The United States prides itself on its criminal justice system’s ability to punish the guilty and absolve the innocent. However, false convictions of not guilty persons are a major problem within the American criminal justice system because the system is victimizing innocent persons, proving that the system is fallible. The National Registry of Exonerations records the current number of exonerations at 2,003 since 1989, meaning that 2,003 people have been falsely imprisoned for varying amounts of time at the hands of the American criminal justice system (The National Registry of Exonerations); though, the true number of false convictions is unknown. There is not one single cause of wrongful convictions. Instead, there are several causes, such as false confessions, flawed forensic science, and eyewitness misidentification. A case may have been influenced by one or several of those causes. There is a need for change to prevent wrongful conviction. Eyewitness misidentification is the simplest cause to correct. Some might argue in favor of eyewitness identifications because they are often necessary for convictions; however, for the system to regain its authority and validity, the American criminal justice system should impose reforms to prevent eyewitness identifications from being tainted and to reduce their influence on convictions due to their involvement in false convictions. 

Historically, policy makers readily dismissed the importance of wrongful convictions in the American criminal justice system, either attributing them as being rare phenomenon or ignoring their existence at all. At the time, the belief was that the system was structured in such a way that it prevented any innocent person from being convicted of a crime because no innocent person would even be a suspect, preventing any possibility of a wrongful conviction. Former Attorney General Edwin Meese claimed that “… you don’t have many suspects who are innocent of a crime…If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect” (Cooper, 22). Because of the dominant mentality that error in criminal cases was not worthy much concern, the issue was ignored until forensic DNA technology was discovered in the mid-1980s, “shattering that perception of virtual infallibility—exposing the reality that error in the criminal justice system is systemic, not just freakishly rare or merely episodic” (Cooper, 22). DNA testing’s importance was slow to be recognized, but quick to be utilized in exonerating innocent convicted criminals and convicting real criminals. DNA testing had a revolutionary impact on wrongful conviction, turning it from a rare phenomenon into a reoccurring error. By 1990, people were aware of the problem of wrongful conviction, and it could no longer be ignored or significance minimized. 

Being aware of a problem can help in aiding to prevent it, but there is more to just recognizing the problem. Solving the problem is much more difficult and requires multiple steps. To achieve the goal of eradicating wrongful conviction from the criminal justice system, first, it is important to recognize that the criminal justice system has an emphasis on convictions, ‘we do not require certainty that those convicted are 100 percent guilty, simply that the prosecution establishes guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt”’ (Cooper, 159). It is important to recognize this because it shows that the system is aiding the problem. There are two models of criminal justice, crime control and due process. The crime control model of criminal justice is the conservative view of criminal justice that has an emphasis on convictions and efficient justice, while the due process model encourages fair treatment and the protection of the innocent. Currently, the systems approach to convictions reflects the crime control model, and for wrongful convictions to be reduced, it is necessary for the criminal justice system to change to reflect the due process model. Second, the causes of wrongful conviction must become known and addressed. There are many causes of wrongful conviction, but not all are identifiable. Research has been conducted to identify some of the causes of wrongful conviction. The University of Michigan Law School’s “Causes of Wrongful Conviction” presents six causes of wrongful conviction, eyewitness misidentification, junk science, false confessions, government misconduct, snitches, and bad representation, and knowing those causes is important to changing the system. It is also important to support those findings with specific instances where they have influenced the criminal justice system. The National Registry of Exonerations has data on five contributing factors to the wrongful conviction cases that they have on file: Mistaken Identification, False Confession, Bad Forensic Evidence, Perjury/False Accusation, and Official Misconduct. These categories are important because they are not just a list. Rather than just having the cause, the registry connects each cause to specific cases. In addition, each cause has statistics detailing the number of exonerations it contributed to, the total amount of years lost, and the average years lost. However, knowing the causes does not fix the problem. The final step in correcting wrongful convictions involves structural change because it is obvious that the original belief that the system safeguards against false convictions is false. The system needs to gradually put into action change for it to be fixed.

