>>[Leslie Stahl] Now that DNA has exonerated more than 230 men,
mostly in sex crimes and murder cases,
criminologists have been able to go back and
study what went wrong in those investigations.
What they've honed in on is faulty eyewitness testimony.
Over 75% of these innocent men were convicted, in part,
because an eyewitness fingered the wrong person.
At the heart of the problem is the fragility of memory.
As one researcher told us, we now
know that memory is not like a video tape recorder.
You don't just record an event and play it back.
Instead, memory is malleable-- full of holes,
easily contaminated and susceptible to suggestion--
as in the case of Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton.
Before this case, did you think that there
were a lot of innocent people put away?
>>[Gauldin] No. >>[Stahl] You didn't?
>>[Gauldin] No, I didn't.
Innocent people are convicted of crimes they didn't commit,
I believed that.
>>[Stahl] What do you think now? >>[Gauldin] Oh, I know better.
I mean, well over 200 cases nationally.
We've had a half a dozen in this state alone.
The first, of course, was my case.
>>[Cotton] Hallelujah!
>>[Stahl] And as these innocent men have been freed in one
state after the next, we've learned something else--
that in all the cases where eyewitnesses were wrong,
the real perpetrator was not in the initial lineup.
>>[Thompson] When you're sitting in front of a photo lineup,
you just assume...
one of these guys is the suspect. It's my job to find it.
>>[Stahl] And Jennifer did her job. She found the suspect's photo.
Problem is, the suspect, Ronald Cotton, was not the rapist.
>>[Thompson] Bobby Poole's photograph was not in the photo lineup.
>>[Stahl] Right.
>>[Thompson] He was not in the physical lineup.
>>[Wells] When the real perpetrator is not in the set, is none of them,
witnesses have a very difficult time
being able to recognize that.
>>[Stahl] Gary Wells, a professor of psychology at Iowa State
University, has been studying eyewitness memory for 30 years.
He says when the real guy isn't there,
witnesses tend to pick the person who looks most like him.
>>[Stahl] I think that Ronald Cotton and Bobby Poole
look very much alike.
They have very similar lips, shape of their eyes,
their eyebrows kind of go up in a look of surprise.
>>[Wells] Yes. Yes.
Without him in the lineup, Ronald Cotton
was the one who was in jeopardy.
>>[Stahl] Wells says eyewitness testimony has two key properties.
One, it's often unreliable.
And two, it is highly persuasive to jurors.
I can see why it's so persuasive.
Someone says, I was there. You'd believe that person.
>>[Wells] You believe that person because they have no reason to lie.
>>[Stahl] Yeah. >>[Wells] The legal system
is set up to kind of sort between liars and truth tellers.
And it's actually pretty good at that.
But when someone is genuinely mistaken,
the legal system doesn't really know how to deal with that.
And we're talking about a genuine error here.
>>[Stahl] He walked us through what went wrong, some of it counterintuitive.
When Jennifer spent five minutes studying the photographs,
she and Detective Gauldin thought she was being careful.
>>[Thompson] I didn't want to come across, I don't think,
as somebody who was like, that's the one.
I really wanted to be sure. >>[Stahl] Wells says, no good.
>>[Wells] Recognition memory is actually quite rapid.
So we find in our studies, for example,
that if somebody is taking longer than 10, 15 seconds,
it's quite likely that they're doing something other than just
using reliable recognition memory.
So you're saying if she really recognized the guy it would
have been almost instantaneous. >>[Wells] Quite quick, yes.
>>[Stahl] He says a better way would have been to
show Jennifer lineup photos, or people, one at a time.
So that she would compare each one directly to her memory
rather than to one another.
Wells showed me a study in which more than 300 subjects
were shown deliberately shaky videotape of a simulated crime.
>>[Wells] You look out a window and you see some suspicious behavior.
What happens is, we tell them later
that this person, that you saw right there,
put a bomb down the airshaft there.
>>[Stahl] Then, subjects are shown a lineup
and asked to identify the bomber.
That would be so hard.
