Some people in Minnesota who have been convicted of crimes using eyewitness evidence may have been wrongly identified. In California, a man was exonerated of rape charges after serving eight years in prison when DNA evidence showed he did not commit the crime. The man had been identified by both the victim and a witness.
A co-director of the California Innocence Project says that initial errors in eyewitness identification are often compounded and solidified over time. A witness might identify a photo in a lineup that most resembles the person they saw. Later, for the in-person lineup, they will then identify the person from the photo. By the time the trial happens, these multiple rounds of identification will have reinforced the witness's confidence that the right person has been chosen. In the rape case, the victim said she was 70 percent certain at the time she made the photo identification, but by the time of the trial, she said she was 100 percent certain. Seeing the man in person reinforced her certainty. A witness who made the same identification was from another race, and studies have shown a higher rate of inaccuracy in cross-racial identification.
