Other causes of wrongful convictions. Besides eyewitness misidentification and false testimony, there are two other major causes of wrongful convictions: improper science and informants. The problem with scientific evidence is that it is not always reliable; even scientific techniques that have been subjected to more empirically rigorous testing can be faulty if presented in the wrong way.
The National Academy of Sciences (2009) was highly critical of a broad range of forensic disciplines, such as ballistics, hair and fiber analysis, impression evidence, handwriting analysis, and even fingerprint analysis. The academy concluded that there are problems with standardization, reliability, accuracy and error, and the potential for contextual bias.
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There are three ways in which an exoneree may obtain compensation after their release: tort claims, private bills, or compensation statutes (Mandery et al, 2013). Tort claims, suing the government, are often unsuccessful do to the standards that must be met. A violation to a specific constitutional right must be demonstrated in order for the claim to be valid. As most wrongful convictions take place due to eyewitness misidentification, false confession, faulty science, and informants, usually a constitutional right has not been violated. Even if the exoneree can prove that a constitutional right has been violated, government actors are protected by absolute immunity, for judges and prosecutors, and qualified immunity, for police officers. A private bill is a petition sent to the government asking for compensation while avoiding the immunities set in place for government actors. It is no more successful than tort claims, however. The last form of compensation exonerees may try to pursue is through pre-existing statutes – though only 27 states and the District of Columbia currently have any statutes of this kind. The obstacle with these, however, is meeting the eligibility requirements.
In some states, exonerees may not seek compensation if they somehow contributed to their convictions (by, for example, pleading guilty to the crime or falsely confessing). In other states, only those with official pardons from the government may seek compensation. In still
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An individual’s quality of life largely depends on how the public perceives them as a person – this may be truer for exonerees than anyone. Reintegration into society has proven difficult due to this stigma due to a host of problems such as psychological disorders and poor social and practical skills (Thompson, Molina, and Levitt, 2012). The theoretical framework these researchers used with consideration to the stigma exonerees suffer was the correspondence bias – meaning that people tend to attribute other peoples’ behavior to their internal disposition rather than a situational occurrence. If someone believes that the conviction was due to personal attributes rather than a situational issue, they are likely to suspect future criminality on the part of the exoneree, even though their prior conviction was absolved. The situational factors – eyewitness misidentification, false testimony, improper forensic science, and unreliable informants – are often forgotten or unknown to the perceiver. The average citizen does not always understand that innocence alone does not always protect a defendant, and the abovementioned situational factors do exist within the legal
This paper will consider eye witness testimony and its place in convicting accused criminals. Psychology online (2013) defines “eye witness testimony” as a statement from a person who has witnessed a crime, and is capable of communicating what they have seen, to a court of law under oath. Eye witness testimonies are used to convict accused criminals due to the first hand nature of the eye witnesses’ observations. There are however many faults within this system of identification. Characteristics of the crime is the first issue that will be discussed in this paper, and the flaws that have been identified. The second issue to be discussed will be the stress impact and the inability to correctly identify the accused in a violent or weapon focused crime. The third issue to be discussed is inter racial identification and the problems faced when this becomes a prominent issue. The fourth issue will be time lapse, meaning, the time between the crime and the eye witness making a statement and how the memory can be misconstrued in this time frame. To follow this will be the issue of how much trust jurors-who have no legal training-put on to the eye witness testimony, which may be faltered. This paper references the works of primarily Wells and Olsen (2003) and Rodin (1987) and Schmechel et al. (2006) it will be argued that eye witness testimony is not always accurate, due to many features; inter racial identification, characteristics of the crime, response latency, and line up procedures therefore this paper will confirm that eyewitness testimonies should not be utilised in the criminal ju...
video. In one version, a man pointed a gun at the cashier and she gave
Eyewitness testimony has long been viewed as important evidence in court cases. The general population believes eyewitness identification more than any other evidence, even if the witness account is conflicting with the other evidence presented. Studies show that eyewitness testimony is unreliable, and yet it is still considered the most important form of evidence. People think that if a person says they saw something then it must have happened. Currently there are no universal guidelines on how to obtain and present such evidence. The purpose of this paper is to explain why eyewitness testimony is unreliable, and discuss the proposed guidelines on how law enforcement agencies should gather identifications, as well how the courts should handle such evidence. The author will begin by providing a history of eyewitness testimony and the studies that have been done regarding the validity of eyewitness identifications. Next, she will discuss eyewitness identifications and why they are unreliable. Finally, she will address the proposed universal guidelines for law enforcement agencies and the courts.
Gould, Jon B. and Leo, Richard A., One Hundred Years Later: Wrongful Convictions After a Century of Research (2010). Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 100, No. 3, 2010; Univ. of San Francisco Law Research Paper No. 2010-28.
Eyewitness evidence is critical for solving a crime, and can often be the main source of evidence in determining who the perpetrator is. However, it is estimated that every year, approximately 4,500 wrongful convictions have happened in the United States alone, based on inaccurate or mistaken eyewitness testimonies. Studies have consistently shown that the leading cause for wrongful convictions is invalid eyewitness testimonies, as this has been a major source of convicting innocent people, who have been later proven innocent by forensic DNA.