>>[Wells] Very difficult. >>[Stahl] And I just saw it.
And, of course, you're particularly cautious right now.
You know, now-- after we've talked--
probably not to pick anyone. >>[Stahl] No. No, actually...
I actually know who it is because if I
had come upon that-- >>[Wells] Yeah? Who is it?
I think it's this guy. Am I wrong?
>>[Wells] Mm-hm. >>[Stahl] Am I wrong?
>>[Wells] Yeah. >>[Stahl] I'm wrong?
>>[Wells] Yeah. >>[Stahl] Ok, so there you go.
And I'm already saying how hard it is.
>>[Wells] It's none of them. >>[Stahl] It's none of them.
>>[Wells] And it's so-- and you know about it.
>>[Stahl] Isn't that bizarre? >>[Wells] You know about this.
We've talked about this.
So, this is the difficult-- this is what makes it so difficult.
>>[Stahl] Look what you just to me. >>[Wells] Yeah.
>>[Stahl] I'm mortified. I feel like Jennifer.
Wells says in real life the mistake is often compounded
by what happens next.
Remember the seemingly innocent information
Jennifer says she got from police after she
picked Ronald Cotton out of the physical lineup?
>>[Thompson] "That's the same person you picked out in the photo lineup."
So, in my mind, I thought, bingo.
I did it right.
>>[Stahl] Wells studied what that reinforcement does.
After half his subjects did what I did--
picked an innocent person from this lineup--
he told them nothing.
Then asked them questions about what they had seen.
Very few felt highly confident about their choice.
>>[Wells] Only about 4% are saying they had a great view,
which is good because we gave them a lousy view.
Only about 3% are saying they make out details of the face.
That also is good because they really couldn't.
>>[Stahl] But he told a second group of subjects--
after they made the same incorrect choices--
"Good, you picked the suspect."
>>[Wells] Now what happens, is.. >>[Stahl] Oh my.
>>[Wells] ...almost 45% of witnesses now report
that they were positive, or nearly positive.
Notice that over 1/4th of them now say they
had a great view.
>>[Stahl] This is really what happened to Jennifer.
>>[Wells] It is what happened with Jennifer.
>>[Stahl] Yeah. What this seems to be saying, is that a reinforcement...
...alters memory. >>[Wells] It does.
>>[Stahl] Dramatically. >>[Wells] It does.
>>[Stahl] He says the solution is to have someone independent
administer the lineup, someone who doesn't even
know who the suspect is--
and certainly not the detective on the case.
You shouldn't have been there. >>[Gauldin] I shouldn't have been there.
>>[Stahl] No. But, nobody did anything wrong.
I mean, that was the practice.
>>[Gauldin] Well, no, that was a common practice.
It was the tradition. It was how it was done then.
Law enforcement wasn't schooled in memory.
We weren't schooled in protecting memory--
treating it like a crime scene,
where you're very careful, methodical, about what you do
and how you use it.
We weren't, we weren't taught that in those days.
>>[Stahl] But none of these errors explains
perhaps the most puzzling part of this story.
How it is that Jennifer could see
Bobby Poole in the courtroom and not realize her mistake?
>>[Stahl] You're looking into the face of the man who raped you,
whose face you had studied so intently. >>[Thompson] Yes.
>>[Stahl] And there was no flicker, nothing between you and Bobby Poole?
Nothing? >>[Thompson] Nothing.
I have gone back there many times trying to think,
was there? Was there ever a moment?
Did I ever look at him, and think-- [gasps]
and I didn't.
>>[Stahl] Elizabeth Loftus is a professor of psychology and law
at the University of California Irvine and an expert in memory.
She showed me an experiment she says
might help explain Jennifer's mistake.
She asked me to study these faces.
Then, after a few minutes, she gave me a memory test.
>>[Loftus] Which of these two faces do you recognize?
>>[Stahl] Right. >>[Loftus] Ok, you picked right.
>>[Stahl] Left. >>[Loftus] You picked left. Ok.
>>[Stahl] I said left, but I wasn't 100% sure.
