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When someone points their finger to a specific person in a courtroom and identifies them as the criminal, it is very powerful. Most people think that that is a case closer. Often these people have identified the same person in photos and line ups prior to being in court. But, is it possible that they could be wrongly identifying an innocent man? Even if they completely believe it and would pass a lie detector test when asked if they believed that this person was truly the one who committed the crime? “Picking Cotton”, the story of Jennifer Thompson’s accusation of Ronald Cotton, is a perfect example of the faults of eyewitness news.
This case was about the rape of young Jennifer Thompson, who suffered this brutal attack in college and wittily escaped and saved her own life. She immediately went to the police and told them of her attack. When interviewed she said, “I made sure to study
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his face, so that if I made out of this alive, I would be able to put this man behind bars.” She described his face to the police and they came up with a sketch. From this sketch, they found one Ronald Cotton who worked only a couple of minutes away and had an already undesirable track record with the law. When presented a group of pictures of different men who looked similar to her sketch, Jennifer, after a couple of minutes picked Ronald Cotton. Then, when presented an in person line-up of men, she picked Mr. Cotton again. Police told her that she had picked the same man in both situation and Jennifer Thompson thought, without a doubt, “I got him. I got the man who raped me.” She even pointed to him in court and labelled him as her rapist. Thus, Ronald Cotton was sentenced to life plus fifty years in prison for first-degree breaking and entering and first-degree sexual assault. Four years later, Cotton asked for another trial after seeing a man named Bobby Poole who he thought looked very similar to the sketch he was shown for Jennifer’s trial. With Bobby Poole sitting in the courtroom, making eye contact with Jennifer Thompson, she still accused Cotton and he was sentenced to two life plus fifty-four years. After spending eleven years, in prison, Cotton wrote to his lawyer and asked for DNA testing for his case after hearing about the new technology. They found a small piece of evidence still in her file and tested it. It was Bobby Poole’s DNA. He admitted to the crime, and Ronald Cotton was freed. This was a shockingly unfortunate case.
Before seeing this, I thought that eyewitness news was pretty reliable evidence in crimes. Especially because Jennifer had identified the same man on so many different occasions as her rapist. But, in this class I have learned that memory is malleable. It can easily be distorted and changed through consequent events, feelings, and other people’s perspectives. Jennifer was shown pictures of people and picked the one who looked most like the face she remembered. Then, she picked the same guy in a line up which reinforced her accusation of Ronald Cotton. He became the face she saw when she replayed that memory in her head. This is because of unconscious transference, which is where an eyewitness misidentifies an innocent bystander as a criminal because of his/her exposure to them in another context, such as a photo or a lineup. The more memories are enforced by other people or our own thoughts, the more we believe them, and the harder they are to change. Sadly, Jennifer and Ronald Cotton had to learn the lesson of malleable memory the hard
way. This case was very important for the judicial system because it forced police officers to alter their ways of using eyewitness evidence and prevent more innocent people from being put behind bars. DNA testing is used much more often now, and they have changed the way that they present line-ups of photos. They present each photo individually rather than a cluster because eyewitness evidence is much less reliable when people are comparing faces. I think that new technology and methodology will be created in our lifetime to make accusations even more reliable. This concept of malleable memory makes me realize the reason behind all of the frustrating times that I am telling a story with my mom and she says, “No, no no. That’s not how it happened.” It’s not that either of us are lying, it is that we have completely different memories that we each wholeheartedly believe. My mom might have been focussing on a certain element of the situation more than me and vice versa which will impact our memories. This will make it much easier for me to listen to and accept other people’s different versions of events because I know that we each have our own life experiences that affect the way we remember a situation. Also, I’ve learned that you can never get a completely correct and well-rounded story from one person’s point of view. Their story will always have holes in it because they are human and unable to see everything at once. Though I hope(and expect) to never be involved in a criminal case, if I am, I will remember this information to make sure that I am given and providing the most accurate story. I really enjoyed “Picking Cotton” and because of it, I am planning on looking into and learning more about the judicial system, how people are convicted, and the unreliability of memory in general.
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.
One of the key points that are point out in this case is that the eyewitness had variables that may have affected her memory causing her to point Williford as the culprit. One of these variables was weapon focus and its believed that the eyewitness focused more on the culprit’s weapon in this case it was a board used to beat and the gas used to set Foxworth on fire. The reason behind this is probably because of the unusualness of the weapons used in this attack thus causing the witness to focus more on the weapon than the culprit. Another argument that is being made in the validity of the eyewitness testimony is that she was exposed to information after the attack from newspaper causing the post-information effect. The cause of the effect in this case were that newspapers published pictures of the suspect which may have caused the witness to form false memories. It was also said that the eyewitness was shown a picture of Williford before picking him out of a photo array which is another potential way for the witness to form false memories associated with the picture. An additional point that’s made is because there were two other people involved in the attack that it would divert the attention of the eyewitness, thus causing her to remember fewer details about the culprits face. Despite all these arguments the witness stays with her choice of
In July of 1994, a little girl named, Megan Kanka, was raped and strangled. They found her body near her home in Hamilton Township, New Jersey. The story of thing young girl has shocked the nation. The man responsible for this brutal act is named, Jesse Timmendequas. He had been convicted twice prior to this attack.
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.
“Eyewitness Identification: A Policy Review.” The Justice Project, Iowa State University. Web. 22 April 2014.
