Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck and we're coming to
Speaker 1: see you guys, some of you some cities. Just listen up.
Speaker 1: That's right, because you know, we just did Chicago and
Speaker 1: Toronto and it went great, and I think our topic
Speaker 1: of went really well. Sure did. Everyone loved hearing about
Speaker 1: That's right. So if you're in Boston, he can come
Speaker 1: see us in August twenty nine at the Wilbur Portland, Maine, Maine,
Speaker 1: at the State Theater on August thirty. I can't wait.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna Labor Day weekend. I'm gonna stay the whole weekend.
Speaker 1: I'll be all over Maine. That's great, man. Where else
Speaker 1: We're gonna be in Orlando on October nine, and then
Speaker 1: on October t we're going to be in New Orleans, Man.
Speaker 1: And then later on that month we're doing a three
Speaker 1: night stand at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn. That's right. Is
Speaker 1: sold out. You can still get tickets for the and
Speaker 1: we will see you then. Check it out at s
Speaker 1: y s K live dot com. Welcome to Stuff you
Speaker 1: should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's
Speaker 1: Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there, and
Speaker 1: this is stuff you should know, the Continuing Courtroom Drama edition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one. I think if you take our podcast on
Speaker 1: memory and our podcasts on police lineups and they made love, Yeah,
Speaker 1: then they would have this baby. I just came a
Speaker 1: little aroused. Chuck can tell. Yeah, this is uh. I
Speaker 1: guess two thousand eleven was the Memory one, so that's
Speaker 1: been a while. Yeah. Also you could sprinkle in a
Speaker 1: little photographic memory. Maybe that one was just watching. Sure, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. Hey, Jerry, how are you? That's right? Good,
Speaker 1: good answer. So, Chuck, Yes, have you ever been wrongfully
Speaker 1: convicted of a crime based on eyewitness testimony? Not convicted,
Speaker 1: but you have been indicted on it a crime? Not indicted.
Speaker 1: You have been accused of a crime. I've been accused
Speaker 1: of crimes. Really, I think you should dish about that.
Speaker 1: You know it, crimes against humanity. Okay, I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: all that as a no, you never have That's great, um.
Speaker 1: But it turns out there are plenty of people hundreds
Speaker 1: so far in the US alone, who have been found
Speaker 1: to have been wrongfully convicted of crimes. Big crimes, I
Speaker 1: mean crimes that have put them on death row, um
Speaker 1: based on eyewitness testimony. And in the last few decades
Speaker 1: it's become really apparent that eyewitness testimony is is really
Speaker 1: not great. I mean we've known it for a long time,
Speaker 1: but thanks to DNA evidence coming along, we can now
Speaker 1: go back and say, um, yeah, this is this person
Speaker 1: was innocent. Actually, yeah, you want to hear something, A
Speaker 1: little story. So the UH we worked with a locations person,
Speaker 1: actually two people, it's a couple on some of the
Speaker 1: stuff you should know stuff back in the day. I
Speaker 1: think some of the shorts and UH in locations and
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say their names or anything to protect them,
Speaker 1: but they were riding their bikes and we're hit and
Speaker 1: run last week and um, she's fine now, but she
Speaker 1: was in the hospital. Was it was not great? And
Speaker 1: they have I've been following this on social media. They
Speaker 1: have video from you know, like everyone has cameras now,
Speaker 1: businesses and homes and stuff. They have video of the incident.
Speaker 1: They have the the car's license plate as clear as day,
Speaker 1: the car as clear as day. The police have all
Speaker 1: this stuff, and the police are like, nothing we can
Speaker 1: do about it unless you have an eye witness that
Speaker 1: can like say who the driver was? What the same
Speaker 1: thing that happened to me in l A when you
Speaker 1: know I told that story back, Uh in one of
Speaker 1: our shows when I got hit and run and I
Speaker 1: couldn't identify this young woman in a in a lineup card.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they're like, sorry, she said she didn't do it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's all you gotta do is they didn't
Speaker 1: do it, But the same thing is happening to them.
Speaker 1: They have You wouldn't believe the clarity of the videos
Speaker 1: that show this car right hitting them and leaving and uh,
Speaker 1: they're like, nothing we can do about it. Man, that
Speaker 1: is crazy. So that's like a pretty good example of
Speaker 1: the law being slow to catch up to the current
Speaker 1: state of I guess the world basically. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: they're they're not They're working the case and they're trying
Speaker 1: to find out who did it, but they can't simply
Speaker 1: go to the person's house who owns that car and
Speaker 1: like arrest somebody. I guess in a way though that
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds stupid and and dumb, but at
Speaker 1: the same time it is kind of reassuring, especially with
Speaker 1: the rise of deep fakes, which we've talked to out too.
Speaker 1: You can't just fabricate a video, especially convincing one, and
Speaker 1: be like, go arrest this person, I guess. So. My
Speaker 1: thought though, is like, go bring in the person who
Speaker 1: owns the car and you will probably very likely find
Speaker 1: out who was driving it. Sure if it wasn't them, Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if you are are really generous with the rubber hose,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, and the d louson I've
Speaker 1: met more of the beating with the rubber hose. No,
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. Okay, you took it a
Speaker 1: different direction. A Rambo in First Blood? What did they
Speaker 1: de loust Rambo? Yeah, they d loused him and then
Speaker 1: hit him with the fire hose. Okay, huh. But all
Speaker 1: this to say, I witness testimony like is what's needed
Speaker 1: in many cases to prove guilt. But it's so unreliable, right,
Speaker 1: it's like a joke almost. It's well, it's the gold
Speaker 1: standard in the American justice system, and I would suspect
Speaker 1: just about every justice system that if somebody comes into
Speaker 1: a court and points at them, at the suspect or
Speaker 1: the defendant and says, I saw them kill that person.
Speaker 1: I saw them hit that couple with their car and
Speaker 1: drive off. I saw them. Other people who make up
Speaker 1: juries will be like, Wow, how are you gonna argue
Speaker 1: with that? You can't this person swearing under oath that
Speaker 1: they saw them do it. Um, they don't strike me
Speaker 1: as a liar. They don't seem to have anything to
Speaker 1: gain from lying about this. So I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and believe this this person and convict. But like we were,
Speaker 1: we've kind of been toying with a little bit and saying,
Speaker 1: like I witness testimony isn't great. Um, you don't have
Speaker 1: to have some sort of vested interest in sending someone
Speaker 1: to prison. You don't have to be outright lying to
Speaker 1: basically send someone to jail who's actually innocent based done
Speaker 1: your own testimony. And while you're doing this, while you're
Speaker 1: testifying a court, you might actually fully believe what you're saying,
Speaker 1: even though what you're saying is fabricated and actually you
Speaker 1: don't really recognize the person that you're saying you saw
Speaker 1: commit this crime. Yeah, and a jury is way more
Speaker 1: likely to uh convict if you're like super super sure
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh no, that was the person. I
Speaker 1: am positive. But as we will learn as we impact
Speaker 1: this topic, um, that that confidence in court is not
Speaker 1: there from the beginning necessarily. Yeah, yeah, that's true. But
Speaker 1: if you think that confidence sells it, if you have
Speaker 1: a cocky witness, they'll just kill the defendant on the spot.
