Eyewitness Misidentification

Eyewitness testimony, evidence from a witness who saw an event and can testify to it in court, is often regarded by jurors as among the most compelling evidence presented at trial. It is also unreliable in ways jurors rarely appreciate: eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful conviction nationwide in the United States, playing a role in more than seventy-five percent of convictions overturned through DNA testing. Memory of a stranger's face decays sharply within the first twenty minutes after an event, and accuracy is further undermined by the stress of witnessing a crime, by the cross-race effect, in which identifications across racial lines are markedly less reliable, and by weapon focus, in which a witness's attention narrows onto a weapon rather than the perpetrator's face. Reforms researchers advocate to reduce misidentification include presenting lineup members sequentially rather than all at once, administering the lineup double-blind so the officer conducting it does not know who the suspect is, instructing witnesses beforehand that the true perpetrator may not be present at all, and recording a witness's confidence in their identification immediately, before any confirming feedback can inflate it.