Renowned Expert witnesses include doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other professionals who are instructed to give expert opinions in legal proceedings. Therefore, when John Warboys applied for parole, an independent psychologist was instructed by his legal representative to assess his risk. This is not always the case. However, Solicitor, Marilyn Stowe, had concerns about the expert evidence of Professor Meadow. Witness misidentifications can affect both plaintiffs and defendants. 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. 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. 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. The shooter had borrowed Heidelbergs car, and when Heidelberg went to retrieve his car later that night he was arrested by officers at the scene. The pathologist discovered that one of the babies had in fact died from a viral infection, not cot death. Most recently, in 2012, the Supreme Court clarified that the Due Process Clause does not require judges to assess the reliability of eyewitness identifications made under suggestive circumstances when the circumstances are not created by law enforcement officials.15 In other words, in cases where the proffered identification does not result from suggestive police procedure, the judge need not consider whether the identification also passes the second step of the Manson test. There have been many famous expert witness cases. 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. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison. The appeal was successful and the conviction was quashed. Even if he allows it, he will have to instruct the jury about the variables that can lead to misidentification. 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 created an inherent bias that made the lineup unfair, and likely affected the victims subsequent identification. A "double-blind" lineup or photo-array is when the person interviewing the potential eyewitness does not which of the persons in a photo array or lineup is the actual suspect. 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. 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. Renowned Expert witnesses include doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other professionals who are instructed to give expert opinions in legal proceedings. Most witnesses didnt come forward of their own accord, and often enough it was the lead investigator for the district attorneys office, John Johnson, who found the witnesses, and brought them in to testify. First, another DNA profileone belonging to John Ruelas, who was just a four-year-old preschooler at the time of the murderwas found on a blood spot taken from the victims left hand. Today, he remains in prison. 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She unsuccessfully appealed against her conviction in 2000. The answer seems like a resounding yes if you consider some well-known and rather disconcerting information. In 1932, Yale University law professor Edwin M. Borchard documented nearly seventy cases of miscarriage of justice caused by eyewitness errors in his book, Convicting the Innocent.22 What would that mean for the reliability of the blood or fingerprint evidence, for example, collected at that scene? You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. It is used to establish facts in a criminal investigation or prosecution. The lineup photo from one of these lineups shows how suggestive it was: The other four men in the lineup were much older and bigger than Chester. They were then asked a leading question about how fast the car was going when it passed the yield sign. Claimed to have called out to Flowers that day. EvgeniyShkolenko/iStock via Getty Images Plus, Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News/Chicago History Museum via Getty Images, Scientific best practices for conducting eyewitness lineups, smile when witnesses are looking at the suspect, no longer tell the difference between accurate and mistaken eyewitnesses, alter witnesses memories of the original crime, less able to recognize the actual perpetrator, is informative regarding the eyewitnesss accuracy, 25 states have adopted these core procedural reforms, Committee Member - MNF Research Advisory Committee, PhD Scholarship - Uncle Isaac Brown Indigenous Scholarship. Out on his porch and saw Flowers walking by that morning. If the contaminated evidence is relied on to establish guilt versus innocence at a trial, the risk of a wrongful conviction is high. Three of the eyewitnesses reported that the detective told them that they had picked the same person other people had, though the detective himself denied having made such statements. In the Miller case, a woman was raped in her car in a parking garage in downtown Chicago. 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. Its a stain on our justice system. Often, it can be the strongest evidence in a criminal case even though it can also be the most unreliable. Marilyn Stowe instructed a pathologist to review the medical notes of both infants. Psychological experiments have shown that lineup administrators who know who the suspect is end up cuing witnesses toward that person. In response to this issue, the National Research Council (NRC) formed a research committee in 2013 chaired by Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District of New York and cognitive scientist, Thomas Albright of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.31 The group released their findings in 2014 in a report titled Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification. As a result, witnesses who have received confirmatory feedback provide testimony that is highly persuasive to jurors. In Winona, Mississippi on July 16, 1996, four people were shot and killed at Tardy furniture store. His offences led to him being named the black cab rapist by the UK press. But faith in eyewitnesses runs so deep that despite the overwhelming proof of Grants innocence, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals initially refused his exoneration request. 31 Elizabeth Loftus, Eyewitness Science and the Legal System, 14 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 110 (2018). This decision attracted intense media attention and was seen to be a controversial decision due to the nature and severity of his offences. 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. 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 He was 19 at the time of that attack. Expert evidence may be important in determining the right outcome. An Iranian girl passed away and we were all very sorry about that. 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. 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. When proper procedures are not followed, the potential for error exists. The shooter wound up crashing the car and escaping on foot. However, there has yet to be research showing what ideal instructions would look like, as each case involving eyewitness testimony varies from each other. Subsequent memory tests, including the dramatic one that occurs in court in front of the jury, constitute contaminated evidence. Published: 00:56 EST, 2 March 2023 | Updated: 01:01 EST, 2 March 2023. In Millers case, the two parking lot attendants were immediately suspicious when the victims car approached the ticket booth. 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. 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). After his conviction at Croydon Crown Court, several more women made allegations of sexual assault against him. She was sentenced to life in prison. 3 Eyewitness Misidentification. 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. Blood and fingerprint evidence, per se, would not be deemed unreliable. He served 61 years in prison before being released on parole in February 2020. I am currently involved in another case in which the failings of witness identification are starkly evident. Instead evidence collected at the contaminated crime scene would probably be declared inadmissible. The person they think was the perpetrator in fact had nothing to do with the crime. And third, the confidence expressed by the eyewitness following an identification of someone from the lineup must be recorded. 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. "Double-Blind" Process for Lineups and Photo Arrays. 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. Laura Mickes is an academic at Royal Holloway, University of London. Standardized instructions regarding best practices should be given, including such tips as the importance of minimizing contact between witnesses at the scene, and how gathering eyewitness testimony as early as possible tends to increase its accuracy. To do this, proper testing protocols that reduce chances of contamination need to be followed. 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. Witnesses arent able to tell whether their testimony was influenced in this way. [Youre smart and curious about the world. 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. or debate this issue live on our message boards. Read through our advertising and sponsorship rates and contact us. 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. What it means is that the malleability of memory can harm reliability. Chester denied having anything to do with these other crimes but was identified by the victims based on these suggestive procedures. 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. The NRCs recommendations for law enforcement and judges are below.32. Thanks for reading The Crime Report! Scientific best practices for conducting eyewitness lineups require that the person administering the lineup not know who the police suspect. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? At his criminal trial, both parking lot attendants identified Miller as the perpetrator. But in 2006, DNA testing on the victims slip exonerated Miller and established the identify of another man, Robert Weeks, as the real perpetrator. To many Americans including many jurors eyewitness testimony is the gold standard when it comes to evidence. Noting a victims initial confidence level at the initial identification can be important, so as to track if the witness grows more or less confident with the identification over the course of the trial, which might be an indicator of eyewitness unreliability. 23 United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 230, 288 (1967). Additional Reading: Truth, Lies and Police Lineups, The Crime Report, May 5, 2021. Some elements include the following: First, and most important of all, because the test itself contaminates memory, only the initial memory test provides uncontaminated results. What facts gave rise to the belief that Leiterman may have been wrongfully convicted based on contaminated evidence? He claimed police did not have the power to use firearms in the riots. 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. 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. 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. The psychiatrist found that she had an adjustment disorder at the time she killed her husband, enabling her solicitors to challenge her conviction for murder. 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