggestive circumstances, the trial judge had not erred in admitting the eyewitness testimony without assessing its reliability under the second step of the Manson test.17 To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. There, the prosecution claims that Flowers stole Doyle Simpsons gun from the glove compartment of Doyles unlocked car and then walked back to his home on the West side of town. However, Solicitor, Marilyn Stowe, had concerns about the expert evidence of Professor Meadow. One reported that he had identified Grant without doubt or hesitation. After . A witness may mistakenly identify a criminal suspect. 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. His doctors maintained that he was suffering from pre-senile dementia, and he couldnt remember three numbers backwards or the name of the US president. A neurologist also claimed that Saunders brain was small for a man his age and showed evidence of shrinking. 'This is not the way to conduct an interview. Sally Challen claimed she experienced years of emotional abuse before killing him with a hammer. In addition to implementing double-blind lineup procedures, its essential that lineup administrators document eyewitnesses confidence immediately following an identification. Episode 3: Eyewitnesses. Thanks to the work of the Innocence Project of Texas, new DNA testing on biological material collected from underneath the victims fingernails cleared Grant and implicated another man, Jermarico Carter, who police said confessed to the killing. 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. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Just as double-blind clinical trials in medical studies are intended to prevent patients and doctors expectations from affecting outcomes of the clinical trial, double-blind lineups aim to prevent witnesses and administrators expectations from influencing the outcomes of the identification procedure. Today, he remains in prison. bn. The other individuals placed in a lineup with the suspect (known as fillers) are supposed to reasonably resemble the suspect in terms of age, height and weight so that the suspect does not stand out. 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. Pregnant), Left and got about 1-2 blocks away and saw a man running west, away from downtown, it was her neighbor Flowers, Clemy pointed it out to Roy but Roy did not recognize him, Couldnt remember his clothes or shoes, did not describe seeing blood on him, Latarsha, Clemys cousin, remains convinced that Clemy made up the story because she felt pressured by law enforcement and because she might be able to get money Latarsha was also taken by the police at 19 to be asked questions and Johnson implied that she might get some of the reward money (30k) if she corroborated, Saw a man running across the street 1-2 blocks away that day of the murders, he was alone (not with Clemy) and it was earlier in the morning and when he was with Clemy later, they did not see anybody running, Law enforcement came and found Roy and he ended up giving a statement to John Johnson, Was shown Flowers picture (school picture) ONLY Flowers asked if that was the person Roy saw running Roy said no and John Johnson pushed Roy that it was Flowers and that Clemy was with him when it happened eventually Roy said he broke down and agreed to the story because he wanted to get out of there (he was afraid of Johnson), After that, Johnson recorded Clemy telling her story of seeing Flowers running away from downtown. Given the prevalence and impact eyewitness testimony can have within a criminal case, it is important to take steps to make it a more reliable practice. The victim, a white female, parked her car in that garage every day and the attendants noticed that as the car approached there was an unknown black male driving the car. This created an inherent bias that made the lineup unfair, and likely affected the victims subsequent identification. 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. Research has repeatedly demonstrated that simple confirming comments such as these have dramatic effects on eyewitnesses testimony. Out on his porch and saw Flowers walking by that morning. Imagine if police let unauthorized people have willy-nilly access to a crime scene that is under investigation. 22 Years later, in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court highlighted the danger of erroneous eyewitness identification in United States v. Now the influential New Jersey Supreme Court has instructed police and judges to take into account an array of responses that might prevent mistaken identifications. 15 Perry v. New Hampshire, 565 U.S. 228, 248 (2012). Following criticism of the decision, the high court ordered the parole board to re-examine Worboys case. Instrumental to the prosecutions theory was the testimony of at least twelve witnesses, each placing Flowers along a discrete portion of the route he was supposed to have traveled that day. The parole board initially approved him for release. In Millers case, the two parking lot attendants were immediately suspicious when the victims car approached the ticket booth. Gov. Overall, an issue plaguing both courts and law enforcement is the lack of standard procedures to safeguard defendants against unreliable eyewitness testimony. A new version of that legislation, AB 308, is pending in the state Senate, though passage in this session is unlikely. Play it now! Instructing an expert witness is not unusualthere are many much-publicised cases where the role of expert evidence has been significant. Later two slideshows were shown, one with a stop sign and the other with a yield sign and they asked the subjects which was the one they had previously seen. Eyewitness testimony can hold a lot of weight with jurors. 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. "Double-Blind" Process for Lineups and Photo Arrays. Assessing confidence is critical because it provides direct information about the trustworthiness of the uncontaminated ID. This helps to safeguard against overly eager police officers who might implicitly encourage eyewitnesses (with tone of voice, body language, etc.) Editorial: Los Angeles County bus riders get no shelter from the storm, Before and after photos from space show storms effect on California reservoirs, Dramatic before and after photos from space show epic snow blanketing SoCal mountains, Yet more rain expected to hit California in March. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation that, among other things, would have set up a task force to examine eyewitness testimony and establish voluntary guidelines to ensure that it was accurate. Marilyn Stowe instructed a pathologist to review the medical notes of both infants. The attendants were also able to have a brief conversation with the driver before he fled on foot. In contrast, a high-confidence ID is highly accurate, a surprising fact that has only recently come to be appreciated by experimental psychologists. You have, Witnesses are Often Wrong: The Case Against Eyewitness ID, Florida City Creates Youth Curfew to Deter Juvenile Crime, Legislator Introduces Laws to Protect Law Enforcement After Temple University Cop is Killed in the Line of Duty, Oversight Report Shows Issues with DOJ Collection of Deaths in Policy Custody Data, Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, New York-Based Chinese Gang Steals 3,000 Texas IDs in Cyber Fraud Case, Murdaugh Murder Trial Jurors to Visit Crime Scene, Heartbreakingly Evil: DOJ Strengthens Fight Against Elder Fraud, Sex Abuse of Athletes: Dont Tell is No Longer an Option, Criminal Justice Journalism Wins Pulitzer Prizes, View from the Trauma Center: Why Gun Violence Persists. 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But there is more to the story. Even though no connection between Leiterman and Ruelas was ever established, the prosecution theorized that all three must have been together after midnight at the murder scene in 1969, with the preschooler bleeding on the victim for some unknown reason while Leiterman killed her. 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). During the meeting Amirabdollahian said Irans government was committed to upholding human rights. 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. 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