Speaker 1: It's a warm summer evening in Virginia, where a nine
Speaker 1: one one operator answers a call. There's a woman on
Speaker 1: the other end of the line. She says she's been attacked.
Speaker 1: Police arrived at the victim's home and they take a statement.
Speaker 1: The victim, a white woman, says that as she was
Speaker 1: walking to her apartment, she came across a man laying
Speaker 1: on the ground. He was clutching his leg. She thought
Speaker 1: he must have fallen off the bike that was toppled
Speaker 1: over next to him, so she bent down to help him,
Speaker 1: and that's when he grabbed her, beat her, and raped her.
Speaker 1: The victim told the police everything she could remember about
Speaker 1: her attacker. She said the man was black with a
Speaker 1: light complexion. He had a mustache, a beard, and some
Speaker 1: scratches on his face. Before the attacker left the scene
Speaker 1: of the crime, he told the victim some vague details
Speaker 1: about his life. He told her that he had quote
Speaker 1: had other white women. The police escort the victims of
Speaker 1: the hospital where a rape kid has taken and sent
Speaker 1: off to a crime lab. You're eighteen years old, just
Speaker 1: graduated from high school. Since you were thirteen, you knew
Speaker 1: that you wanted to be a firefighter, and now you're
Speaker 1: doing it. You're attending the fire academy this summer. You're
Speaker 1: also working at a theme park, collecting tickets running the rides.
Speaker 1: It's not the most glamorous job, but hey pays the rent.
Speaker 1: A few months ago, you moved out of your parents
Speaker 1: house and into an apartment with your girlfriend. Everyone says
Speaker 1: you're too young, but you don't care what they think.
Speaker 1: You're planning your future together. One evening, you finish up
Speaker 1: your ship at the theme parkain head to the office
Speaker 1: to clock out. You see a cop there are chatting
Speaker 1: with your boss. You don't think much of it. There's
Speaker 1: always some security or police at the park. But then
Speaker 1: you see your boss sort of flick his head in
Speaker 1: your direction, and when you try to leave the office,
Speaker 1: the cops stops you. He says, hey, let me talk
Speaker 1: to you for a minute. Have you heard about the
Speaker 1: rape that took place a few days ago, not too
Speaker 1: far from here. It's like he knew that this crime
Speaker 1: had been on your mind. You've been making your girlfriend
Speaker 1: locked the door behind you every time you leave the house.
Speaker 1: You say, yes, sir, I did hear about it? Do
Speaker 1: you know who did it? The officer says he has
Speaker 1: some questions and ask you if you'll come to the
Speaker 1: police station with him. When you get there, the officer
Speaker 1: takes you into a small room with the table and
Speaker 1: a few chairs. He says, wait here, you'll stand in
Speaker 1: as part of a police lineup, and I'll come back
Speaker 1: and get you in a few minutes. It dawns on
Speaker 1: you you're not just here to answer questions. You're a
Speaker 1: suspect in this crime. You call out to the officer,
Speaker 1: Wait what am I doing here? He says, the rapists
Speaker 1: said that he had been with other white women. Don't
Speaker 1: you live with your white girlfriend? He closes and locks
Speaker 1: the door behind them. You lean over in your seat
Speaker 1: and cover your face with your hands. Who would have
Speaker 1: known information about your personal life and try to use
Speaker 1: it against you? Was it one of those cops that
Speaker 1: used to stop by the fire station when you were
Speaker 1: at the training academy. Maybe they saw your girlfriend dropping
Speaker 1: off dinner at the fire station one night. You stop
Speaker 1: and take a deep breath, reminding yourself that being a
Speaker 1: black man living with your white girlfriend isn't a crime.
