Andre Hatchett was convicted of murder in 1991. However, there was no DNA evidence linking him to the crime. Only a single eyewitness said that he saw Hatchett attack the women in a park. During the trial, the eyewitness had testified and Andre Hatchett was charged with murder and was put in jail for 25 years. But 25 years into his sentence it was found that he was wrongly convicted and the eyewitness had testified for having a burglary charge dropped against him. An eyewitness was responsible for putting Hatchet in jail. Eyewitnesses are able to put a suspect behind bars for simple misdemeanors to serious felonies. Eyewitnesses can be incorrect which can lead to the wrong people being put in jail. Eyewitness’s memories can be
contaminated…show more content… When someone commits a crime it would be expected that they would try to disguise themselves to make sure that they are not recognized, which lets eyewitnesses see less of the criminal and makes it more difficult to identify them.
Also, seeing a crime being committed would most likely have the person witnessing the crime
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scene have stress which may affect the memory especially while trying to relive that moment while trying to identify the perpetrator. Juror’s are usually uninformed about how an eyewitness can have contaminated information or have the wrong person identified and are tricked by their confidence which may have them agree with an incorrect eyewitness. John Bohannon is a
Biologist and writes science journals at Harvard but was taught at The University of Oxford, he said, “Jurors can’t help but find an eyewitness’s confidence compelling, even though experiments have shown that a person’s confidence in their own memory is sometimes undiminished even in the face of evidence that their memory of an even is false,”