To make sure that the police could not unintentionally influence the process, officers who didn't know who the real suspect was presented photos of six people to the eyewitnesses. They focused on 348 robberies that occurred in 2013 and involved eyewitnesses and a single suspect. So a team led by John Wixted, a psychologist at the University of California (UC), San Diego, ran an experiment with the robbery division of the Houston Police Department in Texas. But many researchers have voiced concerns about whether these laboratory experiments accurately reflect real-world situations. The findings indicate that eyewitnesses can be easily fooled into confident false memories, and that showing them photographs sequentially reduces false identification. To get a handle on the problem, researchers have conducted experiments in which actors play out a crime, and subjects try to correctly identify the perpetrator from a lineup. Hundreds of innocent people have been exonerated by DNA evidence in the United States since the 1990s, and eyewitness misidentification was the root cause in 70% of the cases. No one doubts that eyewitness evidence is risky. Now, a new study of robbery investigations suggests that these changes may be doing more harm than good. Juries are told to discount the value of eyewitness testimony and ignore how confident the witnesses may be about whom they think they saw. justice system has been changing how eyewitnesses are used in criminal cases. She confidently pointed to him as the man who raped her.īecause of examples like these, the U.S. By the time Thompson faced Cotton in court a year later, her doubts were gone. "I think this is the guy," she told the police after several minutes of hesitation. When Thompson first identified Cotton by photo, she was not convinced of her choice. Eleven years later, after DNA sequencing technology caught up, samples taken from Thomson's body matched a different man who finally confessed. He was eventually sentenced to life in prison based on Thompson's testimony. When word reached Cotton that the police were looking for him, he walked into a precinct voluntarily. Thompson picked out 22-year-old Ronald Cotton, whose photograph was on file because of a robbery committed in his youth.
EYEWITNESSES MAY BE FOCUSED ON THEIR OWN SERIES
Then the police showed her a series of mug shots of similar-looking men. Just hours later, a sketch artist worked with Thompson to create an image of the assailant's face.
She negotiated, convincing him to not kill her. In July 1984, a man broke into the apartment of Jennifer Thompson, a 22-year-old in North Carolina, and threatened her with a knife.
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