Speaker 1: At least it's not supposed to be, not anymore, And
Speaker 1: yet none this seems to matter someone. Some cop already
Speaker 1: have their eye on you for this very reason, But
Speaker 1: you didn't do anything wrong, and you're hopeful that the
Speaker 1: victim's memory of our attacker will set things straight. What
Speaker 1: you don't know is that just down the hall from
Speaker 1: where you're sitting, the woman who called one a few
Speaker 1: days ago is sitting in front of six pictures. An
Speaker 1: officer tells her to pick out the face of the
Speaker 1: man who attacked her. All of the photos set out
Speaker 1: in front of her are black and white mug shots
Speaker 1: except for one yours. You've never been in trouble with
Speaker 1: the law, and so you don't have a mug shot. Instead,
Speaker 1: the cop that showed up at your job took a
Speaker 1: picture of your ID card from the theme park and
Speaker 1: slipped it into the photo lineup. Yours is not just
Speaker 1: the only one that's not a mug shot, it's also
Speaker 1: the only one that's p did it in color, so
Speaker 1: it immediately grabs the woman's attention. She chooses your photo
Speaker 1: and says, I think that's him. The officer comes back
Speaker 1: in to get you. He brings you into a room
Speaker 1: with a window in it and asks you to stand
Speaker 1: in a line with some men. These other men are
Speaker 1: known as fillers. None of these fillers or potential suspects.
Speaker 1: The point of them is to see if the victim
Speaker 1: can identify your face amongst others who are supposed to
Speaker 1: resemble the suspect. None of these other people's faces were
Speaker 1: in any of the photos the victims saw except for yours,
Speaker 1: your color photo I D that's the only photo that
Speaker 1: matches the face of anyone in this lineup. There's an
Speaker 1: officer at the front of the room and he starts
Speaker 1: barking out orders to you and the fillers stand there
Speaker 1: and look straight ahead. Now turn to your right, Now
Speaker 1: turn to your left. You follow the directions that are
Speaker 1: being shouted out. You can't see her because she's on
Speaker 1: the other side of a one way mirror, but the
Speaker 1: victim points you out. She says it's him. I'm sure
Speaker 1: of it, And that's all the information the cops need
Speaker 1: to hear, and you are arrested on the spot. You
Speaker 1: sit in jail wondering what in the world you're supposed
Speaker 1: to make of how this woman mistook you for someone else.
Speaker 1: You look nothing like the witness's original description of her attacker.
Speaker 1: She'd reported that he had light skin, a mustache, a beard,
Speaker 1: and scratches on his face. You have dark skin, You're
Speaker 1: almost always clean shaven. There are no scratches or marks
Speaker 1: on your eighteen year old face. How could that picture
Speaker 1: in her head, the memory of her attacker changed so
Speaker 1: much in such a short amount of time. What is
Speaker 1: it about that lineup that made her choose you? You
Speaker 1: eventually stand trial in front of an all white jury
Speaker 1: of eight women and four men. You were taught your
Speaker 1: entire life to trust law enforcement, to believe in this
Speaker 1: system of justice. The police, officers, judges, lawyers, jurors. They
Speaker 1: were all there to figure out the truth, to do
Speaker 1: the right thing. But that image comes shattering down when
Speaker 1: the jury comes back and find you guilty of rape, abduction, robbery,
Speaker 1: and force sodomy. The judge sentences you to two hundred
Speaker 1: and ten years in prison. Him after the sentences read,
Speaker 1: you slowly looked behind you. You try to find your mom,
Speaker 1: your family. You know they're sitting just behind you, but
Speaker 1: you can't see a foot ahead of you. Everything goes black.
Speaker 1: The story you just heard is based on the true
Speaker 1: events of Marvin Anderson's wrongful conviction six years after he
Speaker 1: was sentenced to life in prison, another man confessed to
Speaker 1: attacking the woman who had misidentified Marvin. The man that
Speaker 1: confessed presented new details to a judge that seemed to
Speaker 1: prove his guilt in Marvin's innocence. Still, the judge did
Speaker 1: not vacate marvin sentence. Marvin wrote a letter to the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project and they took up his case. After years
Speaker 1: of work, lawyers of the Innocence Project were finally able
Speaker 1: to con vinced the judge to compare Marvin's DNA with
Speaker 1: the DNA from seamen recovered from the victim. When the
Speaker 1: rape kit was performed, Marvin was not a match, but
Speaker 1: another man was a match, the man who had confessed
Speaker 1: to the crime. After fifteen long years in prison, Marvin
Speaker 1: walked free and became the person to be exonerated based
Speaker 1: on DNA evidence. He's since become chief of the Hanover,
Speaker 1: Virginia Fire Department and serves on the board of the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project. I'm Josh Juban, civil rights and criminal defense attorney,
Speaker 1: an innocence ambassador to the Innocence Project in New York. Today.