Speaker 1: So like, are you one sure? And they go what
Speaker 1: did I just say? Exactly? That kind of witness will
Speaker 1: send you to the the electric chair or the lethal
Speaker 1: injection needle everyday the week. They're called do I stutter witnesses?
Speaker 1: Oh all right, let's get into this. We've been dancing
Speaker 1: around it quite a bit. It's been a beautiful dance,
Speaker 1: but let's get into it. Okay, Yeah, I guess this
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine paper was kind of says it all. Uh, physiologist,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. A psychologist an attorney named Robert Redmount said
Speaker 1: it has been suggested that the presumption is probably warranted
Speaker 1: to the effect that a random person give an accurate,
Speaker 1: original perception well in the ordinary course of events, reflect
Speaker 1: a memory competent to serve most of the purposes for
Speaker 1: which it is demanded. Which that's sort of a long
Speaker 1: way of saying memory is good enough, right. Yeah. Basically
Speaker 1: that that the average person walking around can serve as
Speaker 1: a reliable eye witness to a crime basically, And what
Speaker 1: what this nineteen fifty nine brief is basically saying is
Speaker 1: like this is this is the state of affairs in
Speaker 1: the American justice them that if you say you saw something,
Speaker 1: and you say you're pretty sure that what you saw,
Speaker 1: what you're saying, or what you think you saw is accurate,
Speaker 1: the court system can rely on you enough to convict somebody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but almost to the point where it's like, can we
Speaker 1: all just get on the same page here and agree
Speaker 1: that we'll just believe someone when they say they're they're
Speaker 1: really sure. Yeah, I mean it's smacks of that too,
Speaker 1: for sure. It definitely does the like I guess the
Speaker 1: guy was just trying to shore up any opposition to it,
Speaker 1: and I mean that was um but long before that,
Speaker 1: there were chinks in the armor of eyewitness testimony and
Speaker 1: just how reliable it was. Um So, I mean people
Speaker 1: have been using eyewitness testimony for basically ever. It's probably
Speaker 1: the oldest type of testimony or that there is in
Speaker 1: any kind of court or proceedings or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But starting in the early twentieth century, it as psychology
Speaker 1: kind of developed One of the first things that psychology
Speaker 1: took on was the reliability of memory and eye witness testimony,
Speaker 1: and one of the first people to take it on
Speaker 1: was a psychologist named Hugo Munsterberg. I got the um
Speaker 1: lau correct. Thanks man. He wrote a book called On
Speaker 1: the Witness stand In and he was he's known still
Speaker 1: today as the father of applied psychology. He was a
Speaker 1: psychologist who said, hey, he was how psychology can help
Speaker 1: you in your day to day life, especially for day
Speaker 1: to day life, is that you're being convicted of a
Speaker 1: crime based on eyewitness testimony and um. He basically showed
Speaker 1: through a lot of experiments and exercises when he was
Speaker 1: a lecturer at Harvard that memory was definitely not um Essentially,
Speaker 1: just like a film strip or a videotape or for
Speaker 1: today's kids in MP four file, you know that that
Speaker 1: we we don't just sit there and record the events
Speaker 1: going on around us in the world at all times
Speaker 1: and can go back and replay those events in our
Speaker 1: lives and it's an accurate rendering of what we experience.
Speaker 1: That's just not the case. Well, yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: uh with with students where they knew that they were
Speaker 1: doing memory tests and quizzes, and they knew that they
Speaker 1: were there to do that and had to focus on
Speaker 1: this stuff and uh, you really need to concentrate and
Speaker 1: remember what I'm about to show you, maybe have a
Speaker 1: sandwich beforehand. Yeah, And they were still inaccurate and really
Speaker 1: demonstrated what we all now know is the fact that
Speaker 1: human memory is very fallible. Like, forget about just happening
Speaker 1: down the street. You got a million things on your mind.
Speaker 1: You're right in the middle of texting someone and you
Speaker 1: look up and you see a crime happen like that
Speaker 1: has Uh. After reading this stuff, it seems like very
Speaker 1: little probability of you getting that stuff right right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw somewhere that smartphones in general are Um, they're
Speaker 1: good that you know, they can help capture video of
Speaker 1: a crime or a photo of a crime. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, they really make a lot of witnesses
Speaker 1: unreliable because everyone is so distracted by their smartphones that
Speaker 1: they don't really see what's going on or don't you know,
Speaker 1: they might have otherwise been a really good witness, but
Speaker 1: they were kind of glued to their phone at the time.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can that's true without even uh, I
Speaker 1: mean that's true about everything when it comes to smartphones.
Speaker 1: I wasn't paying attention. I was looking at the phone
Speaker 1: or the people that. You know, if I can complain
Speaker 1: about concerts again for a moment, go ahead, man. The
Speaker 1: people that videotape entire songs are usually looking at it
Speaker 1: through their phone, and that's the worst possible way to
Speaker 1: experience alive musical moment. It really is, especially when you
Speaker 1: consider that they will probably never go back and watch
Speaker 1: that video. You know, justin my buddy, uh, my tall
Speaker 1: British friend, he he yells from behind them so you
Speaker 1: can hear it on the video. You're never gonna watch
Speaker 1: it as loud as he can, which is great. He's
Speaker 1: probably right like eight percent of the time, I would say,
Speaker 1: But I would like to see the next day where
Speaker 1: some of those people watch it and they hear justin
Speaker 1: in the background, Sam, You're never going to watch it.
Speaker 1: They're probably like, what is that guy talking about? Or
Speaker 1: he's like the person watching is like, I showed that
Speaker 1: guy right, so um Hugo Munsterberg. He wrote this thing
Speaker 1: on the witness stand basically saying we should not just
Speaker 1: you know, take everyone's word for it. When an eyewitness
Speaker 1: comes forward in a criminal proceeding like there's problems with memory,
Speaker 1: and I've just demonstrated it. But his writings were largely
Speaker 1: overlooked because during World War One he was from Germany,
Speaker 1: but he became a German American. Um he wandered around
Speaker 1: vocally supporting Germany during the First World War, which is
Speaker 1: not something you want to do back then. It's not
Speaker 1: a good way to get your book out there. No,
Speaker 1: so he was he was basically just ignored for many,
Speaker 1: many years, even though he was one of the first
Speaker 1: psychologists to take up this mantle. And it wasn't until
Speaker 1: about the mid seventies that psychology again took this up.
