nancylebov: blue moon (Default)
[personal profile] nancylebov
http://www.newsweek.com/id/189294
Wells has been studying mistaken identifications for decades, and his objection to the eyewitness-identification system is not that people make mistakes. In an interview, he explains that eyewitness evidence is important, but should be treated—like blood, fingerprints and fiber evidence—as trace evidence, subject to contamination, deterioration and corruption. Our current criminal-justice system allows juries to hear eyewitness-identification evidence shaped by suggestive police procedures.In a 1977 case, Manson v. Braithwaite, the Supreme Court held that such evidence could be used ifdeemed "reliable."Today we know you can have a good long look, be certain you have the right guy and also be wrong. But Manson is still considered good law.

****
his is not an issue that tracks the usual left-rightdivide. Some of the most zealous reformers of the eyewitness-identification process are lifelong conservatives who recognize that the credibility of the whole justice system is on the line each time an innocent man goes to jail and a guilty one walks free.

The good news is that most of the commenters agreed that there's a serious problem, many of them as a result of having been jurors.

Link thanks to The Agitator.

Date: 2009-03-18 01:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] malkingrey.livejournal.com
A lot of the trust in eyewitness identification, I suspect, dates back to times past when most communities were much smaller, and the chances of a particular crime having been committed by an actual stranger were also much smaller. So witnesses would not have been attempting to pick one stranger out of a group of strangers, but one known (at least on an I-see-him-sometimes-on-the-street level) person out of a group of similar known persons.

Date: 2009-03-18 01:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cakmpls.livejournal.com
I suspect that if I am ever called [again] for jury duty (in my 61 years, I have been called twice; the first time I was called by Los Angeles County after I had already moved to Minnesota--I suspect that mail should not have been forwarded; the second time I was excused because of family circumstances), I will never get on a jury. I am the sister of a cop, so the defense probably won't want me (unless they happen to ask me the right questions), and the prosecution won't want me if they ask me the right questions, either. I consider eyewitness identification of someone the witness had never seen before the crime (I think [livejournal.com profile] malkingrey has a good point) to be pretty much worthless.

Date: 2009-03-18 02:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] xiphias.livejournal.com
In a book I just read on the unreliability of memory -- I think the title was "I Can't Remember What I Forgot", but, opposite-of-ironically, I'm not certain of that -- they told the story of a woman who positively identified her rapist, and charged him, and he was brought into court.

At the time of the rape, the accused man had been on live national television. On a news program. Talking about the unreliability of eyewitness evidence.

As they later worked out, the woman had had the television on in the background during the rape, and had replaced her rapist's face with his.

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