One and done: Researchers urge testing eyewitness memory only once
To prevent wrongful convictions, only the first identification of a
suspect should be considered

Date:
November 3, 2021
Source:
University of California - San Diego
Summary:
Psychological scientists and criminologists say our system of
jurisprudence needs a simple no-cost reform -- switch to testing
eyewitnesses for their memory of suspects only once.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
We all know the scene from countless courtroom dramas: A witness points at
the defendant and confidently declares to judge and jury: "That's the one, that's who did it!" But is it? Perhaps. If that same witness was also
confident the very first time their memory was tested -- write a team
of psychological scientists and criminologists led by memory expert John
Wixted of the University of California San Diego. Otherwise, there's too
high a chance that a contaminated memory will convict an innocent person.


==========================================================================
As most of us also know, people have been convicted of crimes
they didn't commit on the basis of eyewitness memory. Some of these
wrongful convictions have later been overturned by DNA or other physical evidence. But that type of evidence doesn't always exist. To reduce the likelihood of injustice, the researchers suggest a simple, no-cost reform
to our system of jurisprudence.

"Test a witness's memory of a suspect only once," the researchers urge
in a paper published by Psychological Science in the Public Interest,
a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

"The first test is the most reliable test," says Wixted, a professor of psychology at UC San Diego, who has been working on memory for more than
30 years and eyewitness memory specifically for the past decade. "The
first test probes the witness's memory but also unavoidably contaminates
the witness's memory. All tests beyond that very first one only serve
to test contaminated memory and to contaminate it further. And once a
memory is contaminated, there is no way to decontaminate it." In their
paper, Wixted and his co-authors -- Gary Wells of Iowa State University, Elizabeth Loftus of UC Irvine and Brandon Garrett of the Duke University
School of Law -- explain how many wrongful convictions of innocent
prisoners in which a witness conclusively identified the defendant in
court began with something other than a conclusive initial eyewitness identification.

It's not that witnesses are vindictive or malicious, or that anyone else
in the process is either. Nor is it the case that eyewitness memory
is so hopelessly faulty that it shouldn't be admitted as evidence at
all. But our system of jurisprudence ignores the confidence with which
first identifications are made and relies too often on subsequent identifications, usually the very last one made in the courtroom. At
that point, at trial, perhaps a year or more after the crime has been committed, witnesses have usually become so familiar with a suspect's
face that they are certain they're remembering the face. And in fact,
they are remembering -- but very possibly not from the time the crime
was committed. Rather, they're remembering having seen the person in a
line-up (sometimes multiple times) or even on news or social media.

"Memory is malleable," Wixted says. "And because it's malleable, we
must avoid repeated identification procedures with the same witness
and suspect. This recommendation applies not only to additional tests
conducted by police investigators butalso to the final test conducted
in the courtroom." In their paper, the researchers describe the
latest science on eyewitness memory, including findings based on signal detection theory, elaborative processing and source misattribution. To
make a decision about a face in a lineup (signal detection theory),
the witness has to compare that face to their memory of the perpetrator (elaborative processing). Doing so automatically creates a memory of
that face. Even if the initial decision is "no, that is not him," the
face will seem more familiar on any later test. Often, the witness loses
sight of the fact that the face is familiar because of the previous
lineup test and comes to believe that the face is familiar because it
is in fact the face of the perpetrator (source misattribution).

The researchers also detail three real-life cases to underscore the
theoretical and experimental points: The cases of John Jerome White and
Steven Gary Titus,both of whom were convicted of rape on the basis of
witness memories and whose convictions were later overturned, and the
case of Charles Don Flores.

The Flores case is especially instructive, Wixted says. It inspired him
to assemble the research team for this paper -- outlining the latest
scientific understanding of eyewitness memory and calling for reform.

On January 29, 1998, in a suburb of Dallas, two men entered the home
of Elizabeth Black, who was later found shot dead. A neighbor saw the
men enter Black's home shortly before the murder, and she became a key
witness. When the police captured suspected triggerman Richard Childs,
the witness immediately identified Childs from a photo lineup as one
of the two men she saw that morning. Childs also confessed to the
murder and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. The police suspected
Flores as the accomplice because he was engaged in a drug deal with
Childs only hours before the murder, and at his 1999 trial, the same
witness confidently identified Flores as the other man she saw enter
her neighbor's house. However, on the day of the crime in January of
1998, the witness told police that the accomplice was a white male
with shoulder-length hair. After being hypnotized to calm her nerves,
she helped to make a composite sketch of the perpetrator with a police
artist. Consistent with her initial description, the sketch was that
of a white male with shoulder-length hair. The police then showed her
a photo lineup containing Flores -- a Hispanic male with a crew cut --
along with five similar-looking Hispanic males. She rejected the lineup, presumably because none of the faces even remotely matched her memory
of the accomplice. Yet, Wixted says, while examining the faces on that
first and only uncontaminated test of her memory for Flores, she became unavoidably familiarized with his face. By the time of the trial, she
no longer had any doubt that he was the man she saw that morning.

The witness's initial description of the accomplice and her rejection
of the lineup mean that the eyewitness evidence in this case, properly understood, Wixted says, points in the direction of innocence. Instead,
her confident courtroom testimony was interpreted as evidence of guilt
and helped persuade the jury to convict Flores. He has been on death
row ever since, and a governor's clemency now seems to be his last hope.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
University_of_California_-_San_Diego. Original written by Inga
Kiderra. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. John T. Wixted, Gary L. Wells, Elizabeth F. Loftus, Brandon
L. Garrett.

Test a Witness's Memory of a Suspect Only Once. Psychological
Science in the Public Interest, 2021; 22 (1_suppl): 1S DOI:
10.1177/ 15291006211026259 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211103181255.htm

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