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Eyewitness Identifications

Tainted Identifications – 22 September 2016
Many erroneous eyewitness identifications are mistakes, but many others are lies. In some cases, these misidentifications—both mistakes and lies —are produced by deliberate misconduct on the part of police officers. For example, officers might show a single suspect to a witness and then tell the witness, falsely, that he was identified as committing several similar crimes. Or they might tell the witness that if she does not identify the suspect, they will charge her family member with a crime. This report examines how these types of misconduct produce both mistakes and lies by eyewitnesses. Read more.

National Academy of Sciences Releases Report on Eyewitness Identification – 14 October 2014
In 2014 the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences released a report entitled Identifying the Culprit: Assessing Eyewitness Identification. This is an important document and it does an excellent job of summarizing what we do and do not know about eyewitness identification testimony. Read more.