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Eyewitness testimony
Eyewitness testimony in the criminal justice system
Importance of eyewitness testimony in the criminal justice system
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On June 19th of 1990, Robert Baltovich’s girlfriend Elizabeth Bain went missing. Elizabeth told her family that she was going to check the tennis schedules at her school, the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus. She never returned, but her car was eventually recovered. It was found with blood on the backseat, with forensic tests showing that it was Elizabeth’s. With no clear evidence, the “solving” of the case was completely based on eyewitness testimonies, which eventually had Robert arrested for the murder of his girlfriend.
There were two key eye witnesses to Robert’s accusations, Marianne Perz and David Dibben. Marianne stated that she had seen Robert and Elizabeth sitting together on campus at 5:40pm, the day when she disappeared.
The first of the victims were two British backpackers who were touring Australia called Caroline Clark and Joanne Walters. They went missing in April of 1992 and were found in September of that year. They were found in a part of Belanglo State Forest known as “Executioner's Drop”. Joanne had been stabbed, possibly to the point of paralysis, and her zipper was undone, but the
Gail Miller was a 22-year-old nursing assistant living in Saskatoon. She was found in an alley way between 6:45 and 7:30am on January 31st 1969. She had been raped, stabbed twelve times and left for dead. The rape was found to have occurred after she died. The police had little evidence; few clues had been left behind. There had been other attacks in the same area. Authorities tried to suppress the information that linked the Miller rape and murder to the two other assaults.
One reoccurring principle discussed in Crime Scene Investigation is “let the crime scene tell you a story.” When applied to this case, the story was a sad tale of a depressed husband who killed his
The murder of JonBenet Ramsey has become one of the nation's notorious unsolved murder mysteries. A wide range of crime scene investigators and police officials have searched for clues for JonBenet's killer, but countless authorities have already considered this murder to be one of the most inexplicable cold-cases in America. As the world marks the twenty first year anniversary of the tragic event with still no standing suspects, an abundance of evidence proven through research points to one suspect in particular.
Two detectives were assigned to the case: Harry Hanson and Finis Brown. [2] When they and the police arrived at the crime scene, it was already swarming with people, gawkers and reporters. The entire situation was out of hand and crowded, everyone trampling all over any hopes for good evidence. [2] One thing they did report finding was a nearby cement block with watery blood on it, tire tracks and a heel print on the ground. There was dew under the body so they knew it had been set there just after 2 a.m. when temperatures dropped to 38 degrees.
Elizabeth Short famously known as the Black Dahlia was murdered in California in January 15, 1947. She was working as a waitress to support her dream of making it big in Hollywood. The Black Dahlia is one of the biggest unsolved murder mysteries in California to this day. It's been almost 70 years since the murder of Black Dahlia, and many are to believe it is the father of the retired LAPD detective Steve Hodel, his father being George Hodel. But still no one has been put guilty of the murder, as many tried to cover it up by putting themselves guilty when they weren’t. While many scholars believe that Leslie Dollions was the killer, evidence states George Hodel as being the killer of Elizabeth Short.
To support their conclusion the board tells the story of two men who were exonerated after spending thirty years in prison for a crime they did not commit. Days after the rape and murder of eleven year old Sabrina Buie, half-brothers Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown confessed to the crime. Not only were their confessions made under pressure without parents or an attorney present, but the prosecution failed to present multiple pieces of evidence to the defense lawyers, DNA evidence that proved McCollum and Brown were not responsible for the murder. In fact, the DNA belonged to a Roscoe Artis, who was a suspect all along and was convicted of a similar crime just weeks later.
That night, many witnesses reported having seen a man changing the tire of his van and waving any possible help away angrily while others reported seeing a woman wandering around the side of the dangerous highway. More witnesses reported that Kenneth and his wife were having many violent disputes at their home that usually resulted in Kenneth pursuing an angry Yvonne around the block. The most compelling evidence against Mathison, however, is purely scientific. Detective Paul Ferreira first noticed that the extensive blood stains inside the Mathison van. After hearing Mathison’s original account, he summoned the assistance of famed forensic expert Dr. Henry Lee to analyze what he thought was inconsistent evidence. Blood stains on the paneling and the spare tire in the cargo area reveal low-velocity blood stains meaning that the blood probably dripped from Yvonne’s head onto the floor. The stains found on the roof and steering wheel were contact transfer patterns probably caused by Mathison’s bloody hands. Blood stains on the driver’s side of the van were contact-dripping patterns which indicate that Mathison touched the inside of the van multiple times before and after moving his wife’s body. The final groups of blood stains on the instrument panel of the van were medium-velocity stains which show investigators that Mathison probably struck his wife at least once in the front seat causing the blood to fly from her open head wound. The enormous amounts of blood inside the van lead prosecutor Kurt Spohn to investigate the Mathison case as a murder instead of a misdemeanor traffic violation.
