True Witness: Cops, Courts, Science, & the Battle against Misidentification, reviewed by Dr. Katherine Ramsland, Web Mystery Magazine, Summer 2005

True Witness: Cops, Courts, Science
and the Battle against Misidentification
by James M. Doyle
reviewed by Dr. Katherine Ramsland

I don’t ordinarily volunteer to review books, but this one really must find its audience via whatever exposure it can get. It’s rare when a story comes along that’s important, well-told, engrossing, and could also have a real impact on improving the state of the legal system. True Witness uses the case of wrongly convicted Ronald Cotton, sent to prison for fourteen years based on the eyewitness testimony of Jennifer Thomson and ultimately exonerated by DNA evidence. This victory was largely the work of the Innocence Project, but fewer such cases might occur were the police to pay attention to the notion that eyewitness memory is just as corruptible as other types of evidence, just as delicate, and just as in need of proper handling. That’s the message of True Witness. Throughout his discussion of the issues about eyewitness testimony over the past century, Doyle, a veteran litigator, keeps this disturbing case effectively front-and-center. At the same time, he presents a history of one of the most important issues in the American system of justice.

While professionals in psychology who engage in research on forensic issues certainly know the name of Elizabeth Loftus, a noted expert in eyewitness accuracy research, few are aware of the long-running battle in this arena between psychologists and the courts. In Doyle’s book, we meet Hugo Munsterberg, credited with the earliest eyewitness memory experiments during the 1890s, and his rise to fame under William James at Harvard University. We see not just his work but his personality, his drive, his quirks, and his downfall at the hands of brilliant law professor, John Henry Wigmore, who has plenty of his own quirks. This book is no dry account of experimental research but a fleshed-out tale that enlivens the debate between psychologists and the courts and shows just why there’s been such controversy over the key issues.

After Munsterberg’s humiliation in the early 1900s, eyewitness research was put to bed and tucked in so tight that no one bothered with it again until the 1970s when another character happened along, Robert Buckhout. He had both a positive and negative effect on the field, but he certainly was a presence in the courts, shaking the confidence of juries over their ideas about the general trustworthiness of their own senses. In his turn, he sponsored the research that Loftus and others like her were doing, paving a way for them to bring to the court’s attention some shocking revelations about how the human mind yields to suggestibility, even to the point of accepting and creating false memories that feel just like authentic memories. By this time, the courts had made eyewitness testimony into a legal issue, formalizing procedures to avoid some of the pitfalls and fend off the psychologists, but continuing to make other types of errors.

Then along came Dr. Gary Wells, who clarified the notion of system variables in the handling of eyewitnesses that could be changed and estimator variables that could not. Serendipitously during the 1990s, he impressed Attorney General Janet Reno, who then pulled together a panel of police officers, attorneys, and researchers to hammer out a guide for the proper procedures for recording and using eyewitness testimony. While all sides had reservations about the document, issued by the Department of Justice, it paved the way for important discussions and a meeting of minds generally disinclined to give one another any credence. And as a result, the body of research about various factors involved in the complex phenomenon of eyewitness memory has gained a much wider audience.

Doyle, a legal commentator and co-author with Loftus of Eyewitness Testimony, accepts the idea that a man misidentified by a victim or eyewitness ought to have the benefit of these studies presented at his trial. Given the fact that a fairly high percentage of people exonerated by DNA evidence over the past decade were convicted with the help of misidentification, it’s an issue that should be taken seriously – especially if a person can actually be executed based only on the testimony of a single eyewitness. It’s frightening to think that any of us could be wrongly accused, sent to prison, and even end up on death row on the basis of evidence that could have better safeguards in place. No one who cares about science and the courts should miss this book.