Speaker 1: And there were two psychologists in particular, a guy named
Speaker 1: Robert buck Out who basically was was the first to
Speaker 1: be like memory is not a videotape is one way
Speaker 1: to put his research. And then another um psychologists a
Speaker 1: very famous psychologist named Elizabeth Loftus in the later seventies
Speaker 1: a few years after buck Out, Um was really the
Speaker 1: one whose work kind of captured the popular imagination and
Speaker 1: made us all realize that we're just total frauds when
Speaker 1: we're recalling a memory. Well, yeah, and with the advent
Speaker 1: of DNA evidence, and when you know, all it took
Speaker 1: was a building up of cases being overturned because of
Speaker 1: DNA evidence where eyewitness testimony that was positive was directly overturned.
Speaker 1: You get enough of those mounting up, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the United States has a p problem
Speaker 1: on their hands and they have to say, well, maybe
Speaker 1: we really need to look into this whole thing about
Speaker 1: memory and I witness testimony not being super reliable. Right,
Speaker 1: let's take the next thirty years to mull it over. Basically, sure, so, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the the Innocence Project in particular. There have
Speaker 1: been people working to exonerate people based on faulty evidence,
Speaker 1: which really got a punch in the arm or shot
Speaker 1: in the arm after DNA evidence, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: But the Innocence Project in particular, um was started in
Speaker 1: and they've got like I think three hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: five exonerations under their belt, one for each day of
Speaker 1: the year, exactly, do it on the on the daily.
Speaker 1: We did a we did a show on that too.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you remembering in we talked to Paula is
Speaker 1: On That's right, So I can tell by that sigh,
Speaker 1: I think you're ready for a message break, you want
Speaker 1: to take one. Yeah, I'm just gonna google some some
Speaker 1: Polosan trying to remember who she was. We'll be back
Speaker 1: right after this. Alright, So, Chuck, we've been talking a
Speaker 1: lot of smack about the human memory. Let's back it
Speaker 1: up with some some facts and figures and stuffy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there have been, like you said, the past
Speaker 1: thirty years is when the United States started doing I
Speaker 1: just said United He started doing more and more studies
Speaker 1: on on the human memory and how accurate it is,
Speaker 1: and it is really exposed the flaws and biases, um,
Speaker 1: and it's really not even I mean, it is memory,
Speaker 1: but it's also perception and what we perceive is going on,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of like we don't all
Speaker 1: agree on what perception even means, and there are a
Speaker 1: lot of different theories about how visual perception works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like a two fold issue with memory. There's the
Speaker 1: formation of memory and then there's the recall. Right, so
Speaker 1: with the formation of memory, it's like, yeah, if you
Speaker 1: can't agree on what constitutes reality, you know, it makes
Speaker 1: it really tough to perceive reality and like a standard, uniform,
Speaker 1: objective way. But you can form a wrong memory that's
Speaker 1: like that should stop everyone cold in their tracks, right exactly.
Speaker 1: And there's the the this is there's basically two ways
Speaker 1: of looking at um at at how we perceive reality.
Speaker 1: And it is either reality exists in some way that
Speaker 1: we don't perceive and we kind of paint this picture
Speaker 1: that we think of as reality but that's not actually
Speaker 1: really reality, or reality is reality but we just kind
Speaker 1: of um perceive it piecemeal um in in order to
Speaker 1: save energy, save time, save storage space, whatever. But the
Speaker 1: upshot of both of these, and I really want to
Speaker 1: do in an entire episode on the nature of reality someday, okay,
Speaker 1: but the upshot of these theories on what reality isn't
Speaker 1: how we perceive them is that we basically take what
Speaker 1: we need from the environment, from whatever scene we're observing, whatever,
Speaker 1: and then we kind of fill in the blanks to
Speaker 1: create this complete picture. And in doing so, if if
Speaker 1: we're just kind of walking through a meadow or something
Speaker 1: like that, enjoying the day, that doesn't really matter, right.
Speaker 1: We can kind of recall what that butterfly that flew
Speaker 1: by looked like, what its colors were, what the trees
Speaker 1: looked like, but if we really dig in, did we
Speaker 1: actually look at the trees that kind of provided the
Speaker 1: backdrop of the scene or is it just kind of,
Speaker 1: uh a conception of what trees in general look like
Speaker 1: in that situation. Um, that our minds filled in. And
Speaker 1: when people started like thinking about this stuff, not just psychologist,
Speaker 1: but neurologists, philosophers, all these a lot of different people
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, you know, how we go through
Speaker 1: the life and reality and perceive the world. Um, it
Speaker 1: became really apparent that we do a lot of shorthand
Speaker 1: construction as we're kind of moving through life, and when
Speaker 1: we're walking through a meadow, not that important. When we're
Speaker 1: convicting a person of um, robbery and murder, then it
Speaker 1: does become important. And it is an issue that we
Speaker 1: just kind of fill in the blanks to create a
Speaker 1: whole picture that didn't necessarily happen. Yeah. That I don't
Speaker 1: know if anyone listening has ever seen the hollow mask illusion. Um.
Speaker 1: That has to do with gestalt theory basically that our
Speaker 1: perceptions are based on perceptual hypotheses. So like that's us
Speaker 1: making these educated guests educated. Yeah, educated guests is about Um,
Speaker 1: the sensory information that our eyeballs in our ear holes.
Speaker 1: And we should point out that I witness testimony can
Speaker 1: mean audio like thing you overheard as well. UM, I
Speaker 1: don't know how well other senses of performed in court.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that, like, I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: did you smell a chemical smell or something like that? That
Speaker 1: That would be one, but I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: what else you would like. Did you did you feel
Speaker 1: the murderer's touch taste? I don't know, did you lick
Speaker 1: the guy who was robbing the gas station? But if
Speaker 1: you look at the the great example of gestalt theory
Speaker 1: and that UM perceptual hypotheses is the hollow mass. So
Speaker 1: if you go online, there's one UM very famous one
Speaker 1: of Albert Einstein, and it's basically, someone will show you,
Speaker 1: UM what looks like UM, a mask of Albert Einstein's face,
Speaker 1: and then they start to turn it around, and about
Speaker 1: halfway through you realize that you were looking at the
Speaker 1: inside of that mask and not the outside of that mask.
Speaker 1: And it's painted, of course, but it's still uh concave,
Speaker 1: so it shouldn't look convex, but it yet it does.
