A "showup identification" is when police pick up someone who "matches the description" of a suspect and shows them to a witness outside of a line-up. Showups have been shown to be wildly unreliable (source) and disproportionately affect PoC. Denver mom Sharon Battle recently gave testimony to the Colorado House about her teenage boy being wrongfully arrested in a showup. You can watch that 6-minute testimony here.
HB21-1142 will provide statewide regulations requiring police departments to train officers how to conduct less biased showups and to report demographic information of suspects picked up during showups. This is an important step to ending discriminatory police practices in our state.
The house votes on this bill on MONDAY 04/25/21. If you would like to contact your legislator by email, you can do so here.
I’ve seen several comments recently – and one disgusting tweet from Zellner – about Penny B and an upcoming documentary by Northwestern professor Debra Tolchinsky about how eyewitness identifications can be “contaminated” by various factors, including suggestions from police.
I know nothing about the filmmaker, but am hoping it turns out to be something more than a superficial story about how cops can manipulate memories – a fact which is certainly true, but surely just part of the story, as suggested by PB in the past, and by Tolchinsky herself in her NYT opinion piece in which she describes her own experience with recollecting a stalker from her youth, and the tricks of memory that often accompany traumatic events. As she puts it,
>Eyewitness testimony is particularly powerful precisely because the emotion fueling it is often completely genuine. The person delivering the testimony may believe in its fidelity regardless of its accuracy.
It’s an interesting subject, about which I have some anecdotes of my own.
As I’ve mentioned before, I was stabbed on two occasions by a stranger, and have spent a fair number of hours thinking about – and questioning the meaning of – my own “memories” of the events. None of which were “contaminated” by cops, but all of which are contaminated in their own way. There’s what actually happened, what I experienced, and my later “recollections” of what I think I experienced.
Only intellectually, abstractly, do I understand the differences, to some small degree.
On the first occasion, I saw the person’s face for no more than a second or two, before he had done anything, after which he was behind me for the whole 9 seconds of the attack, as shown by a grainy video. I couldn’t possibly identify him. Which is what I told cops, after hopelessly looking at groups of small photos.
But driven by some need, after several weeks I downloaded an online sketch-artist program and selected options for nose, mouth, eyes and the like based on my “recollection” of his face, and created an image. I know why I did it: I didn’t want to feel that anybody I might encounter might be the guy. I wanted to give him a face . . .whether it was his or not.
A year later, almost to the day, the same stranger attacked me, again. That is, I assume it was the same guy. Logically, how could I know? But I assume it was because he stabbed me. In the same frenzied way, in the same locatio
... keep reading on reddit ➡On March 9, 2005, prompted by Penny Beerntsen and Steven Avery, the Wisconsin Department of Justice adopted a model eyewitness identification protocol.
Tom Albright is Professor and Director, Vision Center Laboratory and Conrad T. Prebys Chair in Vision Research at the Salk Institute for Biological studies. His laboratory focuses on the neural structures and events underlying the perception of motion, form, and color. Tom is a leader in the study of the brain systems underlying visual perception and memory in primates. His work has demonstrated the importance of context in information processing, and provides a foundation for determining how the brain detects the features of retinal images and integrates them into a perceptual whole. As a co-chair of a committee that undertook a study for the National Research Council, Tom is an authority on the limits of human perception and how that affects crime investigation.
Professor Albright will be back at 1 pm EDT (5 pm UTC) to answer questions.
(This is based on the jury system in the USA.)
In 1985 Ronald Cotton was wrongfully convicted of rape based heavily on eyewitness identification. A victim identified him as the assailant, with detail, strong emotion, and 100% confidence. He was exonerated in 1995 based on DNA evidence. We can say now that the eyewitness identification, despite the verdict, did not prove that Cotton was guilty. This is obvious because you can't prove something that's false.
There are numerous other cases of incorrect eyewitness identification. Not the majority, but certainly enough to say that, in general, eyewitness identification alone does not prove that someone is guilty.
So, say I'm aware of that fact and I'm a juror on a trial where the prosecution's case depends on eyewitness identification by the victim being correct. I'm asked, "Did the prosecution prove that the defendant is guilty?" My answer is no. Not because I have any particular reason to disbelieve the testimony, but simply because, like I just said, eyewitness identification doesn't prove guilt.
I know that jurors are not to assume evidence that isn't presented, or do their own investigation, or have any bias against the State. I completely agree with all of that, so simply telling me those things will not change my view. From my point of view I'm not talking about doing any of those things. The simple fact is that I know that eyewitness identification doesn't prove guilt. If I were to say that it does in this case, I would be lying in my judgment, and jurors aren't supposed to lie either.
I would like my view changed because I would like to be able to serve on a jury, and according to the consensus on r/legaladvice, I shouldn't be on a jury with this view.
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... keep reading on reddit ➡