She was also given an extensive amount of time viewing the lineup physically and was for the most part hesitant until she pointed out Ronald cotton. In her mind after finally coming to the conclusion that Ronald was her rapist, his face began to become a lot clearer in her head as her rapist and she gained much more confidence in her decision. I took a course in Memory and Eyewitness Testimony and one of the cases we studied in the class was the Ronald cotton case. I found it interesting that Benforado and my other professor Dr. Hildy Schilling both said that in most cases no one is trying to set no one up, they truly do have the intention to catch the
In the magic of the mind author Dr. Elizabeth loftus explains how a witness’s perception of an accident or crime is not always correct because people's memories are often imperfect. “Are we aware of our minds distortions of our past experiences? In most cases, the answer is no.” our minds can change the way we remember what we have seen or heard without realizing it uncertain witnesses “often identify the person who best matches recollection
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...
Eyewitness misidentification cost innocent people to end up in prison. Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions in the United States, having played a role in more than 70% of original convictions later overturned by new DNA evidence(Dunn). This explains eyewitness misidentification is not a reliable solution to prison the suspect and deal with other solution. The suspect is effected because the suspect goes through terrible life for crime they did not commit and false witness hunts
Eyewitness identification and testimony play a huge role in the criminal justice system today, but skepticism of eyewitnesses has been growing. Forensic evidence has been used to undermine the reliability of eyewitness testimony, and the leading cause of false convictions in the United States is due to misidentifications by eyewitnesses. The role of eyewitness testimony in producing false confessions and the factors that contribute to the unreliability of these eyewitness testimonies are sending innocent people to prison, and changes are being made in order to reform these faulty identification procedures.
The offender was her ex-husband. He monitored her coming and going and wouldn’t let her talk on the phone. Everything in his opinion was stupid, including the victim and her family. His mentality of life forced her into a constant struggle. Her days consisted of trying to fix things to meet his high level of expectations. Everything snowballed and escalated from there. The be it all was his threat to kill her. After she heard the threat it was difficult for her to put on her social face outside. It became difficult for her to go home because she feared for her life. Work and church were comfortable settings because no one would harm her. When she would get in her car to go home, she would have panic attacks. She defined her life after the death threat as “looking in from the outside”. She uses that phrase because by the time he threatened her she pushed everyone in her life to the side. She was too far into the relationship to see that he was an improper companion. Those times were difficult and lonely for her to get through. The reason she was with him was her belief that domestic violence wouldn’t happen to her. She thought it would happen to someone else with a different background or a movie star. One moment she was mad for allowing the abuse to continue for so long. The next minute she would feel happiness because she was away from him and the stress. In her opinion, the sexual abuse was the most
The justice system depends on eyewitness evidence to convict offenders. Eyewitness is a difficult task to achieve in the justice system. According to Wise, Dauphinais, & Safer (2007), in 2002 one million offenders were convicted as felons in America. Out of those one million offenders, 5000 of them were innocent in 2002 (Dauphinais, 2007). The Ohio Criminal Justice survey states that 1 out of 200 felony criminal cases is a wrongful conviction (Dauphinais et al., 2007). According to Dauphinais et al., (2007), Dripps said that eyewitness error is a huge factor in cases of wrong convictions. A study conducted in 1987 indicated that in roughly 80,000 criminal cases, eyewitness error was the only sole evidence against the defendant
There has been considerable debate worldwide, regarding the accuracy of eyewitness testimony in the criminal justice system. Particularly, arguments have surrounded wrongful convictions that have resulted from incorrect eyewitness evidence (Areh, 2011; Howitt, 2012; Nelson, Laney, Bowman-Fowler, Knowles, Davis & Loftus, 2011). The purpose of this essay is to consider psychological research about the accuracy of eyewitness testimony and its placement in the criminal justice system. Firstly, this essay will define how eyewitnesses and their testimonies are used within the criminal justice system and the current debate surrounding its usage. Secondly, the impact of post-identification feedback will be used to show the affect on the confidence of a witness. Thirdly, studies around gender related differences will show how a witnesses gender can affect memory recall and accuracy. Fourthly, empirical studies will be used to highlight how a psychological experience called change blindness can cause mistakes in eyewitness identification. Finally, the effect of cross-examination will be used to explore the impact on eyewitness accuracy. It will be argued, that eyewitness testimony is not accurate and highly subjective, therefore, the criminal justice system must reduce the impact that eyewitness testimony is allowed to have. Developing better policies and procedures to avoid wrongful convictions by misled judges and jury members can do this.
In the court of law, eyewitnesses are expected to present evidence based upon information they acquired visually. However, due to memory processing, presenting this information accurately is not always possible. This paper will discuss the reliability of eyewitness testimony, its use in a relevant court case, and how the reasonable person standard relates to eyewitness testimony.
For example, the old man that lived beneath the boy and his father testified that he heard a fight between the boy and the father and heard the boy yell, “I’m gonna kill you,” along with a body hitting the ground, and then claims that he saw the boy running down the stairs. With this information, along with other powerful eyewitness testimonies, all but one of the jury members believed this boy was guilty. The power of eyewitness testimony is also shown in Loftus’s (1974) study. In this study, Loftus (1974) found that those who claimed to “see” something were usually believed even when their testimony is pointless. She discovered in her study that only 18 percent of people convicted if there was no eyewitness testimony, 72 percent of people convicted when someone declared, “That’s the one!”, and even when the witness only had 20/400 vision and was not wearing glasses and claimed “That’s the one!”, 68 percent of people still convicted the person. This proves that in 12 Angry Men and Loftus (1974) study, eyewitness testimony is very powerful and influential in one’s decision to convict a