Speaker 1: And it's a mine trick and it's really freaky. It is,
Speaker 1: but it also just kind of goes to show that
Speaker 1: our brains leap to conclusions basically. Yeah. Absolutely. Another thing
Speaker 1: is that the whole Darwinnian approach is basically, if you're
Speaker 1: in a in a dangerous situation, um, your brain is
Speaker 1: going to quickly decide what's most important to pay attention
Speaker 1: to in that scene. UM, And that that will of
Speaker 1: course skew reality depending on what's going on. Plus also
Speaker 1: so so so that's point one. Our brains fill in
Speaker 1: the blanks probably more than we realize to create our
Speaker 1: idea of reality and memory. Right, yes, and even when
Speaker 1: we're actually actively taking in information the them just how good,
Speaker 1: say like our eyesight is or our hearing is or exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's one thing that that defense attorneys, in particular
Speaker 1: will Um will try to attack is things like that,
Speaker 1: like you know, do you wear glasses or contacts? Have
Speaker 1: you ever had lay sick? Was it raining out? Was
Speaker 1: at nighttime? You know how far away were you? Street
Speaker 1: light was under repair? We have records exactly in the
Speaker 1: whole courtroom goes, yeah, it's the big moment, and Perry
Speaker 1: Mason shoots a duck. Perry Mason farts in court. I
Speaker 1: didn't say that. I said he shoots a duck, all right.
Speaker 1: It was his his thing at least at first and
Speaker 1: the early episodes, and then the producers were like, this
Speaker 1: didn't go a name where we're gonna drop this as
Speaker 1: this thing your honor? I object, right, that's right. That
Speaker 1: was from episode three. Oh boy. Um, so they're there
Speaker 1: has to be a standard here though, Um when it
Speaker 1: comes to court and like how well people see? I
Speaker 1: mean it can't. I mean it is case by case
Speaker 1: and that every case is its own unique thing in court,
Speaker 1: but there has to be some sort of standard as
Speaker 1: far as like how well does somebody with vision see?
Speaker 1: For instance, And there's a guy named Jeffrey Loftus, a
Speaker 1: researcher from UH. I believe is that you dub dub,
Speaker 1: and he kind of developed this formula on vision over distance,
Speaker 1: which basically says, at ten feet you might not be
Speaker 1: able to see eyelashes on a person's face. It's two
Speaker 1: hundred feet you may not be able to see eyes,
Speaker 1: and at five feet you could see a person's head,
Speaker 1: but it's just a big blur. So like this could
Speaker 1: be uh, and is this the standard that they use
Speaker 1: in court. I think he's trying to to make it
Speaker 1: a standard, and I'm sure he gets called on as
Speaker 1: a professional witness and says all this, But I don't
Speaker 1: believe it's it's an actual um, like it's been judged
Speaker 1: to be like the standards, like they don't without a
Speaker 1: chart in court. No, but I think if you really
Speaker 1: wanted to get the point across, you could do worse
Speaker 1: than hiring Jeoffrey Loftus. Yeah, and I imagine don't they
Speaker 1: also do uh did they test these people? Um? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think if you have a really good
Speaker 1: defense attorney, you could probably ask that a witness, if
Speaker 1: not go to an optometrist, at least have their um,
Speaker 1: their optometrist records subpoenaed. Or in the dramatic TV or
Speaker 1: film version, you see the your honor, if I may
Speaker 1: step to the rear of the courtroom, and you do
Speaker 1: that move and then you know, you hold up two
Speaker 1: fingers and you say how many fingers am I holding up?
Speaker 1: And then what in the Mr Brady cross is a
Speaker 1: briefcase and the guy with the nick brace on turns
Speaker 1: his head. What a chump that guy was? It was
Speaker 1: not committed, No, that's so great that you said that,
Speaker 1: because it was between that or a Perry Mason joke
Speaker 1: for me if I was going to swoop in. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know much Perry Mason. Did he fart in court? No,
Speaker 1: I just totally made that up. I don't know anything
Speaker 1: about him either. It is no, it was Raymond Burr.
Speaker 1: He was ironsides, he was both buddy. But I mean,
Speaker 1: if there was ever somebody that looked like he'd fart
Speaker 1: in court, it's Raymond Burr. You know, even like put together,
Speaker 1: um clean shaven Raymond Burr from Perry Mason. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: does look Cassie, doesn't he a little bit? So Okay,
Speaker 1: moving on, Chuck. There's also the problem um that researchers
Speaker 1: have found that we humans have a finite amount of attention, right,
Speaker 1: and if there's a bunch of stuff going on at once,
Speaker 1: or we have to pay attention to multiple things in
Speaker 1: quick succession, it's been found that there are a lot
Speaker 1: of um problems with that that that we don't really
Speaker 1: do real well with pace stuff coming at us, especially
Speaker 1: when we're stressed out or in a high stress situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like this stuff is really neat there's something called
Speaker 1: attentional blink, um, not intentional attentional And that's when, um, like,
Speaker 1: when you're just looking around at things anywhere you are,
Speaker 1: it feels like one big fluid thing where you're taking
Speaker 1: in everything, but that's not really happening. When you you know,
Speaker 1: if I'm looking at this coffee cup and then I
Speaker 1: look up at your face, there's something called attentional blink,
Speaker 1: which is a little blip less than a second where
Speaker 1: there is in um, I guess, just an interruption and input. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and your attention. Yeah, you know, you're you're shifting from
Speaker 1: one thing to the other, and it's not a fluid motion.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a hiccup. But you don't notice this, No,
Speaker 1: you don't. It all blends seamlessly because your brain is
Speaker 1: filling in these little gaps. But during that period, if
Speaker 1: something really vital happened, and that'say half of a second span,
Speaker 1: you might not notice it. And because we've already seen
Speaker 1: that our brains tend to fill in information to create
Speaker 1: a smooth picture of reality. That could be problematic for
Speaker 1: the person who you're saying you saw do something or
Speaker 1: didn't see the other. Thing about attentional blink too, is
Speaker 1: that it really kind of points out that if, um,
Speaker 1: if we are really focused on one thing, we might
Speaker 1: miss another, that our attention is is very selective. Basically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: um yeah, you know, if you're like into your smartphone,
Speaker 1: you're not paying attention to stuff going on around you. Um,
Speaker 1: even if like you're driving, like if you're driven up
Speaker 1: next to somebody and they're driving like thirty miles an
Speaker 1: hour under the speed limit, which supposedly is safe, but
Speaker 1: you know, they're on their phone and you honk at
Speaker 1: them and like flip them off and like throw a
Speaker 1: rock at their windshield that kind of thing, and they
Speaker 1: don't even look up. They don't there, No, they have
Speaker 1: no idea. That's kind of the same thing. But there's
Speaker 1: this really amazing video that I hadn't heard of. But
Speaker 1: these two magicians I know, Jared and John who are
Speaker 1: I hope are working on a podcast um about this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Um, they pointed it out. Did you
Speaker 1: go see that video that was linked in this article,
Speaker 1: which one the one that was created by Daniel Simmons
Speaker 1: and Christopher shabrists or Chebris where it's the ball passing video. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I don't want to give anything else out about
Speaker 1: it to everybody. Just go look up Daniel Simmons ball
Speaker 1: passing video and prepared to be amazed. But it really
Speaker 1: drives home like what the them, Just how focused we
Speaker 1: can become at the expense of other information. That's right, Um,
Speaker 1: what else? Chuck? Uh? Well, there's something called the psychological
Speaker 1: refractory period with the prp UM and that's when if
Speaker 1: two things, if two cognitive tasks, and this can include
Speaker 1: you know, you seeing things, uh, if they arrive really
Speaker 1: closely together, there's a bit of a lag time between
Speaker 1: when we process these two things, that first thing and
Speaker 1: then that second thing. So if these things are coming
Speaker 1: in quick succession, or they are very intense, or there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different stimuli, there is a little bottleneck,
Speaker 1: a processing bottle neck that can occur, and especially in
Speaker 1: a in a like a a scary experience like if
Speaker 1: someone sticks a gun in your face or something. The
Speaker 1: you know, the big example that you always hear is
Speaker 1: like what was the weapon? Was it a gun or
Speaker 1: a knife? And it's been kind of shown time again.
