Unless the victim knows their attacker, witness ID is perhaps the most unreliable evidence allowed to be introduced in a courtroom. As a coach, it took me three baseball practices to be able to tell two kids apart who weren’t related to each other. I kept calling Michael “Isaac,” and Isaac “Michael.” I still have to look really close to tell who I’m talking to.
Let me get this straight. Some guy breaks into your house and commits unspeakable acts on you and your family. You go to a lineup a week later and see the man you are absolutely positive is the one who committed these acts. I mean, there is not one iota of doubt in your mind. If there is no other evidence, then you believe the cops should just let the guy go?
You are absolutely right. This is not something new. People in law enforcement and even in civil law know well, and have known well for a long time, that eyewitness testimony is both the weakest from a reliability standpoint, but the strongest in influencing a jury.
It is a bit counterintuitive, but eyewitness testimony is not nearly as credible as most think. The courts, judges, and lawyers, including prosecutors, know it too. They also know that juries are heavily influenced by such testimony.
Why the deference to such inherently unreliable testimony?
Well, courts (i.e., government) make money out it, judges cravenly defer to the jury, criminal defense lawyers scream about it, but no one listens, and prosecutors use it to advance what are often political careers thereby violating their oath of office.
16 If a false witness rise up against any man to testify against him that which is wrong;
17 then both the men, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges, which shall be in those days;
18 and the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother;
19 then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you.
20 And those which remain shall hear, and fear, and shall henceforth commit no more any such evil among you.
21 And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.