PSYC 162 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Penrod, Houston Police Department, Perceptual Learning
Document Summary
Since the 1990s, dna testing has overturned more than 350 wrongful convictions of the innocent. Eyewitness misidentifications which were invariably made with high confidence in a court of law played a role in 72% of these cases. Research has shown that sequential lineups reduce misidentifications and increase accuracy compared to traditional simultaneous lineups. => police departments should switch to sequential. Research has also shown that eyewitness confidence is, at best, weakly associated with accuracy, yet jurors are impressed by high confidence. In 1984, a college student named jennifer thompson was raped. Shortly thereafter she picked ronald cotton out of a photo lineup. "i was absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt certain he was the man who raped me when i got on that witness stand and testified against him. Cotton was sentenced to life in prison plus 54 years, and he served almost 11 years in jail before being exonerated by dna testing.
