In the Criminal Justice system, the criminal procedure process sometimes has issues in which can confuse and alter the way certain convictions play out. One major issue is false eyewitness testimony. This has a big impact on our legal system because its inaccuracy can cause innocent people to be convicted of serious crimes. People such as Ronald Cotton are wrongfully convicted all the time due to information that can sometimes be unreliable. Some issues regarding identity include lineups, photo arrays, eyewitness identification, and jury bias. When these different ways of identification are used incorrectly it brings forth questions on just how reliable our legal system is.
To start off, lineups can be inaccurate. For example in the 60 seconds video an expertstates that a person may think they are picking out the right person when in all reality they’re just choosing the person who sometimes most looks like the suspect. Another issue with the lineups is that there are multiple
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Ronald Cotton became the victim to wrongful convictions when put in prison for a crime he did not commit. When put in a line up or even photo array the officer and victim should take into consideration that even though it might look convincing the perpetrator may not be in that specified lineup. To add on, individual photos compared to all st once should be taken more heavily into consideration as well. This gives the victim a less likely chance on choosing one based on comparison of photos but just recollection of memory. In CPL the rule of identification should also enforced to help defendant in situations such as this. Eyewitness identification is highly important in criminal trials without it it lets the defendant off a little easier, despite this different steps should be taken in order to avoid legal issues such as false eyewitness