When the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied clemency for Troy Allen Davis Tuesday, the board based its decision on one of the bedrocks of the American judicial system: eyewitness testimony. Nine individuals testified that they saw Davis murder off-duty police officer Mark Allen MacPhail in a Burger King parking lot in 1989, and the jury sentenced him to death. He was executed by lethal injection last night around 11 p.m. But over the years, seven witnesses recanted their testimony; some alleged that police coerced them to identify Davis. Three jurors who sentenced Davis to the death penalty testified that had they known about the problems with eyewitness identification, they would not have sentenced Davis to death.
For more than 30 years, research in criminal justice, social science and behavioral health has pointed overwhelmingly to the conclusion that people aren’t very good at picking criminals out of a police lineup. Whether due to faulty memories or subtle police coercion, eyewitnesses often misidentify the suspect. The first study questioning the validity of eyewitness testimony was published all the way back in 1907. This week, yet another study was released, this one by the American Judicature Society. It found that showing eyewitnesses photos of suspects sequentially, rather than in a cluster, reduces the likelihood of misidentification.
Over the past decade, a dozen states and several large police departments have adopted evidence-based practices, such as having an officer who doesn’t know the suspect’s identity conduct a police lineup, or instructing witnesses that the suspect may or may not be present in the lineup. Still, the majority of states are generally using the same eyewitness identification rules that led to Davis’ controversial conviction.
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3 comments:
How about if we only use death sentence if killer admits to it. But can we take his word on it.
Among the witnesses who did not recant a word of their testimony against Davis were three members of the Air Force, who saw the shooting from their van in the Burger King drive-in lane. The airman who saw events clearly enough to positively identify Davis as the shooter explained on cross-examination, “You don’t forget someone that stands over and shoots someone.”
34 total witnesses 7 of whom changed their stories 2 who were his friends and standing beside him when he pulled the trigger. the msm pulls this bs all the time! he got longer to live than his victum. the way these vandals are running around looting and killing maybe it's time to arm yourselves and save the taxpayers all this time and money being wasted on this scum!
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