Opinion ID: 4027532
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Estimator Variables

Text: Estimator variables are the conditions present during memory formation or storage. They can also have a substantial impact on the reliability of eyewitness identifications.122 https://public.psych.iastate.edu/glwells/The_Misidentification _of_John_White.pdf (last visited July 6, 2016). 121 State v. Lawson, 291 P.3d 673, 689 (Or. 2012). 122 See State v. Henderson, 27 A.3d 872, 895 (N.J. 2011), holding modified by State v. Chen, 27 A.2d 930 (N.J. 2011); National Research Council, Identifying the Culprit, supra, at 1, 72, 92-93. 28 Crucial estimator variables include, but are not limited to, the amount of stress on the observer, the presence of weapons, and visibility conditions. Unlike system variables, estimator variables are beyond the control of the criminal justice system. Nevertheless, asking jurors to consider eyewitness identifications without properly instructing them on the impact that such estimator variables may have had erects yet another barrier to accurate evaluation of identifications.
First, high levels of stress at the time of memory formation can negatively impact a witness’ ability to accurately identify the perpetrator.123 Stressful conditions impair a witness’ ability to identify key characteristics of an individual’s face.124 A meta-analysis of the effect of high stress on eyewitness identifications found that stress hampers both eyewitness recall and identification accuracy.125 A recent study examining the effects of stress on identifications at a U.S. Military mock prisoner-of-war camp illustrates this phenomenon.126 In this study, 509 active-duty military personnel, with an average of 4.2 years in the service, underwent two types of interrogations.127 After twelve hours of confinement, participants experienced either a high-stress interrogation involving real physical confrontation followed by a low-stress interrogation without physical confrontation, or 123 See Charles A. Morgan III et al., Accuracy of Eyewitness Identification Is Significantly Associated with Performance on a Standardized Test of Face Recognition, 30 Int’l J.L. & Psychiatry 213 (2007); Kenneth A. Deffenbacher et al., A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effects of High Stress on Eyewitness Memory, 28 L. & Hum. Behav. 687 (2004); Morgan et al., Accuracy of Eyewitness Memory, supra. 124 See Charles A. Morgan III et al., Misinformation Can Influence Memory for Recently Experienced, Highly Stressful Events, 36 Int’l J.L. & Psychiatry 11, 15 (2013). 125 Deffenbacher et al., Effects of High Stress, supra, at 699. 126 Morgan et al., Accuracy of Eyewitness Memory, supra, at 266. 127 Id. at 267-68. 29 vice versa.128 The interrogations were separated by approximately four hours, and about half the participants received the high-stress interrogation first, while the other half experienced the low-stress interrogation first.129 Both interrogations lasted about forty minutes.130 Twenty-four hours after the interrogations, the participants were asked to identify their interrogators from live lineups, sequential photo arrays, or simultaneous photo arrays.131 Across all identification procedures, subjects had far more difficulty accurately identifying their high-stress interrogators.132 Sixty-two percent of subjects could identify their low-stress interrogators in live lineups, while only thirty percent of subjects could accurately identify their high-stress interrogators from such lineups.133 Furthermore, fifty-six percent of subjects erroneously identified a person who was not their interrogator (false positive) during live lineups, while only thirty-eight percent of subjects did so for their low-stress interrogations.134 This study is particularly stunning when one considers that the subjects all had a prolonged and unobstructed opportunity to view their interrogators, and the interrogators were all within arm’s reach of their subjects. The subjects’ ability to see the faces of their interrogators was therefore exponentially better than the opportunity witnesses to most violent crimes have to see perpetrators. Their views were certainly better than those of Howard, Bertha, and Cameron. As the study’s authors explained, [c]ontrary to the popular conception that most people would never forget the face of a clearly seen individual who had physically confronted them and threatened them for more than 30 min[utes], . . . [t]hese data provide robust evidence that eyewitness memory for persons encountered during events that are personally 128 Id. at 268. 129 Id. 130 Id. 131 Id. at 269-70. 132 Id. at 272. 133 Id. 134 Id. 30 relevant, highly stressful, and realistic in nature may be subject to substantial error.135 Notably, this study further found that memories formed during a stressful event are highly susceptible to modifications from misinformation received after the event. That has particular relevance here given the presence of the system variables described above. Stress almost certainly affected all of the witnesses who saw Chedell Williams gunned down. The shooting undoubtedly caused Howard—the prosecution’s star witness—a significant amount of stress. Not only was she herself chased, but she also watched as the perpetrator grabbed her best friend and shot her at point-blank range. It is not surprising that multiple witnesses recalled hearing Howard screaming. Stress also likely affected Bertha’s ability to later make an accurate identification. He saw the shooter as the shooter rushed him, head on, pistol in hand. Jurors cannot properly assess eyewitness identification testimony where stress was present at memory formation unless this variable is explained to them.
