100 guilty men, 1 innocent man, and all that

At some point I'll post some cites to back this up, but in the meantime, let's just pretend that I know everything:

1) Eyewitness testimony is one of the LEAST RELIABLE types of evidence
(because our memory of what we have seen is very inaccurate --- our brain makes up missing pieces, and details, events, etc. can be suggested later and "inserted" into our brains and made a part of our "memory." The insertion can take place through participating in or hearing conversations about the events, looking at pictures, re-visiting the "scene," etc.***

2) Jurors consider eyewitness testimony one of the MOST CREDIBLE/RELIABLE type of evidence.

3) [Insert any race here] people are generally not good at distinguishing or recognizing the faces of people of [insert different race] heritage.

If the above is true, then in criminal cases there must be many "eyewitness" identifications of people that are incorrectly made. And these bad identifications are probably given undue credence by jurors. And the wrong guy is probably convicted a lot. DNA evidence has freed a lot of people lately, which seems to indicate that, for whatever reason, the wrong guy in fact does get convicted, all too often. This is troubling.





***Have you ever looked everywhere for something and imagined its color in your head? I've been loooking EVERYWHERE for my bright orange Black & Decker drill case. Just yesterday I finally found it, but you know what? It's not orange. It's BLACK. It has one orange buckle thing. The drill ITSELF is orange, yes. I transferred the drill & buckle color to the case in my mind, and I would have sworn -- ha! I would have testified under oath that it was orange. I also told my roommate that I was looking everywhere for my ORANGE drill case. She didn't say, "Orange? That thing is black!" She said, "Hmmmm, I haven't seen it." When I found it, I said, "Hey you know my drill case? I thought it was orange. It's really black." She said, "It is? I was imagining it orange!" If I had told her I was looking for my black drill case, what do you want to bet she would have imagined it black (as it really is)? We BOTH would have testified under oath that it was orange. I don't think we would have even thought of the color as an issue in question at all -- we would have had no idea we were lying (is it lying if you think it's true?). TWO EYEWITNESSES, SAYING THE SAME THING. You see?