![]() McMillan said, “It’s really an unexplainable hurt and pain to be wrongfully accused of something you know you didn’t do, because the people who are perpetuating this are the law enforcement officials who are supposed to be protecting you.” McMillan said he believes if jurors had known the victim who picked him out of a line-up was skeptical, he would be one less innocent man sent to die of old age in prison. “What can make it more reliable is the videotaping because that opens it up to the jury to see whether or not the identification of the accused is a reliable identification,” Massey said. Veteran defense attorney Bill Massey says the system still needs reform. That was in 2010.įour years later, there’s no record of them bringing it up since. ![]() Lawmakers said they would study it over the summer. Members said there were certain fallibilities in eyewitness identifications that can be rectified by a proper eyewitness identification procedure. The group that represents public defenders across Tennessee pushed for photo line-up standards. Turner says officers should remain calm and refrain from suggestive techniques when conducting lineups. That student pinpointed the wrong person anyway. The student responded, “It’s just that his hair is so dark. “You’re 85 percent sure it’s him?” Turner said as he showed one of the photos to a student who watched the crime. The most concerning thing is when they were shown a line-up without the suspect’s picture in it, they still singled out someone. When the pictures were shown individually, they weren’t so sure. ![]() Students seemed more confident picking out the suspect when they could compare him to others. We showed them photos of possible suspects. After a few minutes, we explained the crime was staged so we could gauge their eyewitness accounts. They looked shocked as a man came in and grabbed a fellow student’s computer bag. They didn’t know they were about to be eyewitnesses to a crime. Most students thought we were doing a story on the organization. To show how reliable or unreliable photo line-ups are, WREG asked the University of Memphis Criminal Justice Club to help. I observed this person engaged in this kind of activity,” said Turner. “That’s probably the best evidence is when a person can say, I saw. He’s also a former police officer who used photo line-ups to solve crimes. Turner is chair of the criminal justice department at the University of Memphis. “We’re human beings and we’re prone to make mistakes, so we have to be very careful in relying strictly on our memories,” Dr. In most cases, victims or witnesses picked defendants out of a line-up. “If you got the wrong procedures, some manipulative procedures, you can get someone convicted for life for something they didn’t do,” McMillan said.ĭNA evidence has led to the release of more than 300 innocent people nationwide since 1989. Wrongly convicted for a rape, he spent 22-and-a-half years in a Tennessee prison before DNA evidence freed him about a decade ago. He added, “They victimized her too by doing her like that because the young lady didn’t know.” “She said it was so dark out there, she couldn’t see her hand, so any black man would have done,” McMillan said. He talks about how a rape victim picked him out of a photo array. McMillan says he’s proof the way police often pinpoint suspects is flawed. “I thought I was going to die in prison with 119 years,” Clark McMillan, who was exonerated by DNA, said. However, research shows eyewitness identifications aren’t that reliable, and some officers need to change the way they conduct them. It’s the evidence that can send a person to death row or get them off the hook. Eyewitness testimony is considered the best evidence in any criminal case. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |