Eyewitness Identification Cases

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Eyewitness identification is among the most universal and major types of evidence used in the criminal justice system. Eyewitness testimony is the act of a witness identifying a perpetrator of a crime based off memory of the offender’s physical characteristics (Wells & Olson, 2003).
Although eyewitness identification holds much legal weight, it is not always a reliable method of distinguishing perpetrators. With access to objective DNA testing to revisit cases, the majority of cases where the charged was found to be wrongfully-accused were found to be as a result of misidentification (Hampikian, West, & Akselrod, 2011). In one case, five separate witnesses identified the same innocent person as the perpetrator (Wells, Small, Penrod, Malpass,