Speaker 1: On wrongful conviction junk science, we examine eyewitness testimony. When
Speaker 1: a witness points to a suspect and says that's the
Speaker 1: person who committed this crime. There's nothing more convincing to
Speaker 1: a jury, but it is dangerous lee inaccurate. Over two
Speaker 1: thirds of people who are later exonerated based on DNA
Speaker 1: evidence were convicted based on eyewitness testimony. It may sound
Speaker 1: like a simple premise, but in order for eyewitness testimony
Speaker 1: to work and be reliable, we need to rely on
Speaker 1: our own memories and those of others. But it turns out,
Speaker 1: just as physical evidence can be manipulated, contaminated, or even planted,
Speaker 1: so too can memories. In the early eighties, Professor Wilhelm Once,
Speaker 1: the father of modern psychology, was giving a lecture at
Speaker 1: the University of Leipzig in Germany. One of his students
Speaker 1: attending the lecture was Hugo Munsterberg and Hugo when he
Speaker 1: heard this lecture, he was hooked. He was so fascinated
Speaker 1: by psychology and he began to study under the father
Speaker 1: of psychology himself. After completing his studies, Hugo started working
Speaker 1: at Harvard University, where he led the Experimental Psychology Lab.
Speaker 1: Hugo was especially interested in the concrete, everyday applications of psychology.
Speaker 1: He wanted to study if and how psychology impacted juries
Speaker 1: and trial outcomes, and so he began to run experiments
Speaker 1: on the memory of eyewitnesses. In one of his famous experiments,
Speaker 1: Hugo tested the memories of both adults and children. He
Speaker 1: showed them a photo. In it there was a farmer
Speaker 1: sitting at a table eating some soup. Hugo had his
Speaker 1: test subjects look closely at the photo, then he took
Speaker 1: the photo away. Hugo then asked him open to do
Speaker 1: questions about it, like what did you see in the photo.
Speaker 1: To these questions, the witnesses responded, there was a man
Speaker 1: in the photo eating his soup. Their memories were accurate,
Speaker 1: but then Hugo started asking what he called suggestive questions.
Speaker 1: He asked, for example, did you see the stove in
Speaker 1: the room. Many of the eyewitnesses answered yes, they saw
Speaker 1: the stove, but there was no stove in the photo.
Speaker 1: Hugo found that through asking suggestive questions like these, he
Speaker 1: was able to get his test subjects to remember dozens
Speaker 1: of objects in the photo that never existed. In another experiment,
Speaker 1: Hugo sat at a desk at the front of a
Speaker 1: room and told his students remember every detail of what
Speaker 1: I'm about to do. Starting now, with his right hand,
Speaker 1: Hugo took out a colorful disc and began to spin it.
Speaker 1: While staring at the disk that he was spinning with
Speaker 1: his right hand, he used his left hand to take
Speaker 1: out a pencil and write something down on a piece
Speaker 1: of paper. Keeping that disk spinning in his right hand,
Speaker 1: he used his left hand again to take out a
Speaker 1: cigarette case, open it, take out a cigarette, shut the
Speaker 1: case with a loud click, and put it back into
Speaker 1: his pocket. At a one hundred students who saw this demonstration,
Speaker 1: only eighteen of them were able to report what Hugo
Speaker 1: had done with his left hand, and so Hugo was
Speaker 1: not only able to show that witnesses might fabricate details
Speaker 1: of a memory that never existed, but they are also
Speaker 1: likely to not remember many details of events that happened
Speaker 1: right in front of their faces. These experiments also demonstrated
Speaker 1: that the memories of two different people observing the same
Speaker 1: event or photo could be wildly different, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that they had no stake in lyne or making the
Speaker 1: outcome of the events. A periotive happened one way or another.
Speaker 1: Hugo also concluded that the witness's own claim of certainty
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily mean that their memories were more accurate. A
Speaker 1: witness might say, for example, that they were absolutely certain
Speaker 1: that there was a stove in the photo, or that
Speaker 1: he or she was certain that all Hugo did was
Speaker 1: spin a disc and his right hand. But even as
Speaker 1: they claimed certainty, there was proof that their memories were incorrect.
