Mistaken Identification

Examines traditional safeguards against mistaken eyewitness identification.

Straight from the headlines comes the story of two students, one buried under the wrong name, one in a coma being cared for by the wrong family, and the heart wrenching discovery five weeks later that their identities had been mistakenly reversed.

Michael Biton is a young, ambitious law school student with a bright future ahead of him. Suddenly, everything comes crashing down on him as he is mistakenly identified, arrested and indicted for a crime that he did not commit. His future, which had been unlimited, becomes uncertain as he must now face trial. He must pay a lot of money to a defense lawyer, while at the same time deal with an overzealous prosecutor determined to convict him at any cost. Will justice prevail, or will he be wrongfully convicted and imprisoned? Mistaken Identity is an intense personal drama about a horribly traumatic experience. It is about a young man getting a legal education - a legal education far different from the casebook law that he had been learning in law school. Mistaken Identity is a book that will leave you guessing until the very end.

Eyewitnesses play an important role in criminal cases when they can identify culprits. Estimates suggest that tens of thousands of eyewitnesses make identifications in criminal investigations each year. Research on factors that affect the accuracy of eyewitness identification procedures has given us an increasingly clear picture of how identifications are made, and more importantly, an improved understanding of the principled limits on vision and memory that can lead to failure of identification. Factors such as viewing conditions, duress, elevated emotions, and biases influence the visual perception experience. Perceptual experiences are stored by a system of memory that is highly malleable and continuously evolving, neither retaining nor divulging content in an informational vacuum. As such, the fidelity of our memories to actual events may be compromised by many factors at all stages of processing, from encoding to storage and retrieval. Unknown to the individual, memories are forgotten, reconstructed, updated, and distorted. Complicating the process further, policies governing law enforcement procedures for conducting and recording identifications are not standard, and policies and practices to address the issue of misidentification vary widely. These limitations can produce mistaken identifications with significant consequences. What can we do to make certain that eyewitness identification convicts the guilty and exonerates the innocent? Identifying the Culprit makes the case that better data collection and research on eyewitness identification, new law enforcement training protocols, standardized procedures for administering line-ups, and improvements in the handling of eyewitness identification in court can increase the chances that accurate identifications are made. This report explains the science that has emerged during the past 30 years on eyewitness identifications and identifies best practices in eyewitness procedures for the law enforcement community and in the presentation of eyewitness evidence in the courtroom. In order to continue the advancement of eyewitness identification research, the report recommends a focused research agenda. Identifying the Culprit will be an essential resource to assist the law enforcement and legal communities as they seek to understand the value and the limitations of eyewitness identification and make improvements to procedures.

Encompasses topics including aging (geropsychology), assessment, clinical, cognitive, community, counseling, educational, environmental, family, industrial/organizational, health, school, sports, and transportation psychology. Each entry provides a clear definition, a brief review of the theoretical basis, and emphasizes major areas of application.

Introduces forensic psychology to students and professionals who want to better understand psychology’s expanding influence on the study of law, crime and criminality Forensic psychology is a constantly growing discipline, both in terms of student interest and as a profession for graduates. This book highlights the often sizeable gap between media myths surrounding forensic practice and reality. Editors Graham Davies and Anthony Beech present an exciting and broad range of topics within the field, including detailed treatments of the causes of crime, investigative methods, the trial process, and interventions with different types of offenders and offences. Forensic Psychology: Crime, Justice, Law, Interventions, Third Edition covers every aspect of forensic psychology—from understanding criminal behaviour, to applying psychological theory to criminal investigation, analysing the legal process and the treatment of witnesses and offenders. Each chapter has been thoroughly revised and updated with the latest findings. The book also includes two entirely new chapters—one on psychopathy and crime, the other on female offenders. Drawing on a wealth of experience from leading researchers and practitioners, this new edition will interest and enthuse today’s generation of students. All chapters thoroughly revised and updated Features two brand new chapters Supplemented by additional online resource materials, including related links, multiple choice questions, and PowerPoint slides Authored by a wide-range of experienced forensic psychology professionals Forensic Psychology, Third Edition is essential reading for undergraduates’ first encounter with the subject area and is an excellent introduction for more specialised postgraduate courses.

On January 20, 1984, Earl Washington—defended for all of forty minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case—was found guilty of rape and murder in the state of Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. However, he spent another eight years in prison before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and convicted the guilty man. DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling in-depth analysis, Brandon Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing. Based on trial transcripts, Garrett’s investigation into the causes of wrongful convictions reveals larger patterns of incompetence, abuse, and error. Evidence corrupted by suggestive eyewitness procedures, coercive interrogations, unsound and unreliable forensics, shoddy investigative practices, cognitive bias, and poor lawyering illustrates the weaknesses built into our current criminal justice system. Garrett proposes practical reforms that rely more on documented, recorded, and audited evidence, and less on fallible human memory. Very few crimes committed in the United States involve biological evidence that can be tested using DNA. How many unjust convictions are there that we will never discover? Convicting the Innocent makes a powerful case for systemic reforms to improve the accuracy of all criminal cases.

This volume brings together leading experts on the investigation, litigation and scholarly analysis of innocence cases in America, from legal, political and ethical perspectives. The contributors consider the challenges faced by the exoneration movement, causes of wrongful convictions, problems associated with investigating, proving, and defining ‘innocence’, and theories of reform. These issues are investigated from a multi-disciplinary perspective and with the aim of improving the American criminal justice system when it is faced with its most harrowing sight: an innocent defendant.