Studies have shown that memory and recall are more fallible than failsafe. That finding undermines eyewitness identifications—a critical prosecution mainstay—revealing them as far more fragile evidence than imagined. Just ask Rickey Dale Wyatt of Dallas, Texas. On January 4, 2012, he was released from prison after serving 31 years of a 99-year sentence for a rape he did not commit. Police were sure that a single rapist had committed a cluster of rapes when they arrested Wyatt for three assaults. The third victim, who had been grabbed from behind and dragged at knifepoint to a ... Read More

There’s nothing like seeing a wrongfully convicted prisoner exit a prison gate, perhaps fresh from death row, to put a disquietingly human face on failings in the criminal justice system. Flawed forensic science, decision-makers’ cognitive biases, crime lab contamination, overstated or unverifiable claims for forensic evidence, eyewitness and investigator error, expert witnesses’ exaggerations, problematic interrogation tactics eliciting false confessions, evidence withheld from defendants inadvertently or even deliberately—the list goes on. In May, a study by the Center on Wrongful ... Read More