Incorrect Testimony of Eyewitness: 12 Years of Waiting for Freedom

147 months. That is how it took for Randall Dale Adams to be exonerated back in 1989. 147 months is an abundantly tiring time period to be accused of a crime that you did not commit.  However, for Randall Dale Adams’, that was his reality. For over 12 years, he was accused of killing someone he did not. It wasn’t until filmmaker, Errol Morris, whose film “The Thin Blue Line” surfaced that suggest that Adams’ didn’t kill anyone, but “suggests that prosecutors knew he didn’t”. This evidence further supports that eyewitness testimony is unreliable.

However, there comes a time when eyewitness testimony can’t be enough to imprison innocent people, and needs to be done away with. By allowing eyewitness testimony to convict wrongfully accused persons, the system is failing us. Eyewitness misidentification accounts for more than 70 percent of “wrongfully convicted individuals” according to the Innocence Project. The Innocence Project is an organization that helps exonerated those wrongfully accused. By doing away with eyewitness testimony and relying solely on facts, we can move forward and start rightfully prosecuting those who actually committed their crimes. 

To start with the facts on what happened that night, according to “Dangerous Predictions” by Bruce Gross, Officer Wood was with his partner, Officer Turko when they “made a routine traffic stop of a car driving without headlights.” Officer Wood would then be shot five times when he approached the car and died instantly. Gross then goes on into further detail explaining that 1. Turko shot back several times while the car drove away. 2. Turko did not get a license plate number and only saw “the driver in the car.” Adams’ was offered a ride by David Ray Harris after running out of gas earlier in the afternoon. The pair ended up drinking and smoking together, later going to “an adult drive in theatre and then Harris dropped Adams off at a motel where he had been staying.” Those are the facts and that is what happened on November 27, 1977. 

How did falsified eyewitness testimony ruin a person’s livelihood and cost him nearly 12 years of his life? Adam’s would know. Jumping back to the year 1977, Adams was convicted and given a death sentence for killing Robert Wood, a Dallas police officer. Firstly, as stated in “DangerouS PredictionS”, this traffic stop was made a little after midnight, which concludes besides maybe a few street lights, it is not possible for Turko to properly be able to see who shot Wood. If Turko had seen who shoot Wood at say noon on a bright sunny Dallas afternoon, maybe Adams wouldn’t have to have 147 months taken from him. Just given the fact that this event happened after midnight, Turko’s sight is obviously obstructed due to night time vision causing future faulty eyewitness testimony.

 According to Scott Fraser, a forensic psychologist, describes in detail regarding another case where a similar night time crime had happened. Fraser describing how in his case multiple people testified that the lighting was fine but “the roof of the car is causing a shadow cloud inside a car, which is making it darker.” Fraser is concluding that there was no way that eyewitness testimony was accurate, “I knew the depth of field being 18 inches or less.” This evidence further states that eyewitness testimony is not credible. If you’re depth of field at midnight is only 18 inches, how is it possible to recognize a face out of a police lineup as that person was driving away. 

Additionally, Emily Miller had previously testified in Adam’s trial back in 1977 stating that her and her husband were “driving past as Wood approached the car from which fatal shots were fired. This eyewitness testimony is shown not to be reliable. This is due to the fact that at midnight with dim lit street lights at best Miller would not have been able to see the car, Fraser as stated above proves this.  As Miller’s testimony not only unreliable due to poor lighting, Miller only identified Adams’ because “only after a police officer told her that she had picked the wrong man and gave her Adam’s number in the lineup.” Fricker always goes on to say “The court found that the prosecutor, Douglas Mulder knew this.”. Mulder not only endangered his career but Adams’ life by knowing about this falsified eyewitness testimony. 

Under the Henry Wade administration, it was “easier to get a death sentence against him than the one David Ray Harris.” Fricker continuing on stating that “Harris was only 16 at the time and ineligible for the death penalty.” The notion that a 16-year-old was not eligible for the death penalty (despite confessing in a documentary 12 years later) somehow makes it right to accuse someone else, shows that Wade’s administration clearly was 1. Not following the law. 2. Not abiding by the facts. Having this corrupt administration not care about the facts or follow the law just completely agrees with the claim that eyewitness testimony is not credible. If Wade thought it was easier for Adams’ to get a death sentence over Harris, that proves that he wouldn’t have cared about how accurate the eye witness testimony was either due to the fact he cared about what was easy and not. 

As Fraser and other psychologists around the world are trying to do is to inform people that “faulty human memory can have in identifying culprits correctly.” We cannot solely rely on what we think we remember, especially in the case of incarceration. We must do better and we must rely on science and facts displayed for others. 42 years ago, an innocent man was sent away and the media had a field day, all due to an administration not doing its job and relying on facts instead of memory. 

42 years later, and there is still such a long road ahead of us. We must continue to educate and not base anything on gut feeling, but tangible evidence. For some, their whole lives were ripped away.  For some, they got away with murder for years. Evidence is power, and it empowers while memory is not reliable. We can and must do better.

Works Cited

• Forum, P. E. (June 2004). A National Survey of Eyewitness Identification. U.S. Department of Justice.
• Fraser, S. (2012 , May ). Why Eye Witnesses Get It Wrong. Retrieved from Ted : https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_fraser_why_eyewitnesses_get_it_wrong?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare
• Fricker, R. L. (July 1989). Crime and Punishment in Dallas . ABA Journal, 52-53.
• Gross, B. (2004). DangerouS PredictionS. Forensic Examer, 1-5.