Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Eyewitness
A recent case was done on 60 Minutes about the effectiveness of an eye witness. Jennifer Thompson was raped on July 28, 1984. When shown pictures of possible suspects, after several minutes, Jennifer pointed to Ronald Cotton and said that he was the one. She then backed up her statement by choosing him once from a line of people. Ronald Cotton was convicted and spent eleven years in prison before hearing about a new test for identification called DNA. After a DNA test of a single sperm cell preserved from the case, Ronald Cotton was freed. Through devine forgiveness powers, Ronald has accepted Jennifer's sincere apology and they have become close friends that try and spread the knowledge of their story in order to help others. There have been 233 people exonerated in the United States alone since the discovery of DNA testing; furthermore, three quarters of these people were originally convicted through an eye witness testomony. This is thought to be because the human brain can trick itself into thinking one of the people in a line up must be the person. Once they have picked them out from the line-up, their brain is now convinced that he/she is the person which can lead to very convincing emotions in the court room. Hopefully DNA can continue to free the innocent and lock away the true guilty.
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4 comments:
Right away the topic of this current event caught my attention and encouraged me to read on. Before I continue, I just want to say how "unique" it is for this falsely accused man and his accuser to become best friends. Now, back to forensics, I was fascinated to learn how the human mind can actually trick itself into thinking something totally different from the truth. Ideally, I would have liked to hear of more instances where eye-witnessing has caused issues and I would have liked to read about more ways this problem is being confronted. Overall, I was enjoyed reading this current event for it was interesting, direct, and to the point. It also shows how vital forensic testing is to the world.
I thought it was great that the author picked a current event that was featured on 60 minutes. I thought the topic was very interesting and unbelievable. I also thought it was great the author emphasized the importance of DNA technology.
To improve, maybe the author could have been his summary a little longer or talked more about similar cases.
I was surprised to learnt that the human mind can trick itself.
I like the way Austin summarized this article. I also like the way he went into detail on who did it, what happened, etc., as well as when the case took place. Well done, Austin!
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