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Category: Project

Description: Eyewitness identification has a long history of use as a form of forensic evidence by law enforcement and the courts in the USA and elsewhere. It has played a valuable role in both convictions and acquittals. Despite this value, our society has been confronted with egregious failures of this type of evidence, leading to conviction of innocent people. Of particular note are findings from the era of post-conviction DNA profiling, during which over 350 people, many serving extended prison sentences, have been exonerated based on DNA evidence. In approximately 70% of these cases, the original erroneous convictions resulted from testimony of eyewitnesses. The consequences of erroneous convictions based on flawed eyewitness testimony are profound. Not only have we imprisoned innocent people while the guilty remain at large, but these outcomes risk undermining public trust in the criminal justice system. This project seeks to improve the performance of eyewitnesses using a basic science approach derived from traditional research on human sensory processing and memory.