Eyewitness Testimony

There have been several cases in which eyewitness testimony led to the conviction of an innocent person. In one notable case, Raymond Towler was wrongly convicted in 1981 of the rape, kidnap, and assault of an 11-year old girl based on eyewitness testimony in which the victim and other witnesses identified him from a photo. Towler had been serving a life sentence and was released in 2010 after serving nearly 30 years until DNA evidence proved that he did not commit the rape (Sheeran, 2010). In another case, Kirk Bloodsworth was convicted and sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl near Baltimore in 1984. Five different eyewitnesses testified that they saw him at the scene of crime. After serving nine years in prison on death row, he was released and paid compensation after traces of semen found in the victim’s underwear excluded him as the person responsible for the crime. Although he was released, he was not formally exonerated for another decade until the real killer was found, Kimberly Shay Ruffner. Ruffner was already incarcerated for unrelated crimes and was identified after the DNA sample from the crime scene was added to state and federal databases and came back as a match for him. Despite the fact that Bloodsworth was a completely different height and weight than Ruffner, five eyewitnesses testified that they saw him at the murder scene (Marshall, 2009).

Another case in which the reliability of eyewitness testimony was questioned was that of Troy Davis, who was convicted and executed for the murder of police officer Mark Allen MacPhail. Seven of the nine witnesses who testified against Davis in the shooting later recanted their testimonies (Pappas, 2011). Jason Chan, assistant professor of psych...

... middle of paper ...

...ggers (1972) in which the Supreme Court identified five factors to be used in determining the reliability of eyewitness identification, particularly when identification was not immediately made at the crime scene. Manson v. Brathwaite (1977) resulted in the Biggers-Brathwaite Factors Test, which weighs the five factors of Biggers against the “corrupting” effect of any procedures conducted by law enforcement that jeopardize “the fairness or impartiality of a procedure.” If such “corrupting” effects take occur due to a law enforcement officer or investigator, the eyewitness identification may still be used in court if the reliability of the eyewitness identification is strong (Swanson et al., 2011).

The most logical and obvious question to all of these reliability issues with eyewitness testimony is what changes can be made to prevent further miscarriages of justice?