Edward Honaker spent a decade in a Virginia prison for sexually assaulting a woman at gunpoint. All three of those men were convicted in part because eyewitnesses or victims firmly placed them at the scene of the crime. But not one of them was guilty. They were among the first convicts to be exonerated by DNA tests proving that someone else was responsible.
Some psychologists believe that such mistakes happen in thousands of courtrooms every year.
But most crimes leave no DNA traces to rule out the innocent. Only recently have they seen their findings influence the way the criminal-justice system handles eyewitness testimony. Psychologists have conducted hundreds of studies on errors in eyewitness identification. In some cases, of course, witnesses simply lie. But research has shown that flawed police procedures and the vagaries of memory often lead witnesses to identify the wrong person, and that credulous jurors too easily credit their testimony.