Eyewitness testimony is being able to choose the suspect out of a lineup or an array of photos. Sometimes the witnesses' testimony is not always accurate. When a witness falsely testifies they can send an innocent person to prison. An example of a case where the eyewitness testimony was incorrect was in the murder of 78-year-old Jack Sasson. The man who was convicted of the murder of Mr. Sasson was 18-year-old Kash Register.…
Wrongful Conviction On the morning of August 10, 1984, Deborah Sykes was brutally stabbed, sexually assaulted, and eventually killed in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The man convicted for her murder was Darryl Hunt, a 19 year old boy that would go on to spend 20 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Hunt was convicted based on eye-witness testimony and informants, but was later exonerated based on DNA evidence that matched a man that was caught just a few months after the murder took place. This case is an exemplar of the strength of DNA evidence and the fragility of eyewitness testimony.…
Mr. Replogle, I strongly agree with your point of view. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments prohibited eyewitnesses from testifying to false identification due to faulty memory. In today’s society, a variety of different techniques can be utilized to identify criminals. It is sad to say that several problems have been encounter from eyewitness identification due to an unreliable perception of the events along with other factors. However, eyewitness testimony is a powerful component to obtaining a conviction in some cases.…
1. Do you think that Tyrone Briggs might be a victim of false identification? Why or why not? I think that Tyrone Briggs might be a victim of false identification for two reasons.…
As Holloway pointed out, eyewitness testimony plays a significant role in sending innocent people to prison (Holloway, 2015). Yet, I feel that she only vaguely covered the topic. Because eyewitness testimony is a major component of the American criminal justice system, Holloway should have better emphasized the faultiness of eyewitness…
Eyewitness misidentification has been the predominant cause of erroneous convictions. A study by the Innocence Project shows that it plays a role in 72% of justice miscarriages. However, eyewitness testimony is considered compelling evidence and has been the foundation upon which many cases have been brought to trial. Factors like weapon focus effect, forgetting curve, cross racial identification, communication with witness after identification and memory contamination, contribute to eye witness misidentification. Some of these factors are interestingly depicted in Picking Cotton.…
Evidence Interpretation Over the years, there have been several cases that have been resolved with a false guilty plea or cases where a guilty party was not convicted of a crime. There are various elements that play a role in solving cases; evidence is a one of these key elements. Many factors can determine if the evidence submitted before a court of law is accurate such as how the evidence is collected, if proper protocell was followed before the laboratory’s handling of the evidence, and if the evidences was accurately processed by the crime scene laboratory by various forensic scientists. Furthermore, with the advances in technology in today’s society, various pieces of evidence such a DNA analysis have been considered a crucial element…
Eyewitness identification relies upon the eyewitness memory and the ability for him or her to retain that information and reporting it straight to the police. Memory is considered as evidence because information is being gathered and encoded in memory. Over time the storage holds in the encoded information in the brain until retrieval occurs so the brain can have access to the information. Although memory is not accurate, errors can occur throughout the process of encoding, storage, or retrieval. Even images and sound can deteriorate over time, which makes it hard to recall them back.…
The accuracy of their testimony is sometimes called into question, especially if a witness says they saw the…
When a conviction depends completely on whether or not an eyewitness can select the correct suspect and not one of the foils, known non-suspects, out of a lineup is where many cases of wrongful convictions can begin. For example, in many cases it appears juries believe a witness who can correctly identify a defendant from lineups, even when other sources of evidence are contradictory to their statements (“Eyewitness Identification” 1); therefore, proposing a possibility of bias towards one piece of evidence while ignoring all opposing information from others. However, some may say that eyewitness testimony is the only way to correctly identify the accused suspect. Although in some cases that statement may be true when no other form of evidence is present, for so many others, the eyewitness identification can lead to a lapse in judgement by the jury who may very easily dismiss other pieces of evidence that are available to them; therefore, an individual who unfortunately matches the description of the guilty party may be imprisoned for a crime they did not commit.…
Hello Sangro, I completely agree with you that there should be eyewitness testimonies because of this case. Human memory, like you said, is very fragile. They even conducted several test and observations in the viedo to prove just that. You can forget what you saw in seconds, therefore eyewitness are not reliable. Misidenifcation can ruin lives.…
1. What is your thesis statement? Innocent individuals have been wrongfully convicted for crimes that they did not commit. This has happened in the past, before DNA technology was available, however, it continues to happen today. Some people have spent several months behind bars, while others have spent decades behind bars, all while being innocent.…
Eyewitnesses are humans, who are bound to make mistakes, and are prone to the misinformation effect. The old man had heard the young man threatened his father to kill him and the woman had witnessed the young…
Whether by perjury or eyewitness/victim error (Project, 2016). The criminal justice put more than necessary faith in eyewitness testimony. An eyewitness testimony is not a reliable source for the simple fact that only after innocence is proven is it made clear that eyewitness testimony was flawed. Many factors that can lead to eyewitness misidentification include but not limited to the witness lying and PTSD. It is not possible to know the number of wrongful convictions by mistaken identity, because many who are mistakenly identified will never have a chance to prove their innocence (Project, 2016)…
In a study done by Steven D. Penrod and Brian L. Cutler, eyewitness identification was tested to find the most reliable effects on eyewitness performance. The studies that they performed indicated that jurors ' evaluations of identification evidence are heavily influenced by the confidence of the eyewitness. Unfortunately, in this case and in many other cases, the confidence of the eyewitness did not matter because he still identified the wrong man. The correlation between confidence and accurate eyewitness identification is weak (Penrod & Cutler, 1989). Because the victim’s husband was so confident in his identification, the cops did not feel obligated to find all of the evidence that they needed to prosecute Brenton.…