Speaker 1: If you're if you are, if someone comes and sticks
Speaker 1: a gun in your face, you're going to have your
Speaker 1: attention on the gun and more so than the face.
Speaker 1: M So you might not be able to recall what
Speaker 1: your perpetrator look like. Uh. You may have more information
Speaker 1: about the gun, which is a little helpful, but not
Speaker 1: as much as their face. Yeah. You know, I think
Speaker 1: I told you before that time that Umi got mugged. Um,
Speaker 1: she was not focused on the gun and did not
Speaker 1: know that the guy had had a gun on her
Speaker 1: and her friends. Um, when she was asked if there
Speaker 1: was a gun at the cops station, she's like, I
Speaker 1: actually don't know, Like she didn't process the gun and
Speaker 1: her friends were like, yeah, there was a gun. The
Speaker 1: guy had a gun, Um, which is I hadn't realized.
Speaker 1: Like I get that, you know, not processing something because
Speaker 1: of a stressful situation, but it's it's funny, that's like
Speaker 1: the opposite apparently of how it usually is. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think you can sort of train yourself. I mean,
Speaker 1: hopefully this kind of thing doesn't happen over and over again,
Speaker 1: and like to Umi or anyone else, but like I've
Speaker 1: sort of told myself, like, if anything ever happens, try
Speaker 1: and keep your wits about you and taking as much
Speaker 1: detail as you can and and like repeat it in
Speaker 1: your brain over and over. That's just good advice for
Speaker 1: like daily living. Sure, that's mindful in this, I think yeah,
Speaker 1: I told you before. I think it was the police
Speaker 1: lineups one that she was able to pick the guy
Speaker 1: out in the lineup, So maybe she was focused on
Speaker 1: the guy's face and was missing the gun rather than
Speaker 1: the opposite exactly, she was that a finger in your pocket, right,
Speaker 1: don't say the second part, So I'm not going to.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna leave it up to the listeners, dirty
Speaker 1: dirty listeners minds. So, um, there's also another one for
Speaker 1: forming memories that has kind of confounded researchers for a while. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's called the own race bias or cross race effect. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We talked about this in police lineups, didn't we? I
Speaker 1: feel like we did, But I think it's worth going
Speaker 1: over one more time. So it basically is it says
Speaker 1: that if you are a witness, and you witness a
Speaker 1: crime that's that's carried out by somebody from another race
Speaker 1: or ethnic group other than yours, you're going to have
Speaker 1: a harder time recognizing that person, um than you will
Speaker 1: would if they were a member of your own race
Speaker 1: or ethnic group. And so the the it seems easy peasy, well,
Speaker 1: that you're just a racist and every everybody of another
Speaker 1: race looks alike to you. That's not the case. They
Speaker 1: found that people who score UM low on questionnaires about
Speaker 1: being prejudiced um also are subject to the cross race effect,
Speaker 1: and that it's across the board for everybody of any race.
Speaker 1: They're all equally subjected or they're equally um, what's the
Speaker 1: word victims of it? I guess yeah, miss uh, it's
Speaker 1: in there somewhere misidentified. Now, they're equally susceptible. Susceptible. We
Speaker 1: got there, we got there, chuck. Yeah, that's true. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that's really interesting, Like you could you could test
Speaker 1: out as the least prejudice person on the planet and
Speaker 1: still misidentify someone um from another race. Yeah. And they
Speaker 1: think that different races have different defining characteristics and that you,
Speaker 1: as a child and probably well into adulthood, are kind
Speaker 1: of trained to pick out the identifying characteristics of people
Speaker 1: of your own race UM, which doesn't necessarily apply to
Speaker 1: people of other races. And so people really are bad
Speaker 1: at distinguishing different members of different races, not because they're
Speaker 1: racist and everybody looks alike, but because they're looking for
Speaker 1: the wrong cues distinguishing cues. Yeah, and you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: people can look like other people. It's uh. In the
Speaker 1: famous cases section, I'm gonna go ahead and pick one
Speaker 1: out of there, very famous case of Ronald Cotton. Uh
Speaker 1: In he was identified as a perpetrator of a rape
Speaker 1: sentenced to life in prison. And uh, I went back
Speaker 1: and I looked at the person who eventually was found
Speaker 1: out to be the the he was exonerated Cotton was,
Speaker 1: but the real guy, Bobby Pool that saw side by
Speaker 1: side images. These guys look a lot alike. They look
Speaker 1: at a lot out of like, like their noses are different,
Speaker 1: but if you block out their nose, they're the lower
Speaker 1: half of their face and their eyes and forehead are
Speaker 1: really really similar. And I think that's just a case
Speaker 1: of really bad luck. It was really bad luck. It
Speaker 1: ultimately pan out to be really good luck. But I mean,
Speaker 1: the the victim, the eyewitness was the victim a woman
Speaker 1: named um Jennifer Thompson. And during the rape she did
Speaker 1: she took your advice and like, kept her wits about
Speaker 1: her as much as possible and took the opportunity to
Speaker 1: study the guy's face. But because Pool and Cotton looked
Speaker 1: so much alike, Um, she there was, there was. It
Speaker 1: was a case of mistaken identity of a witness who
Speaker 1: actually is we'll see. Was kind of unsure at first,
Speaker 1: but became more and more confident, which is a big problem. Um.
Speaker 1: But when Cotton was exonerated, Um, Jennifer Thompson and Ronald
Speaker 1: Cotton went on to write a book about the whole
Speaker 1: thing together and their friends. They got to be friends
Speaker 1: because she experienced a tremendous amount of guilt for identifying
Speaker 1: this man and him serving time for something he didn't do.
