Ronald Telephony: An Unreliable Eyewitness Testimony

In the summer of 1984, 22 - year old Jennifer Thompson’s life drastically changed when a man broke into her apartment, held a knife to her throat and raped her. During the attack, Thompson was determined to stay alert; she studied his face, his voice and any other details that could be used to help identify the perpetrator. Her intention was to survive, and with the information from the attack she planned to help the police catch her rapist. After a composite sketch, photo identification, physical line-up identification and trial, Thompson identified Ronald cotton as her attacker. Her testimony and memory alone was enough to sentence Cotton to life in prison. After a few years in prison, Cotton met a man named Bobby Poole, who had previously

boasted to other inmates that he had committed the crime for which cotton was convicted. Even after seeing Poole in a courtroom, Thompson testified twice against Cotton. After 11 years of incarceration, DNA evidence eventually revealed that Cotton was in fact innocent, and instead, Poole was the culprit. This case in particular raises concerns about the reliability of eyewitness testimony and highlights some important errors in eyewitness identification procedures. Research has shown that false eyewitness identification is one of the primary reasons for the conviction of innocent people (Wells et al., 1998). The aim of this essay is to investigate the procedural flaws that might have contributed to the mistaken identity of Ronald Cotton and examine what procedural changes could be implemented to improve the reliability of eyewitness testimony.
The Ronald Cotton case is just one example of what could go drastically wrong when court cases rely on human recollection, often leading to a wrongful conviction.

A leading researcher, Elizabeth Loftus reported that members of the jury tend to trust or rely heavily on eyewitness reports especially when the victim has witnessed the crime with their own eyes. However, research has shown that eyewitness testimony is often unreliable and statistics indicate that there are many wrongful convictions every year as a result of unreliable eyewitness testimony (Loftus, 1986; Wade, Green & Nash, 2010). There are a number of different reasons for why false identification can occur during a criminal case, many of which came into play during the Ronald Cotton case. For example, in some cases perception of what occurred is often impaired and the witness’s memory of the event is sometimes faulty. Other common causes of eyewitness error are often due to external factors such as the procedures that police use to obtain the identification of the perpetrator. These factors include suggestive questioning and line-up biases, which have been known to affect the confidence of one’s decision, and in turn, affect the accuracy of the identification process (Wells & Olson,

2002).
Several variables have been known to make police identification process more or less reliable and these factors often affect the accuracy of eyewitness identifications (Wells & Olson, 2003). These procedural mechanisms are known as system variables and they refer to factors over which the justice system has some control. Research has primarily focused on four factors, namely the type of line up used, the content of the line-up, communications with the witness before and after the identification process and the behaviour of the line-up administrator. Ronald Cotton’s wrongful conviction is likely to have resulted from a variety of these factors.
Firstly, one of the initial problems encountered in a criminal case are the procedures used when conducting a line-up. The moment in which an eyewitness views a line up and identifies a possible criminal suspect can be significant enough to obtain a conviction (Well et al., 1998). A common problem with police line-ups is in some cases the actual culprit might not be included. Research has indicated that when the real perpetrator is not in the photo line-up or physical line up, the witness tends to choose the line-up member who most resembles the actual culprit. This effect is more likely to occur in simultaneous line-ups, where people tend to engage in relative judgement (Wells, 2006). Therefore, line-ups in which several suspects are presented next to each other often encourages witnesses to make decisions about which person looks most like the perpetrator rather than making judgements about whether the culprit is actually present. This type of line-up was used in the Ronald Cotton case, as more than one suspect was presented at the same time, which may have increased the risk of Cotton being wrongfully convicted especially since the actual perpetrator was not present in both line-ups (Wells, 1984). It is possible that Thompson might have assumed that at least one of the six men shown in the photo line-up was the actual culprit and may have been unaware of the possibility that the perpetrator might not be present in both the photo line-up and the physical line-up. As a result, Thompson may have chosen Cotton because he was the person who most resembles Poole. Therefore, without Poole in the line-up, Cotton was the person in jeopardy.
Research findings from several different studies provide support for the relative judgement effect. For example, failure to provide instructions to the eyewitness that indicate that the perpetrator might not be in the line-up can increase the risk of an eyewitness to choose someone from the line-up regardless of whether the actual perpetrator is present (Malpass & Devine, 1981). Even when instructions are provided, research has shown that eyewitnesses still tend to use relative judgments (Wells, 1993). Additionally, a study by Dunning and Stern (1994) reported that witnesses who engage in relative comparison processes or an elimination processes when attempting to identify a suspect are more likely to have made a mistaken identification compared to those who report that the face “just popped out”. Therefore, accurate witnesses who correctly identified the culprit are more likely to automatically recognise the perpetrator, whereas inaccurate witnesses are more likely to use comparison and elimination strategies. This issue may have been present in the Ronald Cotton case, as Thompson, with some difficulty eventually chose Cotton after studying the pictures in the photo line-up for 5 minutes. Recognition memory is quite rapid and therefore, Thompson should have been able to identify cotton within a few seconds, suggesting that it was quite likely that she was doing something other than reliable recognition memory.
Based on this evidence, psychologists have called on the legal system to implement certain procedural changes in an attempt to reduce the number of wrongful convictions (Wells et al., 1998). In particular, some psychologists argue that sequential line-ups should be used over the traditional simultaneous line-ups as a way of reducing the number of false identifications (Wells et al., 1998; Lindsay et al., 1991). In a sequential line-up eyewitnesses can only view one suspect at a time and for each suspect they are asked whether or not they recognise the person. This process continues until a person from the line-up is positively identified as the perpetrator. As a result, in this type of line-up, eyewitnesses tend to rely only on their memory to make the judgement and therefore this eliminates the tendency for a witness to select a person who most resembles their assailant.
Research has shown that fewer errors are made during the identification process when a sequential line-up is administrated as opposed to a simultaneous line-up (Steblay, Dysart, Fulero & Lindsay, 2001). The use a sequential line-up in the Ronald Cotton case, may have discouraged Thompson from making comparisons among line-up members and encourage her to compare each line up member based only on her memory of the perpetrator. During the physical line-up, Thompson was very careful when trying to identify the perpetrator. She viewed the line-up for a while and eventually informed the detective that the assailant was either number 4 or 5 and asked to have the line-up repeated. Eventually she stated that Cotton “looks most like the perpetrator”. Therefore, it evident that Thompson engaged in a process of elimination and compared the line-up members to each other to determine which one looked most like the assailant. Since Poole was not in the photo line-up or physical line-up she chose the person who looked the most familiar. If a sequential line-up had been administrated during the identification process, then Thompson would be forced to base her decision on how well each person matches the information stored in her memory about the perpetrator. As a result, she may have been less likely to identify Cotton as the attacker. Although many psychologists recommend the sequential line-up procedure, there is still an ongoing debate about which line-up procedure should be administrated, as the conditions under which sequential line-ups are superior to simultaneous line-ups are still not fully understood (Surrett, Malpass & Tredoux, 2006).