Atlanta's Piedmont Park: Case Study

ABC News held a recent experiment where they staged a purse snatching in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. The object of the scenario is to give awareness on primetime that human perception is faulty and can lead to the imprisonment of innocent people. Actors were hired to play the victim and the criminal. The criminal walked up to the victim and asked if he could use her pen to write a phone number down. The criminal then proceeded to yell and then snatch her purse. The victim immediately turned to people in close proximity that witnessed the event and asked if they would be able to identify the thief in an array of pictures where there were six accused of doing the crime. Some of the bystanders stated they were certain they would be able to identify the culprit. However, just because a witness is certain does not mean they are accurate. In the experiment, 1/4th of the witnesses reports were inaccurate. According to Ruth Riess, “Those are not good odds when one’s freedom is at stake.” This experiment illustrates the problem that is at hand and the importance of it fixing the court system …show more content…
When there is a situation where the witness could be subject to misidentification because of any system variables that could occur that does not mean the court should not accept that person's response and identification of the culprit. As a species of moral codes that are embedded in our society, we would have trouble not accepting a witnesses statement even though it was highly stress-inductive and traumatic which statistically yields more inaccurate memories. For example, if there was a rape case, as a society we feel the need to put on trial the man/women who the victim reports to have committed this horrific act in prison. However, this can be destructive if we solely rely on eyewitness identification because how inaccurate it can