Change is necessary because wrongful conviction is a major problem. Society should be able to trust the mechanism that was created to protect them, and the American criminal justice system is meant to protect the innocent and convict the guilty; it has shown that it is incapable of accomplishing this. As a result, there is an extreme amount of damage done to “the defendant, the crime victim, investigators, prosecutors, defense attorneys, the entire justice system, and the community…” (U.S. Department of Justice, vii). While the authority of the criminal justice system is damaged, so is society’s trust in the criminal justice system. Exonerations of innocent people show the that the criminal justice system has a structural deficiency causing it to do exactly what it is supposed to be preventing. People live in fear that it may happened to them rather than trusting that the system will achieve its goal. In order to correct the problem, the criminal justice system must implement policies that will correct those systemic failures and prevent wrongful conviction. There will need to be multiple policies implemented, each concerning its own cause. 

To begin with, policy reforms should be created that revolve around the use of eyewitness identification in criminal cases because out of all the identifiable causes of wrongful conviction, eyewitness misidentification is the most preventable. There are currently 592 exonerations associated with eyewitness misidentification (“Exonerations in the United States Map”). Eyewitness misidentification can result from either because of mistakes or lies. As of September 2016, it was reported that unintentional misidentifications contributed to 30% and deliberate misidentification contributed to 26% of exonerations (Jackson, 1). The Innocence Project, an organization whose mission is to free the innocent and reform the system that is responsible for their imprisonment, recommends five easily implemented reforms and solutions to eyewitness misidentification: Blind/Blinded administration, Lineup composition, Instructions, Confidence statements, and Recording. These reforms are meant to prevent unintentional misidentifications, which are often due to procedural insufficiencies. Fourteen states have already implemented such reforms (“Eyewitness Misidentification”, 3); however, instead of allowing states to decide, there should be a national standard for police procedure implemented to minimize wrongful conviction nationwide.

Each of the Innocence Project’s suggested reforms involve adjusting police procedures, which are meant to prevent any outside influence on a witness’s identification. Blinded administration requires the officer conducting the lineup to be unware of who the suspect is. This prohibits the officer from making suggestive statements, unintentional gestures, or vocal cues which might otherwise influence the witness. In a lineup composition, to ensure that the suspect is not obvious, the “fillers” in a lineup should resemble both the witness’s description and the suspect; in addition, if the witness were to view more than one lineup, the suspect should not appear in more than one identification procedure. When administering a lineup, the instructions given to a witness should not be suggestive or pressure them in any way. Instructions should involve telling the witness that the suspect may or may not be in the lineup and that the investigation will continue no matter the result of the lineup to reduce the pressure and prevent a misidentification. Confidence statements should be taken and documented at the time of the witness makes the identification. This allows law enforcement to gauge the validity of the witness’s identification. Identification procedures should be recorded whenever possible so that there can be concrete evidence to refer to during trial (“Eyewitness Misidentification”, 3). None of these reforms are extreme, and they do not need to be. A simple adjustment to current policies can help prevent false convictions, but it is necessary for these adjustments to be implemented for them to be effective. 

Some may argue against reforms because eyewitness identifications can be critical in convicting criminals. They believe that by implementing reforms, convictions will be harder to get and eyewitness identifications may be seen as less trustworthy in trial. In addition, reforms such as lineup composition and confidence statements will make it harder for the witness. If a witness is unsure and is presented with a lineup of identical seeming “fillers” and suspect, they may question their confidence and in turn, their confidence statements will reflect negatively on their identification. However, these reforms are necessary. If a witness is not confident in their identification, then a conviction should not be based off of it. The sheer number of exonerations should prove that the previous standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” is not high enough. The standard for a conviction should be 100 percent guilt, or as close to it as possible.  

