There are a myriad of reasons why individuals can be wrongfully
convicted and end up serving long prison sentences. One of the main
reasons why this occurs is that victims often identify the wrong
perpetrator. Eyewitness testimony is particularly powerful in cases where
there is very little evidence linking the accused to the crime. In many
cases, this eyewitness error is not intentional; the victim is traumatized
and wants someone to pay for the crime. In addition, eyewitness error can
occur when the perpetrator and alleged perpetrator have similar features.
According to the Journal of Criminal and Criminology, eyewitness
error is the cause of many wrongful convictions. The article explains
"A study of 84% of DNA exonerations revealed that mistaken eyewitness
identification was the primary evidence used to convict the actually
innocent defendants. (15) This study was by no means the first one of
its kind. In 1932, Edwin Borchard, a law professor at Yale University,
published a collection of sixty-five cases where an innocent person
was convicted for a crime he did not commit. (16) In his book,
Borchard cited eyewitness error as the "major source of these tragic
errors." (17) In fact, eyewitness error was responsible for twenty-
nine of the sixty-five erroneous convictions examined in the
Borchard found that eyewitness testimony is almost useless unless the
testimony is corroborated with other evidence. Borchard found that there
were several reasons why eyewitness error occurs. He concluded that
"Emotional balance of the victim or eyewitness is so disturbed by his
extraordinary experience that his powers of perception become
distorted and his identification is frequently most untrustworthy.
Into the identification enter other motiv...