Speaker 1: And yeah, they wrote a book together, which is now.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh man, that's tell me that's going
Speaker 1: to be a movie soon. And as of like a
Speaker 1: couple of months ago, it was. It was optioned O
Speaker 1: your film. Nice. It's called the books called Picking Cotton.
Speaker 1: Oh my, uh yeah, I know, um Picking Cotton colon
Speaker 1: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption Semi colon. Oh god.
Speaker 1: So yeah. The good luck he had, though, was that
Speaker 1: Bobby Pool and Ronald Cotton were in the same jail
Speaker 1: together and they were frequently mistaken for one another. That's
Speaker 1: how much they really looked alike, and I guess um
Speaker 1: Bobby pool um blab to another inmate that he was
Speaker 1: the one who had really raped Jennifer Thompson and that
Speaker 1: Cotton was in there, uh wrongfully, and that word got
Speaker 1: around and then finally, thanks to DNA evidence, Ronald Cotton
Speaker 1: was was excluded from the crime. Yeah, nice sending to
Speaker 1: that story, it is, that's the only one in the
Speaker 1: list that does have a nice ending there, that's true. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: here's the other thing with eyewitness testimony or should we
Speaker 1: take a break to all right, let's take a break
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you about that other thing right after this.
Speaker 1: So here's the other thing about eyewitness testimony is that, uh,
Speaker 1: like you have to do this a bunch of times.
Speaker 1: It's not like you identify someone in a police lineup
Speaker 1: and then you're in court the next day. You identify
Speaker 1: someone in a lineup, and then you're gonna get grilled
Speaker 1: by cops after that, and then you're gonna get talked
Speaker 1: to you by your attorney beforehand, and you're gonna be
Speaker 1: recalling this and describing this scene and this who you
Speaker 1: think is a perpetrator a lot of times. And every
Speaker 1: time this happens, Um something can go wrong with your
Speaker 1: recall basically, yeah, yeah, So, I mean, like we've talked
Speaker 1: about this so many times, but every time you recall
Speaker 1: a memory, you are adding to it. You're um, you're
Speaker 1: adding more information to it, right, and that information can
Speaker 1: be incorrect or flawed. And if we, if our brains
Speaker 1: kind of strive to create as complete a picture as possible,
Speaker 1: if the memory originally is incomplete, the more we recall it,
Speaker 1: the more we're gonna round it out to create this
Speaker 1: this this picture. And since part of the process, like
Speaker 1: you're saying, of going through the criminal justice system as
Speaker 1: an eyewitnesses to recall over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: by definition, that process um leads to contaminated evidence, in
Speaker 1: this case, the evidence of eyewitnesses um testimony. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, not to mention when cops get in there
Speaker 1: and they ask leading questions a lot of times, and
Speaker 1: even this one example is really great, even swapping out
Speaker 1: one word that you might not think matters if if
Speaker 1: you hear the questions did you see the broken headlight?
Speaker 1: As opposed to did you see a broken headlight? That
Speaker 1: takes on a whole different meaning because in that first one,
Speaker 1: the cop is basically saying there was a broken headlight
Speaker 1: and did you see it not? Was there one? Yep?
Speaker 1: That's called the misinformation effect, and it can be as
Speaker 1: innocuous as that it can be purposeful, like if a
Speaker 1: cop believes that the suspect is the one UM. Cops
Speaker 1: have been known to ask leading questions, and when you
Speaker 1: have an eye witness who's kind of so so on something,
Speaker 1: after a few leading questions and they're answering, they can
Speaker 1: become more and more confident in their um in their
Speaker 1: their memory, their recall of the event. And then that
Speaker 1: coupled with the fact that well, this is the right person, obviously,
Speaker 1: because the cops wouldn't be prosecuting UM or arresting somebody
Speaker 1: if it wasn't the right person. That just gives the
Speaker 1: whole thing even more confidence. And studies have found over time,
Speaker 1: the more confidence um or the the longer and more
Speaker 1: often a memory is recalled, the more confidence grows associated
Speaker 1: with it. Right, right, So there's this, there's like a
Speaker 1: um a negative correlation over time between confidence and accuracy
Speaker 1: of a of a memory over time. That's a big
Speaker 1: distinction that we'll get into later. But the longer it
Speaker 1: goes on, so say like from the time of crime
Speaker 1: occurs to the time the court date comes or the
Speaker 1: trial starts could be a year, and you, the eyewitness,
Speaker 1: might have had to recall this for half a dozen
Speaker 1: people at least, not to mention all the friends and
Speaker 1: family that you've shared the story with. And so what
Speaker 1: a lot of people say is by the time maybe
Speaker 1: the second, third, fourth time you're recalling this, you're not
Speaker 1: recalling your original memory any longer. You're recalling the story
Speaker 1: that was helped to be fabricated by the cops and
Speaker 1: the prosecutors and in some part by yourself. Just from
Speaker 1: telling this. You're recalling the story. You're not recalling the
Speaker 1: actual memory. And that's a real problem because that's how
Speaker 1: people get um wrongly convicted by eyewitnesses who go into
Speaker 1: court and say, I'm a certain that that was the
Speaker 1: person that I saw commit that crime. Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: thing I mean, if you just think about in your
Speaker 1: own lives, uh not, I mean, forget crimes and forget courtrooms, Like,
Speaker 1: just think about stories that you like, great stories from
Speaker 1: your life that you've told a bunch of different times
Speaker 1: about this one time when like these become so burned
Speaker 1: in your brain as these great stories that like I'm
Speaker 1: always curious too, Like I wish I had video of
Speaker 1: these stories as they happened. Does It'll be kind of
Speaker 1: fun to go back and see this funny story about
Speaker 1: when like my friend and I got shaken down by
Speaker 1: the Texas Highway Patrol. Like I tell the story all
Speaker 1: the time, but it turns out, wonder what really happened
Speaker 1: that day though, right like by the by the end
Speaker 1: of the store, by the time the story is told,
Speaker 1: it's like Chuck Norris himself as Walker Texas Rangers doing
Speaker 1: the search, or or my ghost story in Athens, Like
Speaker 1: to me, I tell that story exactly as it happened,
Speaker 1: but who knows. Well, yeah, it's kind of like you're
Speaker 1: playing a game of telephone with yourself over time, you know,
Speaker 1: like stuff just gets kind of muddled and again, normally
Speaker 1: this doesn't matter, you know, unless you happen to be
Speaker 1: telling a bit of a fish tale to somebody who
Speaker 1: can't stand fish tales and and calls you out on it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really matter, right, Like it does matter in
Speaker 1: a court of law, and the fact that the courts
Speaker 1: have continued to pretend like this this isn't an actual
Speaker 1: implication of the human memory. The human memory is actually
Speaker 1: infallible and just continued on with eyewitness testimony has been
Speaker 1: a problem in the past. I'm not sure if we've
Speaker 1: gotten that across or not. And consider this too, that juries,
Speaker 1: I mean, we talked about that confidence building over time.
