Dan tries to find out more about Mustafa . Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, Beaming Prince Harry and Meghan enjoy a date night at exclusive $4,200-A-YEAR private members' club in LA - as friend claims they've been left furious over King Charles' 'cruel' decision to evict them from Frogmore Cottage, Biden LAUGHS at claim he was responsible for fentanyl overdoses of two brothers and says they died 'under the previous administration' - after mom's heartbreaking testimony to Congress, US housing market faces 20% correction amid further rate hikes and overinflated housing market, Dallas Fed warns, Is air travel going to get even MORE expensive? Instructions given to eyewitnesses should be clear, simple and standardized across jurisdictions. The murder victims cold case evidence was there because the case had recently been reopened; the 1969 preschoolers DNA sample was there as part of an active murder investigation, and Leitermans DNA sample was there because he had recently been arrested for forging a prescription. 10 Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 114 (1977). In much the same way, an eyewitness can be led to falsely remember someone committing a crime that was actually committed by someone else. According to the Innocence Project, mistaken identifications are the leading factor in wrongful convictions, accounting for almost 70 percent of the wrongful convictions overturned by post-conviction DNA evidence. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. The prosecution then claims that Flowers then walked again from his house to Tardy Furniture to commit the murder, passing an auto body shop and a drycleaner on the way, as well as Highway 51. or debate this issue live on our message boards. Pictured: Protestors take part in an anti-Iran demonstration on December 24, 2022 in Istanbul, Turkey, Women burned their headscarves in Kurdish-controlled north-east Syria in September 2022. The prosecutor, Doug Evans, tried Curtis Flowers, a former employee at Tardy, six times for the crime.29 The Flowers case relied on three key points of evidence: (1) the eyewitness testimony of people who placed Curtis Flowers on the route from his home, to steal a gun, back to his home and then to Tardy to commit the murders and then home again (2) ballistics and (3) jailhouse confessions.30 But when the witnesses had received a simple reinforcing comment following their identification (Good job, you got the guy), the mock jurors could no longer tell the difference between accurate and mistaken eyewitnesses. Even if he allows it, he will have to instruct the jury about the variables that can lead to misidentification. John Worboys was given an indeterminate prison sentence. Perhaps one of the most striking examples of the flaws in eyewitness testimony is the case of Jerry Miller, who was convicted of rape, robbery and kidnapping in 1982. But studies demonstrate that a variety of factors can lead to the misidentification of criminals. In about 70% of these cases, misidentification by one or more eyewitnesses contributed significantly as evidence for conviction.3, Eyewitness Testimony: General Social Science Findings, Throughout history, eyewitness testimony was held up as the golden nugget of evidence. According to the prosecution on the day of the murder, at around 7 am, Flowers walked from his home on the West side of town all the way to a sewing factory parking lot on the East side of town, crossing Highway 51, one of the towns largest streets, while doing so. It is used to establish facts in a criminal investigation or prosecution. Imagine if police let unauthorized people have willy-nilly access to a crime scene that is under investigation. [Youre smart and curious about the world. 26 The Innocence Project, DNA Exoneree Case Profiles,. Yet, based on, among other things, this powerful purported eyewitness evidence, Heidelberg was convicted. Following criticism of the decision, the high court ordered the parole board to re-examine Worboys case. In Manson, the Supreme Court highlighted reliability as the linchpin in determining the admissibility of identification testimony and adopted a totality of the circumstances test to assess reliability in this context.10 And third, the confidence expressed by the eyewitness following an identification of someone from the lineup must be recorded. Medicolegal court reports are requested where expert witness evidence is required. Most of these witnesses personally knew Flowers, and many had grown up with him, lived in his same neighborhood. Thus, Chester was charged with three separate felonies as a way to overwhelm him and break him down. Advertise to our national and international criminal justice audience at The Crime Report and support our mission. 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. 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. 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. In this case, the defendant was charged with first degree murder and the only evidence against him was the testimony of two eyewitnesses. 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. The appeal was successful and the conviction was quashed. 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. You can get our highlights each weekend.]