Troy Davis execution highlights witness unreliability

www.newscientist.com

17:19 22 September 2011 by Andy Coghlan

Taken together, the recanted witness statements paint a picture of witnesses being bullied by police into identifying Davis as the murderer. "They made it clear that the only way they would leave me alone was if I told them what they wanted to hear," said one witness, Jeffrey Sapp.

According to Amnesty International USA, many witnesses identified Davis from a photo array after his picture had been "plastered all over the media", potentially priming the witnesses to pick him simply through prior assumptions linking his face with the crime.

The brief states that in controlled experiments and studies of real cases, misidentification occurs around a third of the time.

It cites research showing that juries tend to "overbelieve" witnesses, giving their testimony disproportionate weight over other evidence: witnesses are often mistaken about their recollection of events, but juries believe them because of their passionate conviction that they are correct.

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tags: death penalty
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