Identification procedures and wrongful conviction: Quantifying the role of eyewitness identifications

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Smith ◽  
Natalie Kalmet ◽  
Brian L. Cutler ◽  
Roderick C. L. Lindsay
Keyword(s):  
Wrongful Conviction ◽  
Eyewitness Identifications ◽  
Identification Procedures

scholarly journals Evaluating Earwitness Identification Procedures: The Effect of Pre-Parade Instructions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet M J Smith ◽  
JENS ROESER ◽  
Nikolas Pautz ◽  
Josh P Davis ◽  
Jeremy Robson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
False Alarms ◽  
Wrongful Conviction ◽  
Voice Identification ◽  
Sequential Procedures ◽  
Testing Performance ◽  
Low Performance ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Present Standard ◽  
Identification Procedures

Voice identification parades can be unreliable, as earwitness responses are error-prone. Here we vary pre-parade instructions, testing performance across serial and sequential procedures to examine ways of reducing errors. The participants listened to a target voice and later attempted to identify it from a parade. They were either warned that the target may or may not be present (standard warning), or encouraged to consider responding ‘not present’ because of the associated risk of a wrongful conviction (strong warning). Overall accuracy was low. Performance varied according to instructions and procedure. False alarms were lower on target-absent serial parades following the strong compared to the standard warning. However, the strong warning was associated with higher false alarms on target-absent sequential parades. We discuss the cognitive processes that might drive this effect. Our novel analyses shed light on these results, highlighting the challenges of directly comparing procedures, and revealing position-related effects.

scholarly journals Innocence and Federal Habeas after AEDPA: Time for the Supreme Court to Act

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 300-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph L. Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Law School ◽  
Habeas Corpus ◽  
Wrongful Conviction ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Media ◽  
New Evidence

New empirical research shows that, since AEDPA, the likelihood of success in non-capital federal habeas corpus has dropped to less than one percent. Federal habeas courts continue to be concerned about the wrongful conviction of innocent defendants, but their role in such cases must be redefined. Habeas courts are structurally incapable of effectively screening and investigating claims of wrongful conviction; these responsibilities are better performed by extrajudicial actors such as innocence projects, innocence commissions, law school clinics, volunteer lawyers, and the media. The proper role of habeas is to provide a clear path to relief, unencumbered by procedural restrictions, for petitioners who can produce clear and convincing new evidence of innocence. The Supreme Court should help to create such a path by finally acknowledging the constitutional status of “bare innocence” claims based on new evidence.

Rape and Wrongful Conviction

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-56
Author(s):  
Matthew Barry Johnson
Keyword(s):  
National Registry ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Acquaintance Rape ◽  
Moral Outrage ◽  
Wrongful Conviction ◽  
Wrongful Convictions ◽  
Victim Status ◽  
Investigation Methods ◽  
Innocence Project

This chapter focuses on the concentration of rape cases among confirmed wrongful convictions. How stranger rape differs from date and acquaintance rape with regard to the risk of wrongful conviction is presented. Innocence Project and National Registry of Exonerations data are examined as well as case illustrations. The chapter examines the pressures on law enforcement authorities and the role of primary evidence, secondary evidence, black box investigation methods, the continuum of intentionality, and victim status in stranger rape. In addition, a stranger rape thesis is presented to distinguish the unique challenges faced in the investigation of “stranger rape. The moral outrage associated with stranger rape produces a great demand on police for arrests and convictions yet reliable identification of the perpetrator is compromised in stranger rape.

The Management of Criminal Justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 12-32
Author(s):  
Mike McConville ◽  
Luke Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Institutional Environment ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Wrongful Conviction ◽  
Paradigm Case ◽  
Home Office ◽  
Mistaken Identification

This chapter examines the role of Home Office officials around the end of the nineteenth century, allegedly upgraded by the Northcote-Trevelyan (Civil Service) reforms, in dealing with petitions against wrongful conviction. The authors exemplify the harmful role of civil servants through the paradigm case of Adolph Beck wrongly convicted twice on the basis of mistaken identification evidence. While Beck’s initial wrongful conviction was contributed to by mistakes made by prosecuting counsel, it traces his continued incarceration to incompetence and inertia by officials in the Home Office working within an institutional environment that continued to privilege hierarchy, precedent, and routine over discernment, judgment, and individual responsibility. Senior civil servants in the Home Office failed to properly oversee their juniors, magnified their failings, and sought to evade responsibility through a combination of laxity and moral cowardice. Unreformed, those failings, involving the same officials, carried forward and heavily influenced the regulation of policing and the subsequent development of the Judges’ Rules.

scholarly journals The Role of Estimator Variables in Eyewitness Identification

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Semmler ◽  
John Cameron Dunn ◽  
Laura Mickes ◽  
John Wixted
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Retention Interval ◽  
Recognition Memory ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Eyewitness Identification ◽  
High Confidence ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Lower Confidence ◽  
Eyewitness Identifications

Estimator variables are factors that can affect the accuracy of eyewitness identifications but that are outside of the control of the criminal justice system. Examples include (1) the duration of exposure to the perpetrator, (2) the passage of time between the crime and the identification (retention interval), (3) the distance between the witness and the perpetrator at the time of the crime. Suboptimal estimator variables (e.g., long distance) have long been thought to reduce the reliability of eyewitness identifications (IDs), but recent evidence suggests that this is not true of IDs made with high confidence and may or may not be true of IDs made with lower confidence. The evidence suggests that while suboptimal estimator variables decrease discriminability (i.e., the ability to distinguish innocent from guilty suspects), they do not decrease the reliability of IDs made with high confidence. Such findings are inconsistent with the longstanding “optimality hypothesis” and therefore require a new theoretical framework. Here, we propose that a signal-detection-based likelihood ratio account – which has long been a mainstay of basic theories of recognition memory – naturally accounts for these findings.

Role of dactinomycin in the improved survival of children with Wilms' tumor

JAMA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 195 (12) ◽  
pp. 1005-1009 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. J. Fernbach
Keyword(s):  
Wilms Tumor

Role of the allergist in diagnosis and management of patients with uveitis

JAMA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 195 (3) ◽  
pp. 167-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. E. Van Metre
Keyword(s):  
Diagnosis And Management

The power of norms to sway fused group members

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Winnifred R. Louis ◽  
Craig McGarty ◽  
Emma F. Thomas ◽  
Catherine E. Amiot ◽  
Fathali M. Moghaddam
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Anthropology ◽  
Normative Systems ◽  
Violent Extremism ◽  
Identity Fusion ◽  
Group Members

AbstractWhitehouse adapts insights from evolutionary anthropology to interpret extreme self-sacrifice through the concept of identity fusion. The model neglects the role of normative systems in shaping behaviors, especially in relation to violent extremism. In peaceful groups, increasing fusion will actually decrease extremism. Groups collectively appraise threats and opportunities, actively debate action options, and rarely choose violence toward self or others.

Elaborating the role of reflection and individual differences in the study of folk-economic beliefs

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Arceneaux
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Behavioral Responses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Beliefs

AbstractIntuitions guide decision-making, and looking to the evolutionary history of humans illuminates why some behavioral responses are more intuitive than others. Yet a place remains for cognitive processes to second-guess intuitive responses – that is, to be reflective – and individual differences abound in automatic, intuitive processing as well.

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