Eyewitness Identification

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While eyewitness identification is never going to be fool proof, there are important steps that can be taken to ensure that the witness has the ability to give the most accurate identification possible. The court in Neil v. Biggers set out a criteria to help determine the credibility of witness statements. (Ferdico, Fradella, Totten, 574). “The criteria include “the opportunity of the witness to view the criminal at the time of the crime, the witness’s degree of attention, the accuracy of the witness’s prior description of the criminal, the level of certainty demonstrated by the witness, at the confrontation, and the length of time between the crime and the confrontation. (Ferdico, Fradella, Totten, 574).” All of these things must be considered before deciding if a witness is credible for the purpose of identifying the criminal in the case.

Even with putting all of these procedures in place and following the guidelines to ensure that a witness is credible, misidentifications will still continue to occur. “Research shows that people are woefully poor witnesses and, more dangerous are convinced they are right about the identification by the time of the trial. (Pollock, J. M. (2014). Ethical Dilemmas and Decisions in Criminal Justice (8th Ed.). Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning).”

“Eyewitness misidentification is the greatest contributing factor to wrongful convictions proven by DNA testing, playing a role in more than 70% of convictions overturned through DNA testing nationwide. (http://www.innocenceproject.org/causes/eyewitness-misidentification/).”

“There have been 318 convictions overturned by DNA evidence since 1979; eyewitness testimonies contributed to 72 percent of those wrongful convictions. (Hayasaki).” The innocence project has worked on many different wrongful convictions that relied on eyewitness identification. The reasons for the misidentification vary from showup lineups in the field with poor lighting and long distance from the suspect to the witness, a photo array containing an identifying mark on only the suspects photograph, witnesses changing their description of a suspect after learning more about the suspect that the police believe did it, and positive identifications made with a lack of confidence where a witness will say they “think” that is the person that they saw and not that it “is” the person that they saw. (innocenceproject.org).

“Despite the inherent unreliability, much eyewitness identification evidence has a powerful impact on juries….All evidence points rather strikingly to the conclusion that there is almost nothing more convincing than a live human being who takes the stand, points a finger at the defendant, and says, “That’s the one!” (Fredico, Fradella, Totten, 572).”

Humans are by no means infallible, which means that to rely on perfect perception and memory recall from a human being can be dangerous when someone’s life is hanging in the balance. The only thing separating a person from freedom and the rest of their life in prison should not be something as precarious as an eyewitness’s account of what they observed. There is still more reform that needs to take place in the procedures for using eyewitness identification to ensure that the most reliable possible identification occurs in cases where eyewitness identification may be the key piece of evidence in the case. Also, with juries putting an enormous amount of faith in eyewitness testimony, it is important that these testimonies are reliable. With the widely used DNA testing in today’s society, there is hope that eyewitness testimony will remain a tool in the criminal justice system but not the single piece of evidence that makes or breaks a case. “Whether the hunter is looking for a deer, or one is searching for Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, what we expect to see clearly influences what we think we have seen. (Ferdico, Fradella, Totten, 578).” Some of the best magic tricks in the world illustrate the faulty nature of the mind. A famous quote from Now You See Me, illustrates this point well. “Come in close, because the more you think you see, the easier it'll be to fool you.”