Flaws in the Justice System

Here's an experiment to get you warmed up...



Now that you realize that as an "eyewitness" you aren't all that reliable, and even more importantly, that when you are involved in a task you don't always see other things going on...

Consider this:

... we tell the story of a Boston police officer chasing a suspect. When you do that, you're paying careful attention, figuring out where he's going, if he's got a gun or is throwing evidence away. The officer ran past an incident of police brutality taking place close by and later claimed not to have seen it. He went to prison because the jury didn't realise the extent to which focusing on one task makes you unable to see outside that. They decided he lied to protect fellow officers.

At this point you should be horrified at the legal system. An innocent cop was sent to jail because jurors didn't understand how people's brains really work.

The above is from an interview in New Scientist with the Daniel Simons, one of the original investigators in the above "Gorillas in our midst" study. Here is the study.

What worries me is that there are now a number of studies that demonstrate the fallibility of "eyewitness" testimony. But the legal system simply refuses to recognize reality. At the very least, any trial should spend 30 minutes "training" jurors to be aware of biases and blindness and the problems with "eyewitness" testimony. The fact that the legal system doesn't do this is definitive evidence that the system itself isn't interested in justice. It is simply a historical artifact that we are taught to accept as "the way" to run judicial cases. Any right thinking judge or lawyer would be working overtime to overhaul this archaic system!

Update 2010jul02: There appears to be an effort underway to deal with flawed eyewitness testimony. See here:

Mistaken eyewitness identifications are the leading cause of wrongful convictions, playing a role in three out of four DNA exoneration cases to date, according to the Innocence Project. Now, a cutting-edge report commissioned by the Supreme Court of New Jersey recommends major changes to bring the courts into alignment with the current state of the science on eyewitness testimony.

Geoffrey Gaulkin, a retired judge, spent close to a year reviewing three decades of research and taking testimony from experts in a hearing that legal observers describe as unprecedented. His conclusion: About a third of witnesses who pick out a suspect choose the wrong person, and the courts are not keeping up with science to prevent such wrongful identifications in court. Expert witnesses at the evidentiary hearing included John Monahan, law professor at the University of Virginia, Gary Wells of Iowa State University, and Steven Penrod of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The state high court request for a comprehensive probe stemmed from the case of Larry Henderson, who was convicted of manslaughter in 2004 based on a photographic identification procedure.

In his report, Gaulkin recommends far-reaching procedural safeguards, including procedures to assess the reliability of witnesses' identification of suspects. He also proposes that prosecutors, rather than defendants, should bear the burden of proof regarding the reliability of eyewitness testimony, and that juries and judges should be fully informed about the science of eyewitness identification and its fallibility.

Observers say the Special Master's findings of science and law represent a sea change that may eventually serve as a blueprint for other jurisdictions to revamp both their witness identification protocols and their rules on the use of eyewitness evidence in court.

Go to the forensicpsychologist blog site for links to related materia.