Speaker 1: By the time you get to that jury and you
Speaker 1: are super confident, that's gonna have a huge impact. Juries
Speaker 1: are going to be far more influenced by a confident
Speaker 1: witness than someone's like, Hey, I'm pretty sure, but you know,
Speaker 1: if I'm really being honest, because I'm on the witness stand,
Speaker 1: I can't be sure. Yeah, that is a rare eye
Speaker 1: witness from what I can tell that that by the
Speaker 1: time the trial comes along, they have been so prepped
Speaker 1: and and um guided and have become so confident that,
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, it would be really rare
Speaker 1: to hear an eye witness be like I'm not so sure.
Speaker 1: Maybe they probably wouldn't make it to the wit in
Speaker 1: a stand because the prosecutor doesn't want somebody like that
Speaker 1: on the stand. So what you're gonna hear in court
Speaker 1: is yes, I'm absolutely sure, And you know, juries are
Speaker 1: just normal people. They're not doing the research on you know,
Speaker 1: the possible infallibility or the possible fallibility of eyewitness testimony.
Speaker 1: So it's up to the defense attorneys to kind of
Speaker 1: poke holes in this stuff, and so they will. But
Speaker 1: for a long time, this was really surprising to me.
Speaker 1: I had no idea um courts wouldn't allow expert testimony
Speaker 1: that that basically taught jurors how many problems there are
Speaker 1: with human memory, and that eyewitness testimony is not all
Speaker 1: it's cracked up to be, and that not only should
Speaker 1: you not be wowed by the confidence of somebody who
Speaker 1: comes into court a year after the crime is certain,
Speaker 1: you should probably discount that that testimony you all together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the reason that they weren't allowed is that they
Speaker 1: claimed that was common sense, Like everybody knows that our
Speaker 1: memories aren't great, and eyewitness testimony probably isn't great, Whereas
Speaker 1: it seems to me obvious that you would want to
Speaker 1: get an expert in there to at least explain this stuff,
Speaker 1: especially in like a capital case. Yeah, I mean, you
Speaker 1: can still make up your own mind, but at least
Speaker 1: know the facts and the science behind eyewitness identification, so
Speaker 1: you can like take that into consideration as a juror. Right,
Speaker 1: that's just not the case, that wasn't it. But then
Speaker 1: apparently they started um turning overturning convictions because the expert
Speaker 1: witness on eyewitness testimony UM was disallowed. And once that
Speaker 1: started happening, they started allowing them in the actual trials.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of like, if you have a defense
Speaker 1: attorney and you're you're, you know, being um tried for
Speaker 1: a really important cry that you could get some serious
Speaker 1: time for. Do you want that attorney to bring in
Speaker 1: an witness, an expert witness on eyewitness testimony? For sure? Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court themselves in nineteen seventy seven ruled seven
Speaker 1: to two, uh, that eyewitness testimony is constitutional. It does
Speaker 1: not violate the fourteenth Amendment, even if it's suggestive. But
Speaker 1: they said it was subject to five factors. That just depends.
Speaker 1: It's a case by case thing. But UM, the witness's
Speaker 1: degree of attention, So you have to determine that, um,
Speaker 1: the opportunity of the witness to view the criminal at
Speaker 1: the time of the crime. So I guess just literally
Speaker 1: physically were you able to see this happen right, or
Speaker 1: smell or here or lick the criminal? Um? The accuracy
Speaker 1: of the prior description of the criminal. That's a big
Speaker 1: one and that still holds up today. Yeah, like if
Speaker 1: if you told the cops initially that the guy had
Speaker 1: a mustache and you didn't have a mustache, you're going
Speaker 1: to hear about that from the defense during during the trial.
Speaker 1: And we'll get into that later on. But that that,
Speaker 1: you know, that sort of virgin description, is that the
Speaker 1: right word? I love it is the one that really
Speaker 1: should count sure, all right? And then what were the
Speaker 1: last two factors of the five um the level of
Speaker 1: certainty demonstrated at the confrontation. And by confrontation they mean
Speaker 1: that that's the thing that you always see on like
Speaker 1: courtroom dramas where the witness they say, you know, do
Speaker 1: you see the perpetrator here today? And the witness says, yes,
Speaker 1: that man there, and then they say, let the records
Speaker 1: show that the the witnesses pointing at the defendant. Then
Speaker 1: then Perry Mason farts, right. That's the that's the particular
Speaker 1: one that's under attack today because they're saying, like, how
Speaker 1: certain does that witness seem when they confront the defendant
Speaker 1: in court? And then the last one is the time
Speaker 1: between the crime and the lineup, like, you know, was
Speaker 1: it What if the witness saw the crime and then
Speaker 1: the cops don't catch the person for you know, three months?
Speaker 1: Is that too long? Like does the witness become unusable
Speaker 1: at that point? And those five those were the tests
Speaker 1: for constitutionality of an eye witnesses testimony. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: those are five pretty decent factors to consider. Yeah, except
Speaker 1: for the one, the one about the certainty demonstrated confrontation.
Speaker 1: And that's the big battle toy, because some people are like, look, man,
Speaker 1: if human memory is that fallible, maybe we should just
Speaker 1: get rid of eyewitness testimony altogether. Right, But now that
Speaker 1: I think is the approach, Like, hey, why don't we
Speaker 1: just treat it like anything that can be contaminated from uh,
Speaker 1: from like physical evidence, Like, why don't we just treat
Speaker 1: this like physical evidence and say, you know it was
Speaker 1: that again, that virgin identification is the one that counts,
Speaker 1: and everything after that is tainted. Yeah, And so everybody
Speaker 1: on this there's a there's kind of a battle over
Speaker 1: just how much confidence relates to um accuracy and memory. Right,
Speaker 1: but both sides say everything after that first recall, whether
Speaker 1: it's telling the cop on the scene of the crime,
Speaker 1: what you saw or whether it's the lineup wherever it is.
Speaker 1: The first memory test is what it's called UM. The
Speaker 1: first time you do that, that is the only evidence
Speaker 1: that should be admissible, and everybody can talk about that evidence,
Speaker 1: and you can come to court and describe that evidence,
Speaker 1: but every other time you recall it after that, it
Speaker 1: should be considered contaminated evidence, just as much as you
Speaker 1: would consider um, somebody dropping a blood on a blood
Speaker 1: sample as contaminated, or smearing a fingerprint is contaminated. Same thing.