The presence of weapons is a second, and related, estimator variable. The National Research Council has stated, “[r]esearch suggests that the presence of a weapon at the scene of a crime captures the visual attention of the witness and impedes the ability of the witness to attend to other important features of the visual scene, such as the face of the perpetrator . . . . The ensuing lack of memory of these other key features may impair recognition of a perpetrator in a subsequent lineup.”136 In 1992, an analysis of weapon focus studies concluded that the presence of a weapon significantly reduced witnesses’ ability to recall their perpetrators.137 A more recent study of the pertinent literature confirms that weapon presence 135 Id. at 274. 136 National Research Council, Identifying the Culprit, supra, at 93. 137 Nancy K. Steblay, A Meta-analytic Review of the Weapon Focus Effect, 16 L. & Hum. Behav. 413, 415-17 (1992). 31 has a consistently negative impact on both feature recall accuracy and identification accuracy.138 Here, the jury was never informed that visibility of the perpetrator’s gun may well have hampered the witnesses’ ability to observe and/or form an accurate memory of the assailant’s face. Howard, Bertha, and Cameron all provided clear descriptions of the gun, revealing their focus on it. But the jury was never informed of how this powerful estimator variable may have affected them.
The period between memory formation and memory recall is known as the “retention interval” and constitutes another important estimator variable. A meta-analysis of fiftythree facial memory studies found “that memory strength will be weaker at longer retention intervals than at briefer ones.”139 Most of the studies analyzed in this meta-analysis examined retention intervals of less than one month, many of them less than one week. This meta-analysis also found agreement among experts that “the rate of memory loss for an event is greatest right after an event and then levels off over time.”140 Furthermore, [t]he effect of the retention interval also is influenced by the strength and quality of the initial memory that is encoded, which, in turn, 138 Jonathan M. Fawcett et al., Of Guns and Geese: A MetaAnalytic Review of the ‘Weapon Focus’ Literature, Psychol., Crime & L. 1, 22 (2011). 139 Kenneth A. Deffenbacher et al., Forgetting the Once-Seen Face: Estimating the Strength of an Eyewitness’s Memory Representation, 14 J. Experimental Psychol.: Applied 139, 142 (2008); see also Carol Krafka & Steven Penrod, Reinstatement of Context in a Field Experiment on Eyewitness Identification, 49 J. Personality & Soc. Psychol. 58, 65 (1985) (finding a substantial increase in the misidentification rate in target-absent arrays from two to twenty-four hours after event). 140 Deffenbacher et al., Forgetting the Once-Seen Face, supra, at 143. 32 may be influenced by other estimator variables associated with witnessing the crime (such as the degree of visual attention) and viewing factors (such as distance, lighting, and exposure duration).141 The in-court identifications of Dennis were made nearly one year after the crime occurred—a very significant retention interval under the relevant studies. Research is hardly necessary to appreciate the difficulty of trying to accurately recall the details of this chaotic and traumatizing event— lasting only a matter of seconds—a year later. The jurors should have been informed of that difficulty and its possible impact on the accuracy of these identifications. They were not.
