Even People Who Know You May Misidentify in a Murder Trial
In my article Eyewitness Identification is More Often Wrong than Right, I reported that scientists found that as many as 75% of eye-witness identifications pointed to an innocent person. I gave as an example the case of two sisters, ages 13 and 16, who were raped at knife-point by an intruder for over an hour in their Winston-Salem, North Carolina home. In a photographic lineup the girls separately identified a former neighbor who had once been a visitor to their home.
Based almost exclusively on their eyewitness identifications the man was convicted of rape, burglary and kidnapping and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences. One minor, itty-bitty problem: he didn't do it. DNA on the rape kit identified the actual perpetrator.
A reader email acknowledged that young girls might become confused about an older person they barely know, but what about eyewitness testimony by a person who certainly knows the accused - surely when a close friend, family member or spouse points to him their identification has to be absolutely on the mark, no?
You would think so, but you would be wrong. Here's a case about a man wrongly accused of a crime based on the testimony of his wife, who mistakenly identified him as the person who raped and brutally beat her:
First, the prosecutor-version:
On September 30, 1979, Dianna Green, who was pregnant at the time, was raped and brutally beaten in her apartment. As a result, she lost her memory and her ability to speak or otherwise communicate; as well, her near-term fetus died stillborn.
Kevin Green, Dianna's husband, alleges he was not home at the time but out getting a hamburger from a stand 15 minutes away.
Almost a year later, his wife's memory returned and she was able to recall that she and her husband quarreled often and he had complained to his friends that he was unable to have sex with her during the final two months of her pregnancy. In addition, she and her husband got into another fight on the night of the attack after she refused to have sex because of her pregnancy when he suddenly began hitting her on the head and then raping her.
Based on this testimony, Green was convicted on October 2, 1980 of second degree murder for the death of the unborn fetus and the attempted murder of, and assault with a deadly weapon upon, his wife. On November 7, 1980 Kevin Green was sentenced to fifteen years to life in state prison.
Open and shut, eh?
Not quite.
This is what really happened:
On September 30, 1979, Dianna Green was raped and brutally beaten in her apartment by Gerald Parker, a serial killer called the "Bedroom Basher," who was found years later by a DNA match from the rape-kit. Faced with the DNA evidence, Parker confessed to the attack as well as to 5 other unsolved murders, describing details previously not released to the public.
Green was released and exonerated after spending almost 16 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
What happened to Dianna Green was that the memories she thought were real were actually false created memories, most likely by her parents who thought that Kevin might have been the perpetrator and they did not want him to get away with the crime. People with amnesia are highly suggestible: if you tell an amnesiac that the sky is pink before she can discover the truth by herself, she will go to the grave claiming the same and denying it was ever blue. And so it is with Green's wife, who, despite being confronted with the truth, now claims it was both of them, Green and Parker, who attacked and raped her. She cannot remove the false memory in her brain.
As I have written before, I have studied for many decades the problem of false accusations, wrongful convictions, and False Memory Creation.
False memories can even be planted on non-amnesiacs although a little more than suggestion is required. Some of us vividly recall the case of St. Paul psychiatrist Diane Humenansky, who used suggestions, drugs, hypnosis and threats to get her patients to remember sexual abuse that never happened. Eventually Humenansky had her license suspended after a number of patients successfully sued her for planting false memories of abuse.
So please, dear readers, don't try to suggest that at least we should put murderers to death if we have a case where there is no question of eyewitness testimony - you know - where the perp is obviously guilty. There is no such thing as the obviously guilty. I have no trust in eyewitness testimony. Neither should you.
More on Kevin Green at the Innocence Project.