Speaker 1: That's the big, the big trux. Everybody says, disregard everything
Speaker 1: after that. Where they disagree, though, Chuck, is just how
Speaker 1: much during that first UM, that first memory test, how
Speaker 1: much confidence is correlated to accuracy? And some people say
Speaker 1: it's very highly correlated. Like one guy said that in
Speaker 1: I think fifteen different experiments, they found that the accuracy
Speaker 1: was accurate. Um confidence indicated in accuracy. And other people
Speaker 1: are like, that's flim flam. Don't listen to that guy.
Speaker 1: But that's the battle that's going on right now. But
Speaker 1: everybody agrees the whole courtroom, that's the man right there
Speaker 1: that that shouldn't hold any water whatsoever. The problem is
Speaker 1: that holds the most water, because that's what's done in
Speaker 1: front of a jury. These are human beings. You know,
Speaker 1: someone might carry that kind of confidence, uh in every
Speaker 1: area of their life, whereas someone else might be very
Speaker 1: unsure about everything in their life, and that wouldn't be
Speaker 1: a time for them to be like, you know, someone
Speaker 1: who's not very confident, it's probably gonna have a hard
Speaker 1: time being super confident about something this important, sure, you know,
Speaker 1: but you also could imagine that that person would maybe
Speaker 1: be more easily coached than than somebody who does have
Speaker 1: a lot of self confidence. Yeah, and that the phrase
Speaker 1: this is that's what it says. The T shirts say,
Speaker 1: coach him up. So you want to go over any
Speaker 1: of these other ones, I guess we can. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is all sort of innocence projects stuff. Um, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's certainly been plenty of examples over the years. I
Speaker 1: think of the three and well, how many you said,
Speaker 1: there's three fifty two? Now three that I saw three
Speaker 1: sixty five convictions at this time. Let's just say it
Speaker 1: was three forty nine that they had overturned. Seventy of
Speaker 1: them were based on the testimony of an eyewitness and
Speaker 1: this is just death row, like forget muggings. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's all just death row or not,
Speaker 1: but that's it's some of these two were not just
Speaker 1: single witnesses, multiple eyewitnesses, which if there's one thing that
Speaker 1: basically says there was a copper prosecutor who coached everybody
Speaker 1: to basically share the same story, that's a it's a
Speaker 1: overturned conviction with multiple eye witnesses that DNA evidence shows
Speaker 1: we're all incorrect. Yeah, this one right here was especially maddening.
Speaker 1: Jerome White in ninety nine was convicted of rape and
Speaker 1: robbery and he was exonerated twelve years later. But the
Speaker 1: real guy who did the crime was in the actual
Speaker 1: same lineup where White was identified. So that one's especially
Speaker 1: tough bill to swallow. The one that gets me. Um,
Speaker 1: do you remember Troy Davis. Like back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eleven, Georgia Um executed Troy Davis for the murder
Speaker 1: of a cop, Mark McPhail um, Right, yeah, Don in Savannah,
Speaker 1: and there was no physical evidence and no weapon, nothing
Speaker 1: tied Troy Davis to the crime except for nine eye witnesses,
Speaker 1: seven of which recanted their testimony, and um, there was
Speaker 1: a big deal because a lot of people are like,
Speaker 1: it looks like Georgia's going to execute an innocent man.
Speaker 1: We need to get this commuted to a life sentence
Speaker 1: so we can try to figure this out. And there
Speaker 1: was a petition that went around I remember signing it.
Speaker 1: There was six sixty thousand signatures on this petition, and
Speaker 1: it still didn't get his sentence commuted, and Georgia executed
Speaker 1: what was almost certainly an innocent man for the murder
Speaker 1: of Mark McPhail. Yeah, that was tough, which also means
Speaker 1: that the murderer of Mark McPhail is still out there somewhere. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's not mentioned enough in these cases. It's
Speaker 1: like it's obviously we should think about the victim, then
Speaker 1: the second victim, which is a person falsely accused, and
Speaker 1: then there's also a murderer out there. Yep. Maybe, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a That's another episode I want to do,
Speaker 1: is is you know times when the the um when
Speaker 1: almost certainly innocent people were executed. Okay, there'll be a
Speaker 1: fun one. That's a good title for the You gotta
Speaker 1: put the m in there too. Yeah. Uh, well, that's
Speaker 1: it for eyewitness testimony unless you have something else. I
Speaker 1: got nothing else. Well, Chuck says nothing else. I got
Speaker 1: nothing else. So that means everybody, it's time for a
Speaker 1: listener mail. This is a very sweet email. Hey guys.
Speaker 1: On Father's Day in two thousand fifteen, our son Aaron
Speaker 1: died from cancer at the age of forty. One of
Speaker 1: his last wishes was for his beloved Australian shepherd dog
Speaker 1: Scully to live on a family farm with some wonderful
Speaker 1: friends he knew from Pennsylvania, U scullies with was with
Speaker 1: us in southern California at the time, so I began
Speaker 1: looking at options to send her back, and it became
Speaker 1: obvious at driving Scully to Gettysburg was the only true
Speaker 1: way to say goodbye and carry out Aaron's wish. I
Speaker 1: announced that the family I was taking her back, and
Speaker 1: our daughter, who would come home to be by a
Speaker 1: side while he was in auspice, quickly said she wanted
Speaker 1: to come with me. Without any further delay, the three
Speaker 1: of us took off across the country. After a few
Speaker 1: hours of listening to the radio, our daughter Brandy said,
Speaker 1: do you want to listen to some podcasts? Sure, was
Speaker 1: my response. What's a podcast? So she plugged in her
Speaker 1: phone and started an episode of Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: And from that moment on, for the next four days,
Speaker 1: we listened to an endless stream of you guys. I
Speaker 1: want to thank you for helping us cope with the
Speaker 1: pain and heartache we were dealing with your banter and fun.
Speaker 1: We're very therapeutic as my daughter and I traveled across
Speaker 1: country with our thoughts and Scully. Being with my daughter
Speaker 1: and sharing all this time together with you by your
Speaker 1: sides was one of the best experiences of my life.
Speaker 1: Given the circumstances, I now listen to you guys often,
Speaker 1: and my daughter even bought me a Jerry quote blank
Speaker 1: T shirt as a reminder of our time together. And
Speaker 1: that is from Doug and Brandy Bell. Thanks a lot, Doug,
Speaker 1: and thanks a lot, Brandy. I like the cut of
Speaker 1: your jib for suggesting stuff you should Know. Yeah, terrible circumstance,
Speaker 1: but I'm glad Scully's on that farm in Pennsylvania. Thanks Doug,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Brandy and uh On behalf of all of
Speaker 1: us our deepest condolences. We're glad that we could have
Speaker 1: some small part in making it a little better for
Speaker 1: you absolutely If you want to get in touch with us,
Speaker 1: like Doug did Um, you can go onto stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com and check out our social links.
Speaker 1: You can also send us an email to stuff podcast
Speaker 1: i heeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app.
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.