Speaker 1: When his book on these experiments was published in The
Speaker 1: New York Times wrote that his studies had the potential
Speaker 1: to revolutionize courtroom procedure and to quote, bring light and
Speaker 1: order in domains were all or almost all is darkness
Speaker 1: and confusion. But that's not what happened, because Hugo also
Speaker 1: had many critics who scoffed at his attempt to apply
Speaker 1: psychology to the courtroom, and so courtroom procedure around eyewitness
Speaker 1: testimony was not completely evolutionized. To this day, countless innocent
Speaker 1: men and women are sent to prison based on faulty
Speaker 1: eyewitness testimony. Over half a century after Hugo's research was mocked,
Speaker 1: psychologist Elizabeth Loft this took another look at eyewitness testimony
Speaker 1: with a more modern take on Hugo's experiments. She was
Speaker 1: able to prove just how unreliable eyewitness testimony is and
Speaker 1: why it shouldn't be trusted as the gold standard of
Speaker 1: evidence in a courtroom or in a police lineup. Many people, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: believe that memory works like a recording device. You you
Speaker 1: take in the information, you record it, you just play
Speaker 1: it back the way some kind of video recorder would work,
Speaker 1: And that is not really the way memory works. What
Speaker 1: happens when we're remembering something is we we tend to
Speaker 1: take bits and pieces of experience, sometimes from different times
Speaker 1: of places. We bring it together and we construct a memory.
Speaker 1: So I like to think of memory a little bit more,
Speaker 1: not like a recording device, but more like a Wikipedia page.
Speaker 1: You can go in there and edit it, but so
Speaker 1: can other people. Today on our show, we're speaking with
Speaker 1: renowned psychologist Elizabeth Loft. This Elizabeth is currently a professor
Speaker 1: at the University of California, Irvine. She studies human memory,
Speaker 1: specifically the malleability of memory, which of course is a
Speaker 1: huge factor in cases where eyewitness testimony is used as evidence. So, Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: can you tell us about some of the experiments that
Speaker 1: you worked on to study memories of eyewitnesses. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the ways that I and my collaborators have
Speaker 1: studied memory in hundreds of studies you know probably now
Speaker 1: and participants over the course of my career. One of
Speaker 1: the ways that we study memory is will show people
Speaker 1: a simulated crime. For example, we will then expose people
Speaker 1: to some new information about that crime. So they might
Speaker 1: have seen a bad guy take a wallet out of
Speaker 1: somebody's purse and he's wearing a green jacket, but they
Speaker 1: then get misinformation from another witness or from a leading
Speaker 1: question that the jacket was brown. And finally, we will
Speaker 1: ask our witnesses, tell me exactly what you saw, give
Speaker 1: me as much detail as you can remember, and many
Speaker 1: of them will then remember that the jacket was brown
Speaker 1: and not green, or we can make them believe the
Speaker 1: bad guy had curly hair instead of straight hair. All
Speaker 1: by exposing people to new information misleading information, it impairs
Speaker 1: our own memory, and this is now referred to in
Speaker 1: the psychological literature as the misinformation effect. So give me
Speaker 1: another example. What are some other experiments you did where
Speaker 1: misinformation just kind of gets slipped into the person's memory
Speaker 1: with without them even knowing it. We've shown people a
Speaker 1: simulated accident, a car goes through an intersection with a
Speaker 1: yield sign and then ends up hitting up pedestrian and
Speaker 1: pedestrian falls over. A police officer comes to tend to
Speaker 1: the pedestrian who is lying down on the on the ground. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: are our witnesses are asked a series of questions, and
Speaker 1: one of those questions might be did another car pass
Speaker 1: the red dots and when it was at the intersection
Speaker 1: with the stop sign. Now, that is a very clever question,
Speaker 1: just so you can appreciate the cleverness you as the wind.
