ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY IN VISUAL IDENTIFICATION EVIDENCE

Abstract A wrongful conviction is one of the worst errors of the criminal justice system. Historically, there have been several cases where individuals have been wrongly convicted on the basis of eye-witness identification evidence. Disputes about identity have been the cause of a significant number of miscarriages of justice, both in India and abroad. One obvious problem with identification evidence is that it is difficult to secure the accuracy of witness identification for a variety of reasons (for instance, the ‘vagaries of human perception and recollection’ such as memory distortion and suggestibility; in addition to factors such as stress, rapidity of events, or bad lighting at the time of the initial identification itself. To reduce the number of miscarriages of justice, the formal procedure should be amended in line with current best practices. Visual identification is basically a memory task. Psychology can play more effective roe in the area of misidentification by determining the memory capacity of the eye witnesses. Psychologists still have much to contribute in the area of law and law enforcement, to prevent even more miscarriages of justice. Psychologists are still awaited to be recognized as expert witnesses. This paper critically examines the admissibility and reliability of visual identification evidence in the light of Turnbull guidelines.