False Imprisonment Due to Misidentification

Misidentification is one, if not, the largest factor in false imprisonment. All across the country there are hundreds no, thousands of people who are imprisoned due to witness identification. Eye witness identification plays a major role in shaping a investigation. While witnesses are helpful to identifying the perpetrator of the crime that does not mean that they always identify the right person.

Once a witness identifies There are hundreds of cases where death row inmates were found out to be innocent even though they served most of their lives in prison. The way that the Police handle these type of cases because they influence the victim to make a choice right then and there. In a few cases they have died in prison and their innocence were found out after death. Eyewitness misidentification is one of the largest and sometimes the deadliest forms of identification because it leads to the police or investigators to take the word of the witness and place the suspect into prison for most of their life and sometimes till they die

As stated by the innocence project, many people that have been recently insonarated were imprisoned in the first place due to misidentification. Eyewitness identification is the greatest contributing factor to wrongful convictions proven by DNA testing, caused 70% of convictions overturned through DNA testing nationwide. Over 230 people, serving an average of 12 years in prison, have been exonerated through DNA testing in the United States, and 75% of those wrongful convictions were involved with Misidentification. An example of this is in the case of Andre Hackett. Before he was imprisoned he was recently in a shooting and was greatly injured due to it. The main witness described the murder to be using a crutch as he beat the victim to death. Andrew Hackett had a solid albi and was physically incapable of being the murder, but due to the witness identifying him in the police lineup and having horrible attorneys to back him up in the courtroom, he was found to be guilty and served 25 years in prison.

A growing body of evidence points to serious problems with eyewitness identification procedures. In fact, mistaken eyewitness testimony is the single biggest contributor to wrongful convictions. Mistaken eyewitnesses have played a role in 75 percent of the 273 DNA exonerations nationwide, according to the Justice Brandeis Innocence Project at Brandeis University. And in 36 percent of those cases, more than one eyewitness made the same mistake. One of the most known case of misidentification happened in North Carolina. Someone broke into the apartment owned by college student Jennifer Thompson and proceeded to rape her. She declared that after carefully studying the appearance of her assailant that it was Ronald Cotton that raped her. After spending 10 years in prison he was proven innocent after a DNA test took place.In the heat of the moment many small details of the murders appearance are not noticed so the witness only focuses on the big details. The witness in Andre’s case noticed that the murder was a big man, and was using a crutch as he beat the victim. 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. A well known example of this is the Troy Davis case.

A police officer was killed in a restaurant parking lot. Troy Davis was arrested for the crime, and nine non-police eyewitnesses testified that they saw him shoot the victim. Based almost exclusively on eyewitness testimony, Davis was convicted of the murder and sentenced to death. Since then the witnesses have recalled what they said but it did not help him win a repeal. He has been within days and hours of execution three times before receiving a stay! Last month the supreme court issued him a stay just two hours before he was to be executed. He has not been able to get a hearing in court due to a extreme Georgia law which bars most recantation evidence on appeal.In quite a few cases the details of the murder is changed to fit someone else’s point of view. The witness’s memory is evidence and must be handled as carefully as the crime scene itself to avoid forever altering it.

In murder cases and in many rape cases the victim the details of the rapist/murders facial details get messed with the bias investigator. When the eye witness goes to the police they are shown multiple individuals or photos at the same time. That leads to the eyewitness to make a choice on who looks the most like the perpetrator and it makes the witness think that the perp is in the line up which forces them to choose someone who closely fits the description of the perpetrator despite the doubts they may have. Memory is not fixed, it can be influenced and altered. Many of these misidentifications cases could have been prevented, many wrongful convictions averted, and many additional crimes avoided if police had used more reliable lineup procedures. In recognition of this, procedural reforms have been developed by leading eyewitness psychologists and successfully implemented by criminal justice professionals.Several states, cities and towns have already adopted the reforms and found them to be cost-effective and easily implemented.

The benefits are extensive and include reinforcing the integrity of reliable identifications as well as reducing the rate of misidentifications. Despite positive feedback from police departments where the reforms have been implemented and mounting evidence of the reforms’ effectiveness, the majority of jurisdictions have maintained the status quo. There are no consistent standards for identification procedures from state to state or even from one police department to the next. In fact, many police departments do not have written procedures for conducting identifications, so there is often inconsistency even within individual police departments. Now is the time for change. Misidentifications benefit no one: not the innocent defendants who face incarceration for crimes they didn’t commit, not the victims who are denied justice, not the police officers working to catch the real perpetrator, and not the public whose safety is jeopardized when real perpetrators remain at large.