Opinion ID: 2222943
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: legal & scientific recognition of the existence and scope of the problem

Text: [T]he assumption [is] that witnesses can see accurately, hear accurately, and recall accurately. This assumption which is the keystone `As If' of the law of evidence, is in fact contradicted by the findings of psychological science. [1a] Scores of legal and scientific writers have commented on the make-believe quality of some of our rules of evidence: The notion, still tolerably prevalent, that the faithfully sworn testimony of a mentally competent witness is in general to be regarded as an exact presentation of reality is without justification. [2a] For some reason, the law has until recent years in such decisions as Wade and Simmons, ignored what the behavioral sciences can tell us about the reliability of eyewitness testimony. Almost 90 years ago, Hugo Munsterberg, a pioneer in experimental and theoretical psychology, wrote: The courts will have to learn, sooner or later, that the individual differences of men can be tested to-day by the methods of experimental psychology far beyond anything which common sense and social experience suggest. Modern law welcomes, for instance, for identification of criminals all the discoveries of anatomists and physiologists as to the individual differences; even the different play of lines in the thumb is carefully registered in wax. But no one asks for the striking differences as to those mental details which the psychological experiments on memory and attention, on feeling and imagination, on perception and discrimination, on judgment and suggestion, on emotion and volition, have brought out in the last decade. [3a] And even since Wade and Simmons, many decisions seem to have misconstrued the thrust of the Supreme Court's concern. See e.g., Notes, Pretrial Identification Procedures  Wade to Gilbert to Stovall: Lower Courts Bobble the Ball, 55 Minn L Rev 779 (1971). We have therefore made our own examination of the authorities cited in Wade. In order to properly make an independent evaluation we have also examined additional authorities, including many of the citations and references documenting the authorities cited in Wade. Aside from the recognition of the impact of science and psychology on evidence generally, there is specific recognition of the problems in the area of eyewitness identification. For example, Dean Wigmore, in The Science of Judicial Proof (1937), §§ 253, 254 catalogues numerous cases of erroneous identification. He says of the process of securing eyewitness identification: The whole process therefore calls for caution and precaution. 1. It calls for caution, in that testimonial assertions to identity must be accepted only after the most careful consideration. On the one hand, the process of Recognition being often more or less subconscious, it may be quite correct, even though no specification of marks can be given as reasons for recognition. On the other hand, the risk of injustice being so serious, the great possibilities of lurking error should cause hesitation.    2. The process also calls for precaution, in taking measures beforehand objectively to reduce the chances of testimonial error   . Id, § 252, p 537. (Emphasis added except the words caution and precaution.) [4a] The opinion, p 179, makes reference to a number of authors documenting examples of misidentification. Often quoted in cases and other materials on the problem are the comments of Felix Frankfurter: What is the worth of identification testimony even when uncontradicted? The identification of strangers is proverbially untrustworthy. The hazards of such testimony are established by a formidable number of instances in the records of English and American trials. These instances are recent  not due to the brutalities of ancient criminal procedure. Frankfurter, The Case of Sacco & Vanzetti (1927), p 30. [5a] The actual number of these tragic miscarriages of justice may never be known. Although no systematic study has ever been conducted in Michigan, we were able in a few hours inquiry to turn up three recent examples of misidentification in Wayne and Macomb Counties. 1. Louis Nasir The case of Louis Nasir illustrates one of the reasons that cases of erroneous conviction are difficult to ferret out  the evidence offered and the testimony of eyewitnesses is no different, but to the contrary, the case is indistinguishable from cases of correct identification. The innocence of the convicted man comes to light not from the record or proof itself but, as in the Nasir case, by the confession of a criminal who is later arrested for an unrelated crime. In fact in the Nasir case, this might not even have happened except for the diligent post-trial investigation by the Warren Police Department, the Macomb Prosecutor's Office and court-appointed counsel. Louis Nasir was once arrested for commission of a crime as the result of mistaken identification. Although no charges were brought his picture was taken and found its way into the mug book. Several years later in May of 1965, a bandit wearing wraparound sunglasses and a straw hat held up a credit union in Warren and escaped with almost $5,000. There were three witnesses, the manager, an employee named Dimples Anderson and a credit union customer. On the afternoon of the robbery the manager and Dimples were unable to select anyone from a mug book and were unable to select anyone from a lineup in which Louis Nasir was not present. The day after the robbery the manager and the employee picked Nasir from a mug book and also picked him in a one-man showup from behind a one-way glass. On the following Monday all three witnesses picked Nasir from a lineup that did not appear unfair in itself from the record, absent any prior suggestion in the one-man photo showup or any suggestion that may have occurred in the use of photographs. Nasir was tried for robbery and the sole issue was identification. Despite the testimony of six witnesses who said they saw Nasir at work the day of the robbery, the jury believed the identification testimony of the credit union manager, Dimples Anderson and the customer and returned a verdict of guilty. Nasir was sentenced to serve 7 to 20 years in prison. The court-appointed attorney who was to prosecute the appeal was convinced of Nasir's innocence and enlisted the aid of the two detectives who helped convict Nasir. Working together, the three men found the man who confessed to being an accomplice to the crime. The real robber, who resembled Nasir, had been shot to death in February, 1966. A friend of the dead man, who was serving time in Jackson, corroborated the story by revealing that the crime had been admitted to him before the death of the real culprit. [6a] An hour after Nasir took lie detector tests he was freed on bond pending a new trial and the charges were dismissed on motion of the prosecutor. Nasir had spent 375 days in prison. One of the ironies of the case is the absolute certainty of the witnesses regarding their identification of Nasir. Dimples Anderson, for example, testified that she had no doubt whatsoever about the identity of the man: Q. It's possible that you could have made a mistake today?
