Ronald Cotton's story illustrates that wrongful convictions based on eyewitness testimony are not unique. There are instances where individuals have been falsely convicted and placed on death row before being later exonerated.

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The Innocence Project is a non-profit organization dedicated to exonerating individuals who have been wrongly convicted of crimes. A significant focus of its work is on cases where convictions were based on flawed eyewitness testimony.

The Innocence Project

Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, M. D. (2020, April 22). Psychology (2nd ed.). OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/1-introduction

OpenStax Psychology (2nd ed.) Textbook

Though human memory is fragile, legal and investigative processes often depend on eyewitness testimony. This reliance is risky, as suggestive police identification procedures can cause eyewitnesses to make incorrect identifications, and such false testimonies can result in wrongful convictions. According to the Innocence Project's analysis of the first 239 DNA exonerations, eyewitness misidentification was a contributing factor in approximately 75% of these cases, establishing it as the leading cause.

Eyewitness Misidentification

An analysis of the first 239 DNA exoneration cases by the Innocence Project identified several common causes of wrongful convictions. Eyewitness misidentification was the most frequent factor, contributing to about 75% of cases. Other significant causes included flawed forensic science (about 49%), false confessions (about 23%), and unreliable informant testimony (about 18%).

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