Western Massachusetts

Research shows "eyewitness" evidence unreliable; Liberal researchers can't see conclusion to their data

MIM Notes 99, April 1995

The U.S. justice system claims to seek and punish the guilty for crime while leaving innocent individuals free. MIM does not share this objective, because the facts show that crime stems from how a society is organized, not how the system assesses individuals. Now there is also evidence from several studies that shows that the system cannot even punish the right people, never mind reduce crime. A recent case involving a man falsely convicted of rape and who died of a heart attack in the process of clearing his name caused the New York Times to publish a summary of the academic evidence.

"A 1993 review of 1,000 convictions of people who were later found to be not guilty revealed that eyewitness errors were the single largest factor, accounting for about half the cases." At least 80,000 trials a year rely on eyewitnesses for evidence.

Experiments show that the ruling class has successfully brainwashed the public into blaming someone for crime--anyone--once a crime has happened. For example, in an experiment with a staged theft with 100 eyewitnesses, the eyewitnesses faced a police lineup that did not include the perpetrator. 21 eyewitnesses still picked someone from the lineup. In a similar study, even when the eyewitnesses knew that the criminal might not be in the lineup, 33% still picked the wrong person.

The U.S. justice system is supposedly based on convicting people based on proof "beyond a reasonable doubt." Since 21% of the time an eyewitness will pick someone from a lineup when the actual criminal was not even in the lineup, there is always "reasonable doubt" in the system. Cases based on eyewitnesses would seem to be subject to perpetual "reasonable doubt."

From the Liberals' point of view, "it is a nightmare for the innocent person, while the actual culprit remains at large." They are frustrated by not being able to gauge individuals accurately. In contrast, MIM does not base its strategy against crime on the individualist premise of judging each person one at a time. We are going to organize society to cut the crime rate to 10% of what it is now just as China under Mao succeeded in doing.

The figures for picking the right person from the lineup are no better when the actual perpetrator is in the lineup. Researchers divided eyewitnesses into two groups--people who were sure and pointed quickly and those who had to think about it.

Among the eyewitnesses sure they found the culprit, only 70% picked the right person from the lineup; 30% were wrong. Among the eyewitnesses who reasoned their way to a conclusion, the accuracy rate was only 30%; 70% of the time, these eyewitnesses picked the wrong person.

To make matters worse, there is "monkey-see-monkey-do" effect. Witnesses who knew there were other witnesses became more confident. This confidence turns out to have no relationship to accuracy.

Despite these studies, police do not always put people with similar features in the line-ups to force eyewitnesses to make hard choices. They go on using the same methods despite these studies that have come out from 1981 to 1993.

The hypocritical Liberals who lead these studies see the abysmal figures, but they cling desperately to an asinine system. "'Police are skeptical when I present these findings,' said Dr. Wells. 'They're afraid of making witnesses overly cautious. They want convictions, not cautious witnesses. But we find the right procedures minimize false identifications while leaving the accurate ones unchanged. If the culprit is there, they'll spot him.'" Seeking respectability with the police--within the system--these individualists refuse to face the facts they gathered.

The truth is that the system only claims to punish the appropriate individuals to bolster its own legitimacy. In actuality, the police and even the researchers don't care about the obvious facts that have made the fascism-crazed settlers of this society willing to convict anyone without any evidence. The ruling class is not threatened by these matters, because the danger falls on the common people, mostly the poor and oppressed nationalities. The rich simply buy their way out of prison if the cops ever make the mistake of arresting them in the first place. The rich also don't have to worry, because theft of bread and murder of individuals is a crime, but white collar criminals who embezzle funds serve in cushy prisons if they serve at all, and criminals who put poisons into the environment that kill more than 20 times as many people as killed by so-called murder go free. The ruling class doesn't care if it convicts the right person, because the imperialist government only imprisons people to repress the poor and national minorities.

Note: New York Times 1/17/95, p. C1, C6.

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