Speaker 1: Just think I'm asking you about whether another car passed
Speaker 1: while the dots and was stopped. You revisualized the scene,
Speaker 1: and in your visualization you might put in a stop
Speaker 1: sign that I've mentioned as part of the question. You
Speaker 1: think you're answering about whether another car stopped, But this
Speaker 1: stop sign kind of invade your consciousness, almost like a
Speaker 1: trojan horse. You don't even detect that it's coming. And
Speaker 1: after that, many people will then claim I saw a
Speaker 1: stop sign at that intersection, And you can show them
Speaker 1: to scenes the scene with a stop sign or the
Speaker 1: scene with a yield sign. They'll pick the one with
Speaker 1: the stop sign. They have succumbed to the question and
Speaker 1: fallen sway to its suggestion, and now it appears as
Speaker 1: if this is their memory. Now I want to get
Speaker 1: back to the way cops influenza witness. UM. I've dealt
Speaker 1: with cases where the cops know who the suspect is
Speaker 1: and do things either consciously or even unconsciously. I guess
Speaker 1: to encourage the witness to choose the person that they
Speaker 1: believe is their suspect. Have you dealt with anything like
Speaker 1: that in your research. One of my favorite examples the
Speaker 1: case I testified in uh in California. There's a crime,
Speaker 1: the eyewitness has shown a six pack six photographs. The
Speaker 1: eyewitness says, I I really don't recognize anybody, and the
Speaker 1: officer says, wait a minute, I see your eyes drifting
Speaker 1: down to number six. What's going on there? Eventually number
Speaker 1: six gets seized upon identified, and that's the person who
Speaker 1: gets prosecuted. So there's a highly suggestive thing going on here.
Speaker 1: I'm willing to get, certainly to give these officers the
Speaker 1: benefit of the doubt and say they they're not even
Speaker 1: aware in a way of their own influence. UM, And
Speaker 1: and that a lot of what's happening is kind of unwitting.
Speaker 1: So look I'm an alleged expert in jury selection, and
Speaker 1: people are always saying to me, like, how does this
Speaker 1: affect you? Are you always trying to psychoanalyze me? So
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about how this, you know,
Speaker 1: deep knowledge of memory impacts you. Do you find yourself
Speaker 1: like not trusting your own memory at times? Well, the
Speaker 1: one experience that I do have from all these decades
Speaker 1: of doing this kind of work is I understand, um
Speaker 1: that along with those like sort of bits of truth
Speaker 1: are bits of fiction intermingled in there. And I'm not
Speaker 1: bothered by that. I understand that's part of the the
Speaker 1: malleable nature of memory. I think what this acceptance has
Speaker 1: done for me is it makes me a little bit
Speaker 1: more tolerant of the mistakes that friends make, or family
Speaker 1: members make, or even I myself might make. I don't
Speaker 1: immediately assume somebody's a big, fat liar. They could honestly
Speaker 1: have a false memory. And I think it's a kind
Speaker 1: of kinder way to feel about people. Okay, so that's
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Do you think this same kindness, as you
Speaker 1: refer to it, that you offer, let's say, your friends,
Speaker 1: your family, even yourself, do you think we should offer
Speaker 1: witnesses the same kind of kindness in court cases. Do
Speaker 1: you want to call these people a liar or do
Speaker 1: you want to accept the fact that maybe some kind
Speaker 1: of process has led them to develop a set of
Speaker 1: beliefs and things that feel to them like memory. And
Speaker 1: it is kinder even in a court case. I think
Speaker 1: sometimes for for lawyers who are challenging these memories to
Speaker 1: talk about them as potentially false memories rather than talk
Speaker 1: about the accuser as being a big fat liar. So
Speaker 1: you're an expert witness in a lot of cases that
Speaker 1: depend on eyewitness testimony. You know, we've talked a lot
Speaker 1: throughout the course of this podcast about how some expert
Speaker 1: witnesses aren't basing their testimony on good science or facts.
Speaker 1: But you're not that kind of witness. I mean, you've
Speaker 1: been studying memory for years and years, and you've done
Speaker 1: experiments and um, you know, tested this with thousands of participants.
Speaker 1: You have a lot of data to back up what
Speaker 1: you're testifying to in court. But tell me, have you
Speaker 1: ever heard of witness testifying in court or read their
Speaker 1: testimony and it kind of made you think, well, this
Speaker 1: isn't science at all. They're actually twisting this so much
Speaker 1: that it's more like junk science. I guess what I've
Speaker 1: seen happen in some cases, and this bothers me where
Speaker 1: I think opposing experts are introducing junk science. It's about trauma.