As one would expect, exposure duration, distance, and lighting affect the accuracy of eyewitness identifications.142 The charge that was given here did alert the jurors to the impact of these factors on the accuracy of an identification.143 141 National Research Council, Identifying the Culprit, supra, at 99. 142 Brian H. Bornstein et al., Effects of Exposure Time and Cognitive Operations on Facial Identification Accuracy: A Meta-Analysis of Two Variables Associated with Initial Memory Strength, 18 Psychol., Crime & L. 473 (2012) (metaanalysis of the effect of exposure duration on facial identification accuracy); R.C.L. Lindsay et al., How Variations in Distance Affect Eyewitness Reports and Identification Accuracy, 32 Law & Hum. Behav. 526 (2008) (study of the effect of distance on identification accuracy). 143 Race-bias—referring to the relative races of the witness and perpetrator—is another crucial estimator variable. Although this variable does not raise concerns here because the three eyewitnesses and the perpetrator were all Black, it is nevertheless worth noting because it again shows the extent to which circumstances (other than opportunity to observe) can greatly impact the reliability of an eyewitness identification. Research has thoroughly documented a phenomenon known as “own-race bias” wherein people more accurately identify faces within their own race as compared to those of members 33 However, as I explain in the following section, it did not adequately convey the impact these factors can have on incourt identifications. C. The Dissent’s Dismissal of Estimator Variables As the Majority recounts, nearly all of the eyewitnesses who mentioned the shooter’s height in their initial police interviews described him as between 5’8” and 5’10”.144 The witnesses also described the shooter as having a dark complexion and weighing about 170 to 190 pounds. James Dennis is 5’5” tall and weighed between 125 and 132 pounds at the time of trial. The Dissent dismisses and tries to rationalize away this considerable size discrepancy. In an attempt to reinforce the reliability of the three witnesses, the Dissent relies on research that concludes eyewitnesses tend to underestimate the height and weight of taller and heavier targets and overestimate the height and weight of shorter and lighter targets.145 The of a different racial group. See National Research Council, Identifying the Culprit, supra, at 96; Roy S. Malpass & Jerome Kravitz, Recognition for Faces of Own and Other Race, 13 J. Personality & Soc. Psychol. 330 (1969). The Innocence Project analyzed 297 DNA exonerations and found that a cross-racial misidentification occurred in forty-two percent of the cases in which an erroneous eyewitness identification was made. Edwin Grimsley, What Wrongful Convictions Teach Us about Racial Inequality, The Innocence Project (Sept. 26, 2012), http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/What_Wrongful_C onvictions_Teach_ Us_About_Racial_Inequality.php. 144 In fact, one eyewitness—Joseph DiRienzo Jr.—described the shooter’s height in terms of his own height: “about my height, about 5’9”.” J.A. 1649. 145 Dissent at 3 (Fisher, J.) (citing Christian A. Meissner, Siegfried L. Sporer, & Jonathan W. Schooler, Person Descriptions as Eyewitness Evidence, in 2 Handbook of Eyewitness Psychology 3, 8 (Rod C.L. Lindsay et al. eds., 2007) and Rhona H. Flin & John W. Shepherd, Tall Stories: Eyewitnesses’ Ability to Estimate Height and Weight Characteristics, 5 Hum. Learning 29, 34 (1986)). 34 Dissent’s use of that research is cruelly ironic. The finding of those studies was not that we should disregard eyewitness inaccuracy, as the Dissent’s citation implies. Those researchers found just the opposite. The studies discovered that eyewitness identifications are frequently unreliable.146 As two of the researchers explained, “[t]he width and range of subjects’ errors for the targets’ height and weight in this study showed clearly that some subjects experience great difficulty in accurately judging another individual’s physical characteristics.” 147 The Dissent also focuses on the strength of three estimator variables. The Dissent reminds us that “the visual conditions were excellent,”148 the witnesses saw the shooter at “close range,”149 and none of the identifications were crossracial.150 This is not only misleading, it also ignores many other system and estimator variables that were at least as important (if not more important) than the ones the Dissent focuses upon. I agree that the lighting was good. However, the lighting here was likely no better than that in the rooms where the military personnel who failed to recognize the faces of their interrogators were questioned under stressful conditions.151 The witnesses here were in close proximity to the shooter. However, they were not as close as Jennifer Thompson was to Ronald Cotton or John White’s accuser was to him. Moreover, these witnesses only had a matter of seconds to view the perpetrators. Howard saw the shooter as he rushed towards her, Cameron in the seconds the crime occurred, and Bertha as the shooter ran past him. All of the witnesses’ views occurred under highly stressful circumstances and their focus appears to have been as much on the gun in the shooter’s hand as on the 146 Meissner, Sporer, & Schooler, Person Descriptions as Eyewitness Evidence, supra, at 8 (citing the Flin and Shepherd study); Flin & Shepherd, Tall Stories, supra, at 36. 