James Ochoa Perpetrator Essay

Introduction

In Buena park, California, at the night of May 22, 2005, a young Hispanic man pointed the gun to two young Hispanic men and took their wallets with $600 and drove off their car (Volkswagen Jetta) away.

Two victims reported to police and gave the description of the perpetrator. The police office who took the description from the victim immediately thought of James Ochoa and he showed the picture of James Ochoa to the victims, both of victims said the man in the picture “look like” the perpetrator. The stolen Jetta was recovered from the location a short distance from Ochoa’s house. Three things were found in the car: grey shirt, black hat and a black BB gun, and victims stated that these things belong to perpetrator. A bloodhound

dog was brought to the scene and lead police to Ochoa’s front door. Six hours later, Ochoa was arrested. Two victims identify Ochoa second time by looking at him was in shirtless and handcuffs, and they identified Ochoa a third time two months later in a live lineup.

Ochoa said that he was home all night on the night of the crime and at least five family members confirmed his story. The Orange County Crime Laboratory report eliminate Ochoa as a possible contributor to DNA on the evidence. The same unknown male was identified the major contributor on the baseball hat and on the gun grip. A fingerprint found on the Jetta’s gearshift knob did not match Ochoa or either victim.A CODIS database run did not identify the male. According to news reports, prosecutors attempted to exert pressure on a crime lab analyst who conducted the tests that exonerated Ochoa.The lab analyst refused to change the report.

A judge threatened Ochoa with a sentence of 25 years to life in prison if a jury found him guilty, and against his attorney’s advice, Ochoa accepted a plea bargain in December 2005 that led to a sentence of two years in prison.

In October 2006, a man named Jaymes T. McCollum’s DNA matched the unknown male profile from Ochoa’s case and he confessed to the May 2005 carjacking. On October 20, 2006, at 6:30AM, Ochoa was released from the jail. Ochoa did not know about the CODIS hit or that his sentence had been vacated and he was not represented by an attorney at the time.

There was no physical evidence linking Ochoa to the crime. DNA or fingerprints found on crime-scene items excluded Ochoa. Two eyewitnesses identified Ochoa and gave the evidences. Even though Ochoa and his attoney believe that eyewitnesses were wrong and he was not guilt, but Ochoa took 2 years deal in jail, because he didn’t want to have 25 years to life in prison in case a jury found him guilt

In this assignment, I only focus on discussing how reliable was eyewitness testimony, what factors affect the accuracy of eyewitness identification, how these factors resulted in wrongful convictions of Ochoa.

Discussion

Wllis (1978) pointed out there are number of different variables that are known to influence eyewitness identification accuracy. These variables can be divided into two categories: System variables and estimator variables. Wills (1978) stated that system variables refer to that set of variables that the criminal justice system has control over. And estimator variables refer to that set of variable that are likely to influence witness accuracy, but the criminal justice system has no control over. For example, how to line up the witness and what kind of instructions police give to the witness. Estimator variables are very important, but police cannot really do anything about it. For example, police couldn’t control the age of eyewitness that evidently had huge impact on the accuracy of identification.

System variables:
System variable includes live versus photographic presentation, clothing bias, instruction bias, whether verbal description was given by the witness, and the amount of the delay the event and the task.

Photographic identification
In this case, witnesses identified Ochoa three times. First time, police officer used the photographic identification process. During this process, the proper procedure was not followed. The responding officer didn’t give witnesses a list of photos to identify, rather than showed only Ochoa’s photograph to one witness, and the photographs of Ochoa’s two friends to another witness. What police officer did may unintentionally indicate to witnesses who they should choose and gave inadvertent signals to the witnesses who suspect was.