Scene: This story takes place in New York City, New York in the mid 90's. While the UN conference is in town, a series of kidnappings has erupted and it's up to a team of forensic scientists to follow the clues and find the killer.
Jennifer Thompson-Cannino was raped at knife point in her apartment. She was able to escape and identify Ronald Cotton as her attacker. The detective conducting the lineup told Jennifer that she had done great, confirming to her that she had chosen the right suspect. Eleven years later, DNA evidence proved that the man Jennifer Identified, Ronald Cotton was innocent and wrongfully convicted. Instead, Bobby Poole was the real perpetrator. Sadly, there are many other cases of erroneous convictions. Picking cotton is a must read for anybody because it educates readers about shortcomings of eyewitness identification, the police investigative process and the court system.
Sue Grafton once stated: “Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they're right.” This is clearly the thought the Boulder Colorado police conceived in the case of little beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. As many have observed from the onslaught of media coverage, the day after Christmas 1996, six year old Jon Benet Ramsey was found buried under a white blanket, bound, beaten, and strangled to death in the wine cellar of their Boulder home. With such a strikingly rare and glamorous story of a six year old beauty queen dead, who was a part of a “perfect American upper-middle class family”, combined with a lack of a lead and ever mounting suspicion piling up against the parents it was no surprise to find that it was fuel to the media and soon stories sold and became a matter of competition between the press. So, like wildfire, this heart-breaking story spread, stretching across the nation, shattering the souls of the world. News broadcasts, magazine and newspaper articles, and television specials all shaped and molded peoples perceptions of this beautiful child’s murder, especially her parents, John and Pasty Ramsey’s involvement or lack there of. The police and FBI’s merciless quest to connect Jon Benet’s murder to her parents, seemed to cause the them to overlook important evidence, or at the very least dismiss suspicious findings that would otherwise send red flags to investigators. There are many contributors as to why this case remains unsolved including lack of investigative expertise, failure to protect valuable evidence, and focusing too much on the parents as suspects but, ultimately, the over involvement of...
A seventeen year old named Richard Buckland, with learning disabilities who worked at Carlton Hayes psychiatric hospital, was spotted near Dawn Ashworth's crime scene and new unreleased information about the body. In 1986, Buckland confessed to Ashworth's murder but not Mann's. Scientists used Sir Alec Jeffery's new techniq...
In November of 1980 A young girl, 12 years old, named Christine Weller went missing. She would later prove to be one of Olson's first murder victims. Christine was abducted from her home in Surrey, BC. Her mutilated body ...
On June 9th 1959 near Clinton, Ontario 14-year-old Steven Truscott gave his classmate 12-year-old Lynne Harper a ride on his bike from their school down to Highway 8 (Ontario Justice Education Network Timeline of Events for the Steven Truscott Case). This sole event would be the one to change his life forever. The next day Lynne’s body was discovered near Lawson’s bush (close to the area in which he dropped her off) where she had been strangled, sexually assaulted and subsequently killed. That day Constable Hobbs conducted lengthy seven-hour interview on young Steven Truscott in which he asked him a number
Robert William “Willie” Pickton is currently serving a life sentence for the second degree murder of six British Columbian women. Although convicted for the murders of six victims, physical and forensic evidence for thirty-three women was uncovered at Pickton’s Port Coquitlam pig farm which served as the crime scene for his murders. Numerous other missing women, mostly marginalized prostitutes with chronic drug addiction, from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside area remain unaccounted for. It is not unreasonable to assume that they too, met the same disturbing fate as the other murder victims. Pickton’s modus operandi for the serial murders was the same; he would prowl the drug and poverty ridden Downtown Eastside neighbourhood of Vancouver looking for potential victims, take the victims back to his Port Coquitlam pig farm, and then sexually abuse, torture, and murder them before mutilating and disposing their bodies. Most disturbingly, the victim’s remains were allegedly fed to the pigs on his farm, which were then slaughtered with the meat given out to associates of Pickton or to visitors of the farm (The Pickton Trial, CBC.ca/news).