147 Flin & Shepherd, Tall Stories, supra, at 36. 148 Dissent at 2 (Fisher, J.). 149 Id. 150 Id. at 3 (citing Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U.S. 51, 72 n.8). 151 Morgan et al., Accuracy of Eyewitness Memory, supra, at 268. 35 shooter’s face. As I will explain in greater detail below, the charge that the jurors received did not focus their attention on any of those considerations. The lack of blinding, the presence of officer feedback, the fact that the record suggests that the witnesses thought they had to select someone from the photo arrays, the multiple viewings of Dennis, and the witnesses’ viewing of the live lineup in the same room, all suggest that the identifications may have been corrupted by cues from law enforcement and/or other witnesses. We would be justifiably skeptical of any clinical trial where the researcher knew which sample was a placebo or who received the placebo. Yet, we do not think twice about allowing someone to be convicted of a crime and sentenced to death on the basis of identification procedures where the investigator presenting the photo array or lineup is fully aware of who the suspect is. The witnesses who identified Dennis at trial had not one, but three opportunities to view Dennis. And none of the procedures included any level of blinding. Nothing in this record suggests that anyone other than Dennis was present in both the photo array and lineup. Yet, the jury was not made aware of the potential importance of any of these considerations. That should sound a note of caution in assessing the reliability of these identifications. Finally, we should not ignore the fact that the majority of the witnesses that police interviewed after the crime were unable to identify Dennis as the shooter. Jurors did not know that Joseph DiRienzo, Joseph DiRienzo, Jr., Clarence Verdell, and David LeRoy all were unable to identify Dennis from the photo array. Although Anthony Overstreet did identify Dennis from this array, he did not think Dennis was the shooter once he had an opportunity to view him in the lineup. Overstreet had expressed the most confidence in his ability to positively identify the shooter during the initial police interviews.152 152 The fact that Overstreet and other non-identifying witnesses could theoretically have been called by defense counsel is no answer. No defense attorney in her right mind would put such witnesses on the stand, knowing that the witnesses had seen photographs of the defendant and would 36 When the totality of circumstances is viewed in context, the evidence of Dennis’ guilt is not as uncompromising as the Dissent suggests. Moreover, concerns about the reliability of these identifications should not be assuaged by evidence that was introduced in an attempt to corroborate the identification testimony. As the Majority explains, aside from eyewitness testimony, the Commonwealth presented testimony from Charles Thompson, who told detectives that he saw Dennis with a gun the night of the murder. Thompson identified an illustrative .32 chrome revolver (previously admitted as a Commonwealth exhibit) as being similar to the one he saw in Dennis’s possession. As the Majority notes, Thompson had an open drug-possession charge at the time of trial, but testified that he was not expecting help from the Commonwealth in exchange for his testimony. Years after trial, Thompson recanted his testimony, averring that he had never seen Dennis with a gun and that his testimony at trial was false. I realize, of course, that it can be argued that Thompson’s recantation is not necessarily relevant to the force of the eyewitness identifications because it happened after trial. However, his testimony clearly corroborated the identification evidence, and it underscores the dangers of the inadequate identification instructions. The fact that the jurors were not given a sufficient basis to assess the identifications of Dennis severely undermined the potential force of Dennis’ alibi testimony. Why would jurors believe such testimony (especially since it was offered by his father) when three neutral witnesses identified Dennis as the shooter? Had the jurors been able to assess the identifications with an appropriate understanding of the variables I have discussed, Dennis’s alibi testimony may well have had much greater force, and jurors would have been in a better position to weigh Dennis’ alibi against Thompson’s testimony that appeared to corroborate the three eyewitnesses. That is particularly true when we factor in the evidence of the Cason receipt that the know the person sitting at counsel table was the person the police had arrested for the crime. A criminal justice system seeking fairness and justice should not countenance the creation of such an absurd dilemma. 37 Majority explains.153 The Cason receipt could have further bolstered Dennis’ alibi testimony and raised a reasonable doubt about the accuracy of the eyewitness identifications.