. All six of those eyewitnesses were wrong. (2017). Its a stain on our justice system. It turns out, back in 1998, just days after the crime, the NYPD had a main suspect for the murder of Al Ward: a man named Mustafa. Psychological experiments have shown that lineup administrators who know who the suspect is end up cuing witnesses toward that person. This can be true even in situations where the witness has an ample opportunity to observe the offender. The variables include: viewing conditions (lighting-distance-duration), distracting stimuli (weapons-loud noises) and internal states of the observer (attention-motivation-skill-prejudice). The witnesses trial testimony reveals a simple explanation for these high-confidence errors: All of the eyewitnesses received confirmatory feedback following their identification of Grant. Do not sell or share my personal information. 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. Although she was due to face further trial at the Central Criminal Court, on the basis of the expert evidence, the Crown accepted her plea to the lesser offence of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. 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. On the strength of six eyewitnesses lineup identifications, Lydell Grant was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for the murder of a young Texas man, Aaron Scheerhoorn, who was stabbed to death outside a Houston nightclub in 2010. As with DNA evidence, eyewitness evidence needs to be safeguarded against contamination. Yes, the 1959 Matthiessen (Not Deer Park) State Park rape/robbery played a role in Wegers arrest (the rape victim ALSO ID Weger separately and BEFORE the line-up mentioned here), but it played NO role (not mentioned at all) in his trial or subsequent conviction. Confidence collected at the time of an identification during a double-blind lineup procedure is informative regarding the eyewitnesss accuracy. It does make sure that photos in a lineup resemble one another.) Retrieved March, 2019. U. L. Rev. This created an inherent bias that made the lineup unfair, and likely affected the victims subsequent identification. This helps to safeguard against overly eager police officers who might implicitly encourage eyewitnesses (with tone of voice, body language, etc.) . It should be revived and approved. Miller was ultimately charged with rape, robbery and kidnapping. The detective also admitted making a similar comment to at least one other witness. Such behaviors are often inadvertent; neither lineup administrators nor eyewitnesses may be consciously aware that theyre happening. I can vouch for the truth of his observations, having been involved in several cases dealing with witness misidentifications while representing both plaintiffs and defendants. Ernest Saunders only served 10 months of his sentence before being released. Kendall Taggart BuzzFeed News Reporter Blood and fingerprint evidence, per se, would not be deemed unreliable. 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. His offences led to him being named the black cab rapist by the UK press. Confidence reported at trial after the eyewitness has received confirmatory feedback is not. I must also add that Chester Weger also CONFESSED to the 1959 Matthiessen State Park rape/robbery but was never brought to trial (he already had received a life sentence for murder) to avoid putting the TEENAGED female victim on the witness stand. The nearly simultaneous analyses of evidence from these three cases in the same crime lab in 2002a reunion, of sorts, among Mixer, Ruelas and Leiterman, who were ostensibly last together on the night of the murder in 1969was either an incredible coincidence or the Mixer evidence was contaminated with DNA from both Leiterman and Ruelas. Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? 8 Clifford & Hollin, Effects Of the Type of Incident and the Number of Perpetrators on Eyewitness Memory, Journal of Applied Psychology 66.3 (1981). One might assume that Grant was the murderers unlucky doppelganger. Years later, in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court highlighted the danger of erroneous eyewitness identification in United States v. Wade, stating, The vagaries of eyewitness identification are well-known; the annals of criminal law are rife with instances of mistaken identification.23 The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimates that U.S. law enforcement made 12,196,959 arrests in 2012. Judges should strive to make sure the jury is informed of all of the identifications an eyewitness has made prior to the trial. In recent years, more and more jurisdictions have come to accept expert testimony on the reliability of eyewitness identification. 2023 Scientific American, a Division of Springer Nature America, Inc. He is the founder of Hale & Monico, Americas Justice Attorneys. Therefore, it is important that the individuals allowed to testify are accurate in their recollections. Second, the police lineup has to be fair (that is, the suspect should not stand out). The involvement of expert witnesses in famous expert witness cases often leads to changes in how expert evidence is formulated and the effect it may have on the outcome of the proceedings. To do this, proper testing protocols that reduce chances of contamination need to be followed. 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 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. Does Irans Foreign Minister accept women can peacefully protest for change in Iran? Well ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. At his criminal trial, both parking lot attendants identified Miller as the perpetrator. 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