Examining the entire case and comparing psychological perspective with the eyewitness testimony and that reason for the false confession, I concluded that, the victim husband was under the stress creating due to the trauma of been witness of such horrible crime and the loss of his love one. Other factors such as the weapon effect in which a person pay more attention to the weapon than faces, colors or any other details. In addition, the time crime occurs, the lightness of that location, and that fact that the perpetrator approaches the victim from behind were significant factor for a person to be confused about what real happen during the crime and certainly identify a perpetrator.
According to Psychology Today, eyewitness identification can be unreliable. Many people who are convicted of crimes due to eyewitness testimony are usually released based on DNA evidence. As a result, criminals roam freely because eyewitnesses are unable to identify them properly. Eyewitnesses usually take time to identify potential criminals. The extra time allows them to mentally add all kinds of other specifics to the criminal’s face.
Eyewitnesses are such a powerful tool because, “...eyewitnesses are too persuasive in the sense that their confidence and other qualities of their testimony are greatly exaggerated.”(Wells/Bradfield 1998). This can be a useful tool in any courtroom, heavily turning a case in one's favor. However, this can also be (and often is) a dangerous aspect to using eyewitnesses in a trial, because a witness who strongly believes in their identification of a suspect can solidify a verdict, even if the suspect is innocent. It becomes monumentally more dangerous when you find that the eyewitness’ confidence can be swayed into a desired direction. Researchers Wells and Bradfield had to take into account the different variables that factor into the confidence levels of eyewitnesses spanning the gap between the identification of a suspect and their testimony. To help narrow this window, the researchers employed what they called a “postidentification feedback paradigm”, which through only administering feedback after the viewing and identification processes allows the researchers to assume that any variation of recollection stemming from the use of feedback manipulation would be forms of false recall about the witnessing process (Wells/Bradfield
Eyewitness identification evidence has long been recognized for its tendency to be unreliable and majority of the time, inaccurate. Recent studies have shown that inaccurate eyewitness identification testimony is the single greatest cause for wrongful convictions in the United States. One study estimated that half of all wrongful convictions were results from false
It is my belief that eyewitness testimony should be inadmissible in a court of law due to the many dilemmas’ in our memory and our inability to recollect certain details from specific memories without them being distorted. Studies have been conducted showing the extent to which eyewitness testimony can be inaccurate, one being the Wells and Bradfield (1998). This study instructed participants to watch a video of a robbery (8 seconds long), after they were given slides of possible robbers. All participants identified a robber, although the actual person in the video was not present in the slide. It is the shown that errors of mistaken identity and constructive nature of memory, such as this that make eyewitness testimony an unreliable source to be used in a court of law.
Forensic psychology covers many different topics such as detecting deception, interrogations, criminal profiling, and eyewitness testimony to name a few. Eyewitness testimony is a key element in regards to the criminal justice system and crime evidence. It uses the recall of memories but these memories can be corrupt along the way which impacts eyewitness testimony. There are many different research findings in this area of study and these different studies have been conducted to understand how accurate eyewitness testimony and identification can be. In a real world example a man is wrongfully convicted because of two eyewitness testimonies stating he was the culprit.
Eyewitness account testimony remains an important part of the justice system. Individuals who are victims of crime or witness a crime are asked what they say and who was the perpetrator of a crime. However, eyewitness testimony has been shown to be false in many cases. In the case shown, a man was falsely imprisoned for two rapes. His one victim memorized the perpetrator during the rape. She stated that she made a conscious effort to remember anything possible about the man who raped her. She wanted to help the police in catching the man. However, the wrong man was put in jail. The man repeatedly denied his guilt. After the OJ Simpson trial, the convicted person asked for a DNA test. The DNA test exonerated him. He was released from prison after eleven years.
In 1995 a Virginian prison inmate Robert Lee Brock was determine to prove his innocence. While he couldn't trade places with man he could at least seek restitution. Brock filed charges stating that his religious beliefs had been violated and felt entitled to $5 million dollars. The defendant? Robert Lee Brock. He was suing himself. Of course, since he was in prison, the state would have to pay.
Victim restitution is when the offender of a crime is ordered by the justice system to reimburse a victim for harm or damages done. Reimbursement can be sought by victims for expenses related to medical expenses, therapy costs, prescription charges, counseling costs, lost wages, legal expenses, insurance deductibles, crime-scene clean up or repair, and lost or damaged property. All state level courts and the federal court system have various means in which victims can purse restitution (National Center for Victims of Crime, 2004). Some jurisdictions require victims’ who wish to seek compensation for damages as a result of crime, do so as a civil action against the offender, while other jurisdictions include restitution as part of the sentencing
Within the criminal justice system, it is evident that jurors rely heavily on eye-witness testimony in determining the guilt of a suspect. Psychological research in relation to this issue primarily focuses on the correlation between confidence and accuracy and in doing so asserts that jurors perceive that the more confident a witness appears, the more likely they are to be accurate in their testimony (Cutler & Penrod, 1995). By corroborating both Wise et al. (2009) and Cutler et al. (1995), it is evident that of all the factors which impact on the jury in relation to eye-witness testimony, eye-witness confidence is the most significant in influencing a juror’s verdict. However, this relationship is recorded as obtaining a correlational value