page_title: Eyewitness identification
section_title: Known cases of eyewitness error
hierarchical_section_title: Eyewitness identification / Known cases of eyewitness error
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Strukturmodell eines Ausschnitts aus der DNA-Doppelhelix (B-Form) mit 20 Basenpaarungen. English: An overview of the structure of DNA.
context_page_description: In eyewitness identification, in criminal law, evidence is received from a witness "who has actually seen an event and can so testify in court".
  The Innocence Project states that "Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing." This non-profit organization uses DNA evidence to reopen criminal convictions that were made before DNA testing was available as a tool in criminal investigations.
  Even before DNA testing revealed wrongful convictions based on eyewitness identifications, courts recognized and discussed the limits of eyewitness testimony. The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. observed in 1980 that "At least since United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, the Court has recognized the inherently suspect qualities of eyewitness identification evidence, and described the evidence as "notoriously unreliable", while noting that juries were highly receptive to it.
context_section_description: The Innocence Project has facilitated the exoneration of 214 men who were wrongfully convicted of crimes as a result of faulty eyewitness evidence.  A number of these cases have received substantial attention from the media.
  Jennifer Thompson was a college student in North Carolina in 1984, when a man broke into her apartment, put a knife to her throat, and raped her.  According to her own account, she studied her rapist throughout the incident with great determination to memorize his face. "I studied every single detail on the rapist's face. I looked at his hairline; I looked for scars, for tattoos, for anything that would help me identify him. When and if I survived the attack, I was going to make sure that he was put in prison and he was going to rot."
  Ms. Thompson went to the police station later that same day to work up a [composite sketch] of her attacker, relying on what she believed was her detailed memory.  Several days later, the police constructed a photographic lineup, and she selected Ronald Junior Cotton from the lineup. She later testified against him at trial.  She was positive it was him, without any doubt in her mind. "I was sure. I knew it. I had picked the right guy, and he was going to go to jail. If there was the possibility of a death sentence, I wanted him to die. I wanted to flip the switch."
  But she was wrong, as DNA results eventually showed. She was presented with her actual attacker during a second trial a year after the attack, but at the time she said that she had never seen that man before in her life. She remained convinced that Ronald Cotton had attacked her. It was not until much later, after Cotton had served 11 years in prison and was exonerated, by DNA testing, for wrongful conviction, that Thompson realized she was mistaken.
  Her memory had been mistaken. Cases such as hers have resulted in the emergence of a field within cognitive science dedicated to the study of eyewitness memory and the causes underlying its frequently recurring failures.
caption: Structure of DNA, which has played a role in exonerations of wrongfully convicted people
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