Show up
Second time, police use a show-up to get witnesses to identify Ochoa. A Show-Up is conducted where an officer brings a witness to a location to show the witness a suspect that has been apprehended. In this case, the witnesses were brought to Ochoa’s house, and they saw Ochoa in handcuffs. The automatic assumption of witnesses would be that the officers must have additional evidence on the person, so this must be the perpetrator. Their brain filled in the gaps with the details of the person in handcuffs, and the face of the suspect became the person they saw commit the crime. Thus, over time, the witnesses became more certain of their identification even though it was wrong. Many courts have disallowed show-up lineups because of this.

Verbal overshadowing

In some identification situation, witness are not asked to provided a description of a perpetrator (when there are multiple witnesses to an event). However, witnesses often are asked to describe the person who committed the crime resulting in a deficit in identified accuracy attributed to verbal overshadowing ( ), which related to Ochoa’s case very well, the witnesses were ask to give the description of perpetrator, which may affect the identification accuracy.

Estimator variables:

Effect of Disguises

At second eyewitness identification process, Ochoa was shirtless without wearing hat, which was different from the perpetrator that witnesses saw during the robbery. Research has examined the influence of several disguises and appearance alterations such as hairstyle and facial hair changes, removal or addition of eyeglasses, and the wearing of a cap. Overall, disguise and changes in appearance make accurate recognition significantly more difficult. This decrease in recognition can be dramatic depending on the degree of change. Face-recognition memory is much reduced by disguise even when this involves apparently small changes such as adding or removing hat.

Weapon Focus
Witnessing a crime can be a stressful experience. In some cases, the anxiety people experience as a result of such events may alter their perceptions of whom or what they saw. This may lead to inaccurate identifications or testimony. The use of a weapon during the commission of a crime often compacts this issue because witnesses may focus on the weapon rather than the suspect or other details. In this case, the gun was used to robbery, which could create a very stressful experience to witnesses, which may affect their perceptions of whom they saw .Experiments suggest that the presence of a weapon draws attention toward the weapon and away from the weapon-holder's face, resulting in less reliable identification performance by eyewitnesses (Steblay, 1992)

With eyewitness misidentification playing a role in nearly 75 percent of convictions overturned through DNA testing, it is evident that eyewitness testimony can have severe flaws and that proper steps should be taken to avoid future mistakes. In order to prevent additional additional wrongful convictions due to misidentification, the Innocence Project is collaborating with law enforcement and policymakers to adopt the following policies, which can also be applied in this case.
Blind/Blinded administration
Blind administration, where the officer administering the lineup
unaware of who the suspect is. In Ochoa’s case, if the police office who
did lineup procedure had no idea if the suspect was in the line, he
wouldn’t give any influence on the witness’s decision. In Ochoa’s caee,
when witnesses identified Ochoa, if Ochoa was not in handcuffs,
witnesses wouldn’t have impression that police may have some
evidences to arrest Ochoa.

Lineup composition
“Fillers” (the non-suspects included in a lineup) should resemble the
eyewitness’ description of the perpetrator.

In Ochoa’s case, when

witness were to take to identify Ochoa, Ochoa should wear same t-shirt,

and wear same cap that was same as the prepetrator’s description.

Instructions:

The person viewing the lineup should be told that the perpetrator may or

may not be in the lineup and that the investigation will continue

regardless of the lineup result. This reduces the pressure on the witness

of feeling like they have to pick a perpetrator. The witness should also

be told not to look to the administrator for guidance.

Confidence Statements:

Law enforcement should elicit and document a statement from an

eyewitness articulating his or her level of confidence in the identification

made at the time that the identification is made.

Conclusion

References

1). The Psychology of Eyewitness Identification

By James M. Lampinen, Jeffrey S. Neuschatz, Andrew D. Cling

2). The Handbook of Eyewitness Psychology: Volume II: Memory for People, Volume 2

edited by R.C.L. Lindsay, David F. Ross, J. Don Read, Michael P. Toglia

3). http://criminal-justice.iresearchnet.com/forensic-psychology/eyewitness-identification-effect-of-disguises-and-appearance-changes/

4).

https://www.innocenceproject.org/causes/eyewitness-misidentification/