Speaker 1: They want to introduce a science that basically says traumatic
Speaker 1: memories are are completely different. Traumatic memories, you know, are
Speaker 1: stored in the body. Traumatic memories can be relied on
Speaker 1: traumatic memories that kind of don't have these same problems.
Speaker 1: In fact, traumatic memories operate under similar in similar ways.
Speaker 1: They fade over time, they can be influenced by post
Speaker 1: event information. There. There's just lots of features of memory
Speaker 1: that are true, whether you're trying to remember something that's
Speaker 1: upsetting or whether you're trying to remember something that is
Speaker 1: a little bit um more new role and less emotional.
Speaker 1: You see this in the movies all the time. They're
Speaker 1: saying something like, I was so frightened when this happened.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget that face as long as I live.
Speaker 1: That's an expression of the belief that this traumatic memory
Speaker 1: is sort of imprinted in the brain and it is
Speaker 1: reliably and solidly there and you just need to read
Speaker 1: it out. And that is not the way things work
Speaker 1: with with memory in general, or even traumatic memories. So
Speaker 1: tell us more about that, because I do think that
Speaker 1: when we hear about someone who has been, you know, raped,
Speaker 1: or there's been a violent attack, our instinct is that
Speaker 1: we should believe them, no matter what, right like, why
Speaker 1: would somebody make this up? So how do we reconcile
Speaker 1: the desire to believe a victim, or the natural tendency
Speaker 1: to believe a victim, with the knowledge that memories just
Speaker 1: aren't the most reliable form of evidence. I think the
Speaker 1: way we reconcile all this is that when there is
Speaker 1: somebody with an accusation, we we certainly listen to it
Speaker 1: and examine it. And we don't want to uncritically accept
Speaker 1: every accusation, no matter how dubious. And we don't want
Speaker 1: to routinely reject an accusation just because we don't like
Speaker 1: how it sounds. So I do think there there is
Speaker 1: a way to reconcile these two seemingly conflictual driving forces.
Speaker 1: But I don't think we forego our democratic principles and
Speaker 1: and and forget about the fact that that we're proud
Speaker 1: to have a legal system that respects the rights of
Speaker 1: the accused to have a defense. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: a tough delem right, because I've had that instance just
Speaker 1: last week where you know, I am defending someone who
Speaker 1: I believe to be innocent. And you know, I when
Speaker 1: when people hear about the case, or you tell them
Speaker 1: about the case, you know at least what's public knowledge.
Speaker 1: You know, the reaction is, well, why would somebody make up, um,
Speaker 1: you know, a accusation of sexual assault for instance. But
Speaker 1: the reality is that they may not be consciously making
Speaker 1: it up. It may not be a conscious lie. It
Speaker 1: may just be that their perception um and they're what
Speaker 1: they think is their reliable memory is just not correct. Now, look,
Speaker 1: I have my own ideas, and you know, the Innocence Project,
Speaker 1: as you know, has done a ton of policy work
Speaker 1: around this and trying to get reform um achieved in
Speaker 1: law enforcement across the country and the way they go about,
Speaker 1: um instituting line ups and you know, eyewitness identifications. But
Speaker 1: you tell tell me what you think. What do you
Speaker 1: think is a way that we can reform the system
Speaker 1: so that eyewitness identification would be more accurate. First of all,
Speaker 1: one thing that is important when law enforcement is conducting
Speaker 1: some kind of test, whether it's with photographs or whether
Speaker 1: it's with a live lineup, How do you conduct the test?
Speaker 1: What instruction do you give to the witness who conducts
Speaker 1: the test? Who were the fillers? The people who are
Speaker 1: put in the set of photos are put in the
Speaker 1: lineup along with your suspect. Each of these issues is important,
Speaker 1: and there are best practices that have been devised by
Speaker 1: scientists and very thoughtful people in the legal field about
Speaker 1: what those best practices should be. So best practice, the
Speaker 1: person conducting the test should not know who the suspect is.
