Research indicates eyewitness identifications are incorrect approximately one-third of the time in criminal investigations. For years, this phenomenon has significantly contributed to wrongful convictions all over the country, including in Washington State. But jurors, attorneys, and police remain unaware of the nature and extent of the problem and continue to give undue weight to eyewitness evidence. Experts have estimated that approximately 5,000–10,000 felony convictions in the United States each year are wrongful, and research suggests that approximately 75% of wrongful convictions involve eyewitness misidentification. The phenomenon of eyewitness misidentification is also amplified and most troublesome in the context of cross-racial identification—when a witness identifies someone of another race. Experimental research suggests that an eyewitness trying to identify a stranger is over 50% more likely to make a misidentification when the stranger and eyewitness are of different races. Consistent with this finding, approximately one-third of wrongful convictions uncovered by DNA analysis nationwide have involved whites misidentifying blacks. For these reasons, this Article focuses on cross-racial misidentification, and discusses the nature and extent of the problem and potential tools for addressing it; however, this Article’s reasoning applies in large part to eyewitness misidentification in general.

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