Eyewitness Testimony : Identification One of the main goals for law enforcement is to solve crimes; police strive to “clear” these crimes. They have a much higher chances of clearing the crime if the offender is caught within a few minutes, or an eyewitness provides specific information that is considered relevant to the case. Researchers have shown that if neither of these are available to police, there is less than a 10% chance that the crime will be solved, or “cleared”. This is the first of many future posts which will be exploring the problems with allowing eyewitness identification testimony into evidence during a criminal trial. Eyewitness testimony that incriminates the defendant is arguably one of the most valuable and influential pieces of evidence that the prosecution can attain, aside from a confession. Even when there is a seemingly large amount of evidence favoring the defendant’s claim of innocence, there have been cases where the individual is convicted solely based on the testimony. In the field of psychology, it has been concluded that errors in eyewitness testimony are the leading cause of wrongful convictions. In 2000, it was estimated that… Read More