NCJ Number
235615
Journal
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice Volume: 27 Issue: 2 Dated: May 2011 Pages: 183-203
Date Published
May 2011
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This article discusses the Innocence Project.
Abstract
Of the first 225 exonerations of wrongfully convicted individuals in the United States by the Innocence Project, 77 percent were based on mistaken eyewitness identifications. Given the mounting evidence on reliability issues surrounding eyewitness testimony, coupled with the fact that forensic evidence is neither infallible nor always available, it becomes important to better understand how jurors use these different types of evidence in their decisionmaking. The current research seeks to fill a void in the literature by evaluating the influence of eyewitness testimony on case outcomes while accounting for other types of evidence (e.g., DNA). Although the results underscore the value of forensic DNA evidence, they also highlight the importance of eyewitness testimony in juror decisionmaking. In fact, both pretrial perceptions of the reliability of eyewitness evidence and the credibility of an eyewitness during trial significantly impact the desired verdict for jurors above and beyond other types of evidence. Implications for case processing and avenues for future research are discussed. (Published Abstract)