And then, the tricky part.
Oh.
Well, I'll tell you why I'm stymied--
because I just picked this one on the left two seconds ago,
but now I'm not sure because those two
look very much alike to me.
But I'm going to tell you the left.
But I was wrong. It was the one on the right.
Loftus explained how I had been duped.
>>[Loftus] You saw this face.
Then I gave you a test where I presented you
with an altered face along with a novel one.
So I pretty much induce you to pick a wrong face
because I don't even have the real guy there.
It's an altered version.
And later on, when you now have a choice
between the altered one and the real one,
you stuck with your altered left choice.
>>[Stahl] This is exactly what happened to Jennifer.
>>[Loftus] This can help us understand why Jennifer can
be sitting in a courtroom and be looking at Bobby Poole--
the original rapist--
and looking at Ronald Cotton and saying, no, it's not Poole.
It's Cotton.
Because she has been picking him all along.
>>[Stahl] I begin to wonder whether there should ever be
eyewitness testimony in trials. >>[Gauldin] (laughs) Well...
Because of the tricks that memory plays.
>>[Gauldin] Yeah, I think what's important, though, is to understand that--know that.
Know it is a police officer, as an investigator, as attorneys.
>>[Wells] We need eyewitnesses.
I mean, if we couldn't convict based on an eyewitness,
that's giving a lot of comfort to criminals.
We have no choice.
We have to find ways to make this evidence better.
>>[Stahl] And that's something Jennifer has tried to do ever since,
by telling her story to prosecutors, police, defense attorneys.
And she's had some success.
Her state, North Carolina, was the first in the country
to mandate reforms by law--
showing victims lineup photos one at a time
and emphasizing that the right answer
may be none of the above, having lineups
conducted by a person who doesn't
know who the suspect is--
or not by a person at all.
>>[computer voice] The person who committed the crime
may or may not be included.
>>[Stahl] One system--now used in a handful of cities--
is computer software Mike Gauldin helped
develop to have a laptop conduct photo lineups.
>>[computer] Does this person look familiar to you?
>>[Stahl] But law professor Rich Rosen says that in the
vast majority of places there has been no reform,
and that needs to change.
>>[Rosen] This is something that police officers can and
should be in favor of.
>>[Stahl] Because you're not getting the real guy off the street.
>>[Rosen] Yeah. Bobby Poole raped other women because
they went after Ron Cotton.
So Ron is not the only person who suffered from this mistake.
>>[STahl] Ronald Cotton, now 47-years-old, has worked hard
to rebuild his life.
He works the late shift in a factory.
He's been married for 12 years, and has a 10-year-old daughter.
They live in a house paid for with money North Carolina paid
him in restitution--
$10,000 for each of the 11 years he spent in prison.
When he can, he joins Jennifer in her campaign for reforms.
One of the most amazing things to have come out of this
miscarriage of justice, is the most unlikely of friendships.
Jennifer and Ron say they speak on the phone about once a week.
Their families are friends.
They say they have a shared bond that is hard for most people to fathom.
Have people ever met you for the first time
when you're together and said, kind of cheerily,
"Hey, how did you two meet?"
>>[Thompson] Yeah. >>[Stahl] They have?
>>[Thompson] We get it on the airplane a lot. >>Cotton] Oh, yes.
We're traveling and I usually just go, "You tell them."
>>[Stahl] What do you say?
>>[Cotton] We would look at each and laugh, you know,
and finally, we go ahead--
>>[Stahl] And tell them? >>[Cotton] Mm-hm.
>>[Stahl] And they have recently co-authored a book in hopes
that their story can inform and inspire others.
Today, when you think about what happened to you that night when
you were 22-years-old, whose face is there?
>>[Thompson] Nobody's. >>[Stahl] Oh my.
>>[Thompson] That, to me, is one of the most beautiful things,
is I don't have a face.
Bobby Poole is dead.
I don't ever have to worry about him ever hurting another woman.
He died in prison.
And Ronald Cotton is my friend.
>>For more on how memories can be contaminated,
go to 60minutes.com.