Opinion ID: 1205096
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Certainty of Identification

Text: (22) Defendant further contends that the trial court erred in instructing the jury that the extent to which the witness was either certain or uncertain of the identification was a factor to consider in assessing eyewitness testimony. Defendant asserts that there was no evidence to support this instruction because Dr. Loftus testified without contradiction that a witness's confidence in an identification does not positively correlate with its accuracy. As a corollary to this claim, he argues the instruction was improper because it contradicted Dr. Loftus's testimony, thereby implying the jury could not rely on her evidence. We cannot agree with defendant's contentions. First, as defendant concedes, the jury remained free to reject Dr. Loftus's testimony although it was uncontradicted. ( People v. Wright, supra, 45 Cal.3d at pp. 1142-1143.) The trial court was not required โ indeed, was not permitted โ to instruct the jury to view the evidence through the lens of her theory. Second, the jury was instructed that it should consider [t]estimony of any expert regarding acquisition, retention, or retrieval of information presented to the senses of an eyewitness. Thus, if the jury was persuaded by Dr. Loftus's testimony, the instructions allowed it to infer that Angela's positive identification was not necessarily an accurate one. We cannot agree with defendant that the jury must have found these two portions of the eyewitness identification instruction confusing. His contention would be valid only if the jury were required to accept Dr. Loftus's testimony; as we have seen, it was not. The trial court did not err, therefore, in instructing the jury on the certainty factor.