The role of race in misidentification of criminal suspects

[fishwax]

Unreliable eyewitness testimony is frequently a major factor in wrongful convictions. Such testimony may be even more unreliable when the witness and the accused are of different races. Not surprisingly, the majority of those later exonerated are African-American. (Such problems are also compounded by techniques some investigators use to elicit suspect identifications.)

From the Innocence Blog at the Innocence Project:

http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/1524.php
Social science research has shown that eyewitness misidentifications are more likely to happen when the perpetrator and witness are of different racial backgrounds. And statistics on the 218 wrongful convictions overturned by DNA testing to date support the evidence. More than one-third of these wrongful convictions were caused by a cross-racial identification.

Jennifer Thompson-Cannino (above) knows first-hand how a misidentification can happen. When an African-American attacker broke into her home and raped her in 1984, she made a conscious effort to note the perpetrator’s features so she could identify him later. Thompson-Cannino, who is white, helped police draw up a composite sketch, and then she viewed photographs and identified Ronald Cotton as the rapist. She told the jury she was certain, and Cotton was sentenced to life. But she was wrong.

DNA testing exonerated Cotton after he had served more than a decade in prison. Eyewitness misidentification played a role in more than three-quarters of wrongful convictions overturned by DNA testing, and Thompson-Cannino and Cotton now travel the country telling audiences how it can happen. And she has written a book with Cotton, scheduled for release early next year, about wrongful convictions and their unusual partnership to address the causes of this injustice and reforms to prevent it from happening again.

From a related news story:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26123421/
The American Bar Association, meeting in New York, is considering whether to recommend that judges use their discretion to make juries aware of the problems that can plague cross-racial identifications.

California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Utah already employ such instructions in some cases.

"The majority race is not as good at identifying minorities as it is its own race. This is hard-wired in some way that we don't completely understand. But the phenomenon should be presented to the jury," said Barry Scheck, co-founder of The Innocence Project.

Prosecutors, however, do not want judges to raise the issue with juries.

"This is not an appropriate area for judges to go into," said Josh Marquis, district attorney in Astoria, Oregon, and a member of the executive committee of the National District Attorneys Association. "Yes, eyewitness ID across races has its issues. But is there a rampant problem to the degree that we need to get judges to start telling juries this is the law? No."

More from the Innocence Project on the problems with eyewitness identification:

http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/Eyewitness-Misidentification.php
In case after case, DNA has proven what scientists already know – that eyewitness identification is frequently inaccurate. In the wrongful convictions caused by eyewitness misidentification, the circumstances varied, but judges and juries all relied on testimony that could have been more accurate if reforms proven by science had been implemented. The Innocence Project has worked on cases in which:

• A witness made an identification in a “show-up” procedure from the back of a police car hundreds of feet away from the suspect in a poorly lit parking lot in the middle of the night.

• A witness in a rape case was shown a photo array where only one photo – of the person police suspected was the perpetrator – was marked with an “R.”

• Witnesses substantially changed their description of a perpetrator (including key information such as height, weight and presence of facial hair) after they learned more about a particular suspect.

• Witnesses only made an identification after multiple photo arrays or lineups – and then made hesitant identifications (saying they “thought” the person “might be” the perpetrator, for example), but at trial the jury was told the witnesses did not waver in identifying the suspect.

[fishwax]

1. kick

:kick:

[malaise]

2. K & R

for the innocents in prison or dead.

[Nevilledog]

3. Eyewitness testimony as a whole is the most unreliable evidence....

and yet it is given the most weight by juries.

K & R