politics

Should we Rely on Eyewitness Testimony for Criminal Prosecution?

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of knowledge, and can best be summarized in a simple question, “How can I truly know that I know something?” While this question is crucial to critical thinking, it is of particular importance in criminal cases, in which eyewitness testimony can be a deciding factor in a conviction. Over the past decade, new methods of scientific analysis have exonerated many people who were falsely imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, often on the basis of eyewitness testimony. This raises the question: in light of advancing DNA and forensic testing capabilities, should the criminal justice system continue to rely on the memories of witnesses to convict people of crimes?

Keith Lehrer, a contemporary philosopher who specializes in epistemology, elaborates on what it means to “know” something in his 1990 book Theory of Knowledge. He provides an example of a man looking into a field, seeing a sheep, and saying that he knows he sees a sheep. Since the animal is not far away, and the man knows what a sheep looks like, most people would not question this statement, and believe that this man is completely justified in believing that he sees a sheep. However, Lehrer, taking an epistemologist’s viewpoint, raises the supposition: “Now imagine that the object he takes to be a sheep is not a sheep but a dog. Thus, he does not know that he sees a sheep.”1

In some cases, the matter is not as simple as seeing a sheep versus seeing a dog. Joseph Lamont Abbitt, of Winston-Salem, NC, spent fourteen years in prison because of a much more critical form of misidentification. In June 1995, he was convicted of the 1991 rape of two young girls at knifepoint; this conviction was based almost entirely on the eyewitness testimony of the girls, who testified that they recognized Abbitt, a former neighbor, as the man who broke into their house and attacked them. Despite some contrary DNA evidence and his employer’s testimony that Abbitt was at work at the time of the crime, Abbitt was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences plus 110 years for the crime.

In 2005, the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence accepted his plea for assistance and began to collect evidence which could be scientifically tested to prove his innocence. Even though much of the original evidence had been destroyed in the fourteen years since the crime, the organization was able to obtain one of the rape kits collected from the victims. DNA testing using new technological methods proved Abbitt’s innocence, and he was officially exonerated in September of 2009, after serving fourteen years in prison.2

Sadly, Abbitt’s case is neither unique nor uncommon. According to the Huffington Post, a “shocking number” of people convicted in U.S. courts are actually innocent. They estimate, based on information gathered from two university databases, that more than 2,000 people have been wrongly convicted, served a substantial prison sentence, and then exonerated.3 The facts on eyewitness testimony are sobering: nearly four out of five false convictions in sexual assault cases are based on mistaken eyewitness identification. One must wonder why, in an age of advanced technology, so much importance is placed on eyewitness testimony when so much physical evidence can be obtained and scientifically analyzed in these violent crime cases. It seems that neither the victims nor the prosecutors in these cases think critically and question how they know, without a doubt, that the accused is definitely the criminal.

This issue is so concerning, it is beginning to receive recognition even beyond the scope of scholarly articles and legal journals. In 2011, the National Geographic Channel aired a three-part series called Test Your Brain, and the first episode, titled “Pay Attention”, presented a mock crime scene, in which multiple eyewitnesses to a staged daylight mugging in New York City were brought into a mock courtroom and asked to give their accounts of the crime and describe the witness.4 Alarmingly, none of the ten witnesses were able to accurately describe either the crime or the perpetrator. The show’s experts explain that this is because the human brain is hard-wired to “connect the dots”, so to speak; when there are details missing in a person’s memories, their brain invents details to bridge the gap and finish the story.

Given all the evidence, the criminal justice system should reduce its reliance on eyewitness testimony, or at the very least, view it with a high degree of scrutiny. With all the scientific knowledge and ample technology available, there is simply no reason to use a person’s memories and perception, which can be highly subjective, to determine a matter of such high importance as a person’s guilt of a serious crime. After all, as Herbert Feigl, former head of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science, once wrote, “….science acquires a reach far beyond the limits of our unaided senses”.5 If a person is to serve a life sentence for a crime, we have an ethical and moral duty to examine all evidence, and be able to say, without a shadow of a doubt, that we have the knowledge that this person is actually guilty of committing a serious crime.

Kelly Dillon

1.  Keith Lehrer. The Analysis of Knowledge. Second edition. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), 19.

2. The National Registry of Exonerations: University of Michigan Law School and The Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. Joseph Lamont Abbitt case detail, http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3807. Website.

3. Pete Yost. Huffington Post: Criminal Exonerations: 2,000 Convicted Then Exonerated In U.S. Over Last 23 Years, Study Says. May 21, 2012. Periodical Website.

4. “Pay Attention!” Test Your Brain. National Geographic Channel. April 17, 2011. Television.

5. Alburey Castell, Donald M. Borchert, and Arthur Zucker. Introduction to Modern Philosophy: Examining The Human Condition. 7^th ed. (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001), 506.