Speaker 1: That's one of the most important things that in other words,
Speaker 1: the person conducting the test should It should be what's
Speaker 1: called a double blind test. The witness doesn't know who
Speaker 1: the suspect is and the person conducting the test doesn't
Speaker 1: know who the suspect is. And why that's important is
Speaker 1: because that means that the person conducting the test cannot
Speaker 1: inadvertently queue the witness as to who to pick, and
Speaker 1: the investigator cannot give feedback to the witness, cannot say,
Speaker 1: good job, that's our suspect, um, that's who we think
Speaker 1: did at another witness picked that same person. This kind
Speaker 1: of feedback artificially inflates the confidence of the witness and
Speaker 1: makes them a more powerful witness at the time of
Speaker 1: the trial, more impervious to cross examination. It's not a
Speaker 1: fair situation, so blind testing is one simple reform that's
Speaker 1: been suggested. How about the instruction you give to the witness.
Speaker 1: It's very important to have an unbiased instruction to say
Speaker 1: to the witness, you know the person may or may
Speaker 1: not be in this lineup. It's just as important to
Speaker 1: exonerate the innocent as to find the guilty person. You're
Speaker 1: trying to take pressure off of the witness. Take the
Speaker 1: pressure off so they don't feel they've got to pick
Speaker 1: someone anyone, uh, in order to solve the case. So
Speaker 1: that's why that instruction is important. Then there are other
Speaker 1: issues like who you put into the lineup. What should
Speaker 1: the fillers look like? Do they just resemble the suspect? No,
Speaker 1: they should also resemble the description that the witness gave.
Speaker 1: So if the witness said, you know a skinny guy
Speaker 1: with medium length hair, um, you want basically skinny people
Speaker 1: with medium length hair fitting the description, not just fitting
Speaker 1: the characteristics of the suspect. What is the biggest takeaway
Speaker 1: that you think our listeners should have from today's episode.
Speaker 1: Just because somebody tells you something and they say it
Speaker 1: with a lot of detail, and they say it with confidence,
Speaker 1: and they even show emotion when they tell you it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it really happened. It doesn't mean it really
Speaker 1: happened exactly that way. You need independent corroboration to know
Speaker 1: whether you're dealing with an authentic memory or one that
Speaker 1: is the product of some other process imagination, suggestion, misinterpreting dreams,
Speaker 1: or some other non authentic process. We always try to
Speaker 1: end each episode with a call to action. So I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about the lessons for today's interview with Elizabeth
Speaker 1: and just how interesting, informative, and really eye opening it's
Speaker 1: been when someone's freedom hangs in the balance. We should
Speaker 1: leave open the possibility that when someone takes a witness
Speaker 1: stand and claims to have watched a crime unfold or
Speaker 1: says they are sure they saw the defendant leaving the
Speaker 1: scene of a crime, they may not be accurately conveying
Speaker 1: what happened, and not because they're intentionally lying or even
Speaker 1: shading the truth, but their memory may have been influenced
Speaker 1: in some way. So considered the surrounding circumstances, whether they
Speaker 1: were fed information, if there was this suggestion about who
Speaker 1: may have committed the crime by a member of law enforcement,
Speaker 1: if the methods used to quote unquote identify a perpetrator
Speaker 1: or influenced in a way that made the accused stand out.
Speaker 1: And maybe it's not the most reassuring thing that in
Speaker 1: an error, When it seems that misinformation is rather popular
Speaker 1: and it's sometimes difficult to know what the truth actually is.
Speaker 1: Here is yet another reason to doubt our perception of reality.
Speaker 1: But remember, your willingness to remain open to all credible
Speaker 1: possibilities may in fact prevent the next wrongful conviction. Next week,
Speaker 1: on our final episode of the season, we'll explore how
Speaker 1: what's known as shaking baby syndrome has been used to
Speaker 1: falsely implicate people in crimes they did not commit. We'll
Speaker 1: discuss this with executive director of the Center for Integrity
Speaker 1: and Forensic Sciences, Kate Judson. Wrongful Conviction Junk Science is
Speaker 1: a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number One. Thanks to our executive producer Jason
Speaker 1: Flom and the team, it's Signal Company number One Executive
Speaker 1: producer Kevin Wardis and senior producers care Cornaber and Britt's Angler.
Speaker 1: Our music was composed by j Ralph. You can follow
Speaker 1: me on Instagram at dubin Dot. Josh followed the Wrongful
Speaker 1: Conviction podcast on Facebook and on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 1: and on Twitter at wrong Conviction