It is true that eyewitness testimonies are important for convictions, but no conviction should be solely based off eyewitness testimony. In 1984, Jennifer Thompson was a college student in Burlington, North Carolina. Her life was going just as she wanted when she was raped at knifepoint by an unknown assailant. As her assailant threatened to kill her, she made two decision that unknowingly determined the course of the proceeding cases and trial. She decided that she would live, and she would remember every detail of her assailant to ensure that they would be caught and convicted for the horrors that they subjected her to. Following the attack, Thompson provided the police with a description of her assailant so that they could compile a sketch. She identified the man who she thought had attacked her first from a photo array and later confirmed it in a line up. The police that handled her case called her a “perfect witness”. Her testimony and eyewitness identification of the supposed perpetrator, Ronald Cotton, lead to his conviction (U.S. Department of Justice, ix). Cotton was given a retrial in 1987 and was re-convicted on the same evidence. In 1995, after eleven years in prison, 33-year-old Cotton was exonerated due to DNA testing that proved that he was not the assailant who had attacked college student Jennifer Thompson. Instead, it was Bobby Poole, a man who was already serving consecutive life sentences for a series of rapes. While in prison, Cotton had heard that Poole was telling other inmates that he was the one who had raped Thompson (Jones, 609). Cotton’s lawyer made multiple attempts to use that evidence to exonerate Cotton, but it was not sufficient. As result of the police basing their initial case off of Thompson’s eyewitness misidentification of Ronald Cotton, and in the retrial, ignored the evidence provided by the defendant’s lawyer that contradicted the original conviction, he spent eleven years in prison for a crime he did not commit. As Thompson put it, “He had become the victim, and I had become the offender” (U.S. Department of Justice, ix). 

The case of North Carolina v. Cotton is an ideal example for why implementing reform is necessary. Cotton spent 10 years in prison because his conviction was dependent on Thompson’s confidence in her eyewitness identification. Had DNA testing not been discovered; Cotton would likely have had to serve his entire sentence: life plus 50 years (“Ronald Cotton”). At the time, had there been a procedure like lineup composition, Thompson may have questioned her identification of Cotton because lineup composition prevents a witness from being presented with the suspect in more than one identification procedure. Thompson was presented with Cotton twice, once in a photo array and then in a lineup, which may have influenced her confidence, as well as the police’s reliance on her identification. Wrongful conviction deprives people of their freedom, and the system needs to be adjusted so that wrongful convictions are no longer possible.

Not only does wrongful incarceration deprive people of their freedom and belittle the authority of the criminal justice system, it cost money. The United States has the fastest growing prison system in the world, housing 25% of the world’s prison population. Each inmate, on average, costs $36,286 per year to incarcerate, and those costs are being paid for by taxpayers. There are about 2,300,000 Federal and state prisoners, which makes the yearly cost of the prison system $83,500,000,000. The average taxpayer is then paying $260 per year (Robertson, 1). The National Registry for Exonerations records there currently having been 2,003 exonerated persons from the prison system since 1989 (“Exonerations in the United States Map”). Multiplying the yearly cost of housing a single prisoner ($36,286 per year) by the number of exonerated prisoners (2,003 exonerations) results in taxpayers having to pay $72,680,858 per year that that number of falsely convicted persons were in prison. In addition to that number, on average, the men and women who have been exonerated of their supposed crimes have spent 8.7 years in prison with a total of 17,499 years lost; totaling the cost of wrongful conviction since 1989 at $1,271,842,334,142. Though, that is only the total cost of recorded exonerations. It does not include the cost of those false convicts who have not been identified since 1989 or before then, which would increase the overall cost of wrongful conviction. Christopher and Jamie Cox Robertson suggest that there is as many as 100,000 people in prison who do not belong there (Robertson, 1); however, the true number is unknown. In preventing wrongful conviction, those who do not belong in prison shall maintain their freedom and the cost of the prison system will decrease. 

Wrongful convictions are a major problem within the American criminal justice system. They deprive innocent people of their freedom, damage the authority of the system, damage society’s trust in the system’s ability to do its job, and cost taxpayers money. There is not one single cause of wrongful conviction; instead, there are several. Eyewitness misidentification is one of the identified causes of wrongful conviction and does not require any extreme reforms to prevent. For the system to regain its authority and for society to trust the system again, the American criminal justice system should implement a national standard for police proceedings involving eyewitness identification to prevent misidentifications and thus, limit the amount of false convictions. Reforms will encourage a decrease in wrongful convictions, especially ones caused by eyewitness misidentification. 
