How Misidentification Occurs
According to the National Registry for Exonerations, eyewitness misidentification contributes to the cause of a wrongful conviction over a quarter of the time. This kind of issue usually takes place when a stranger commits a crime against another stranger (Stenzel, 2017). Eyewitness misidentification arises because a witness’s memory is not always reliable, which can lead to them accusing the wrong person. A person’s memory is prone to error and when they do remember something, they do it unconsciously (Stenzel, 2017). A person remembers something in three steps: encoding, retention and retrieval (Stenzel, 2017). Ther three elements can be further broken down into estimator and system variables. An estimator variable would be a variable that is not in control, such has the race of the suspect (Stenzel, 2017). A system variable involves variables that are in control of the reliability of the identification such as the instructions a witness may receive before looking at a line up (Stenzel, 2017,).
Factors That Effect Why Misidentification Occurred
There are certain factors that may affect why the misidentification has occurred. An article written by Carla Stenzel notes that there are eight factors that affect misidentification. Those factors include: a witness not having confidence in their accuracy of correctly identifying the suspect, having a witness’s reliability weakened by their focus on the weapon, the high stress of the situation causing the witness to recall a less accurate judgement of what happened, a cross-racial identification is less accurate than if the suspect was the same race as the witness, the fact that a person’s memory becomes less accurate as the days pass, a witnesses identification in a suspect becoming less reliable if a lineup is not done where both the person conducting the lineup and the witness do not know who the suspect is (a double-blind process), when a witness receives information about the post event or post identification and an occurrence of unconscious transference (which is when a witness misidentifies a bystander they saw as the suspect) (Stenzel, 2017). It is important to understand all of the different aspects that can lead to eyewitness misidentification and to understand how our memory is not always accurate.
Factors That Lead To Accuracy
There are factors that add to the accuracy of a witness’ identification of the correct perpetrator. It is important to understand the factors that can lead to a correct identification to help try and prevent an incorrect identification. Those factors that contribute to this are: facial features, distance, the length of time the witness saw the perpetrator, whether or not the witness rehearsed after seeing the crime and their confidence in their statement (Stenzel, 2017).
Facial Features:
When it comes to facial features, a witness should concentrate on the person’s upper facial features and also look for any unusual features that they may have (Stenzel, 2017). There is a better chance to have an accurate memory of the perpetrator when you focus on the upper facial features compared to the lower features (Stenzel, 2017).
Length Of Time The Perpetrator Was Seen:
An experiment was done by J. Kirkland Reynold and Kathy Pezdek where the faces were shown to one group for twenty seconds and another group for three seconds (Stenzel, 2017). The researchers found that people in the group who were able to describe all five features of the face shown better than those who only saw the face for three seconds (Stenzel, 2017). This study shows us that in order for an eyewitness to be able to give a more accurate description of the perpetrator, they should look at their face for as long as possible.
Distance:
A witness can identify the perpetrator more accurately the closer he/she is standing at the time of the crime. A witness can identify the perpetrator when using his/her low and high spatial frequency bands (Stenzel, 2017). When an eyewitness is standing further away from the crime, his/her retina’s visual image decreases, which causes him/her to rely on lower spatial frequencies because high spatial frequency bands are no longer functional (Stenzel, 2017). A study done in the United Kingdom found that a witness can remember the perpetrators face at a distance of five meters or less best (or roughly 5 yards or 16 feet) (Stenzel, 2017). When a witness describes where they were relative to the crime that occurred, it allows for authorities to decide on the reliability.
Rehearsal:
When an eyewitness instantly rehearses after the crime they have witnessed, their ability to identify the correct perpetrator is reduced (Stenzel, 2017). An experiment done by J. Don Read showed that the best way to get accurate results is to wait at least ten minutes before remembering the persons appearance (Stenzel, 2017). If authorities want a witness testimony to have more accuracy, this should be one of the guidelines that they follow.
Confidence:
The witness’s confidence level is most important at the time of the initial identification of the perpetrator (Stenzel, 2017). This then sets a standard of determining if the witness lost or gained confidence in their identification over time (Stenzel, 2017). If the witness has low confidence in identification, then it is likely that they did not identify the correct person (Stenzel, 2017). Although it can be difficult to determine the confidence of a witness, this can be an indicator of how reliable their testimony is.
All of these factors are important to consider when it comes to the reliability of a witness, if they are not fitting to some of these criteria, then it is possible a wrongful conviction can occur.
The Cross Race Effect
Another factor that result in a wrongful identification is The Cross-Race Effect (CRE). This is the idea that a witness is less likely to identify the correct perpetrator if they are a different race than the witness and can more accurately identify the person if they were the same race (Bernstein, 2013). Psychologists have identified two causes of CRE (Bernstein, 2013). One factor that causes CRE, is that many people do not have experience with cross racial faces (Bernstein, 2013). The other cause that has been identified is people thinking of others as categories and not looking past their differences (Bernstein, 2013). We must understand that race does play a role in misidentification and that this is just another factor to consider when considering the reliability of an eyewitness testimony.
Race And Stereotypes
Race also plays a role in the misidentification of a suspect due to the stereotype that African American men have very similar facial features. The stereotype of a criminal African American man includes a combination of darker skin, a wide nose, and full lips (Kleider-Offut, 2017). Since these facial features are often associated with the idea of a “criminal”, then misidentification could occur due to the idea of the “type” of criminal they are looking for (Kleider-Offut, 2017). This is important to consider when looking at witness testimonies because of these preconceived notions of the “stereotypical criminal”, the identification of the actual criminal may be misidentified due to appearance.