Ryan Matthews Case

In the year 1997, a man named Vanhoose was shot four times for refusing to give a robber money from his store. The culprit then fled the crime scene and jumped into the passenger’s seat of a car while taking off his mask. Numerous witnesses saw this criminal leave the crime scene, including a woman who later identified a seventeen year old named Ryan Matthews as the gunman. Furthermore, even Ryan Matthews' friend, Travis Hayes, eventually confessed to the crime of driving Matthews away from the crime scene (Ryan Matthews n.d). Although, the fact is worth mentioning that Hayes, and Mathews as well, suffered from some sort of learning disability, so Hayes' confession may have not been by his own volition (University of Michigan Law School 2023). However, Matthews maintained

Eventually, his friend was proven innocent in the month of December 2006 and was exonerated in the month of January 2007 (Ryan Matthews n.d). Cases like this are often common where innocent people are convicted of crimes that they did not commit. The reason for this is due to the courts over reliance on eyewitness testimonies, despite the fact that they tend to be unreliable. According to Albright (2017), “memory is malleable.” People often fail to remember various situations correctly because of what they do or do not perceive. Individuals can often mistake objects or others for something else. Moreover, crimes are committed without notice, so people may remember them incorrectly due to the sudden nature of said offense. Additionally, the conditions of the environment can have a massive effect on a person's perception of a situation (Albright 2017). For instance, in Matthews' case the witness, “Cheramie identified Johnson, [Ryan Matthews], as the gunman,” even though DNA evidence proves he was not the person that shot Vanhoose (University of Michigan Law School