Eyewitness Testimony Current Event in Criminal Justice

Eyewitness Testimony

Current Event in Criminal Justice

The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony

The execution of Troy Anthony Davis on September 27, 2011, in Georgia has stirred new debate over the reliability of eyewitness testimony. Davis was convicted of the August 19, 1989 murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia. Working a security guard at a Burger King, MacPhail was shot when he attempted to defend a man being assaulted in a nearby parking lot. At the trial seven witnesses testified that they had seen Davis shoot MacPhail, and two others testified that that Davis had confessed the murders to them. However, the murder weapon was never recovered. Ballistic evidence linked earlier shootings and bullets recovered at the scene to those of another shooting in which Davis was also charged. In 1991 he was convicted of murder and the earlier shootings. He was sentenced to death.

Davis maintained his innocence until his execution. At an evidentiary hearing order by the United States Supreme Court in June of 2010 the defense presented affidavits from seven of the nine trial witnesses whose original testimony had identified Davis as the murderer, but who it contended had changed or recanted their previous testimony. Some of these writings disavowed parts of prior testimony, or implicated Sylvester "Redd" Coles, whom Davis contended was the actual shooter. The state presented witnesses, including the police investigators and original prosecutors, who described a careful investigation of the crime, without any coercion. Davis did not call some of the witnesses who had supposedly recanted, despite their presence in the courthouse; accordingly their affidavits were given little weight by the judge. Evidence that Coles had confessed to the killing was excluded as hearsay because Coles was not subpoenaed by the defense to rebut it.

This case garnered worldwide attention by challenging the trust worthiness of bystanders who claimed they witnessed Davis shoot officer MacPhail. Davis's defense attorneys' asserted that witnesses who had identified him in court as a killer two decades ago had tried years later to recant their testimony. Dorothy Ferrell testified at the trial, "Well, I'm real sure, positive sure, that that is him, and you know, it's not a mistaken identity. I did see him and you know, on the fact of what happened and how it happened, you know, I'm pretty sure it's him." Nine years later, Ferrell signed an affidavit saying she didn't actually see the 1989 shooting, but pointed to Davis to tell police what they wanted to hear (Associated Press 2011).

Several states have reduced reliance on eyewitness testimony. The Supreme Court of New Jersey issued a ruling making it easier for criminal defendants in its state courts to get pre-trial hearings challenging eyewitness evidence. It also requires judges to give juries more detailed instructions about potential flaws in eyewitness identifications. In 2009, Maryland lawmakers prohibited prosecutors from seeking death unless they have DNA evidence, a videotape of the crime or a videotaped confession from the suspect. The Chicago-based Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University reports that out of 138 defendants sentenced to death for murder and then later exonerated since the mid-1970s, 32 had been convicted in whole or in part based on erroneous eyewitness testimony (Associated Press 2011).