Q. If you should find out later  if I were to tell you     that this man could not have possibly been there, would you say that you could be mistaken? [7a] 2. Charles Edward Richardson On January 16, 1968, a man held up a gas station and escaped. The two gas station attendants positively identified Charles Richardson, who lived in the neighborhood and was about the same size as the man who robbed the station. Two or three months later a man named Kendrick was arrested on an unrelated charge and as the result of diligent police investigation he confessed to the robbery of the gas station. Charles Richardson was released from Jackson Prison. After this evidence was presented to the trial judge, Honorable Horace W. Gilmore, the charges were dismissed on motion of the prosecutor. This is another case where there was no intentional suggestion and the witnesses were honestly positive in their minds about the earlier identification. Again the error is not apparent from the record but was only discovered by diligent police investigation of an unrelated crime. At the nolle prosequi hearing the identifying witness upon seeing both the innocent man and the confessed robber could no longer make an identification: The Court: You are aware that Mr. Kendricks has admitted to committing this crime? A. Yes, I heard. The Court: And has testified that Mr. Richardson did not do it? A. Yes, I do, sir. The Court: Can you identify either one of them as the person? A. Well, right now, positively, I couldn't. [8a] 3. Charles Clark On November 23, 1937, three men held up a clothing store in Hamtramck. The owner was shot and killed. The owner's daughter, who was 21 years old at the time, went to the assistance of her father and was slugged with a revolver by one of the robbers. Charles Clark was later identified by the girl in a lineup as the man who shot her father. One of the other defendants implicated Clark in an initial statement, but he and two others said at the trial later that Clark had no part in it. Clark's landlady testified that he was home all that day. Nevertheless, Clark was convicted primarily on the identification testimony of the young woman and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Clark tried for a new trial several times over the 30-years imprisonment, but it was denied each time. Partly because Clark was an exemplary prisoner he was offered parole by the prison authorities and later was offered a pardon and commutation of sentence, but he turned these down because acceptance of such terms would have been a tacit admission of guilt. At one point in a quest for a new trial he was offered the opportunity to plead to a lesser charge, the sentence of which would have freed him immediately. Again he refused. Finally in 1968 the case was assigned to the Legal Aid & Defenders Association of Detroit. The attorneys researched early transcripts and discovered that the victim's daughter, the sole identifying witness, had originally said that she could not identify Clark as one of the bandits. In an affidavit in support of the motion for a new trial the witness revealed that after she said she could not identify the defendant, the Hamtramck detectives had pointed Clark out as the guilty man before the lineup. Clark was granted a new trial in 1968 and the case was dismissed on motion of the prosecutor. As a result of this, on January 28, 1972, Public Act No. 1 of the 76th Legislature was signed into law by Governor William G. Milliken as follows: Sec. 1. There is appropriated from the general fund of the state the sum of $10,000.00, to Charles Lee Clark, born October 17, 1899 at Americus, Georgia, residing at 238 E. Mount Vernon, Detroit, Michigan, for mental suffering incurred in state prison for an offense of which he was found innocent upon later trial after 30 years of confinement. Sec. 2. The money appropriated under the provisions of this act is not made in payment of any claims for damages, but is provided solely out of humanitarian consideration. Ordered to take immediate effect. Approved January 28, 1972. [9a]