NCJ Number
88735
Journal
Northern Illinois University Law Review Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Dated: (Winter 1981) Pages: 59-85
Date Published
1981
Length
27 pages
Annotation
To safeguard the accused from unreliable out-of-court identifications, the court should permit expert testimony on the question of reliability of eyewitness identification in cases where the eyewitness was a stranger to the accused and little or no corroborating evidence exists.
Abstract
Juries accord enormous weight to eyewitness testimony, although the scientific community regards it as generally unreliable because of the fallibility of perception and memory and the mind's susceptibility to suggestion. Despite this opinion and the liberal approach to the admissibility of expert testimony taken by the Federal Rules of Evidence, judicial opinions generally uphold the exclusion of expert testimony on eyewitness identification. This situation is exemplified in People v. Johnson, a rape case involving a black defendant and a white victim which excluded such testimony by holding that it would invade the province of the jury and questioning whether the study of eyewitness identification was a science. Another common explanation given for exclusion is that the matter is within the experience of the average juror. Other decisions have noted that expert testimony on identification would confuse the jury, not aid it significantly, or be too time-consuming. Judicial reluctance to permit this testimony is based on the unarticulated belief that identification is not a science, even though the methodology employed by experimental psychologists is reliable and valid. A second reason may be a pragmatic fear of establishing a rule which would permit defendants to routinely call experts on the issue, culminating in courts being bogged down in battles of experts. The article includes 102 footnotes.