Eyewitness Testimony Part 2

Lesley Stahl explores the task of an eyewitness to choose a criminal out of line up through memory. Jennifer Thompson falsely selected Ronald Cotton as her rapist.

>>[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.