Misidentification is one of, if not the most significant factor in false imprisonment. Across the country, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people who are imprisoned for being identified by witnesses. Identifying eyewitnesses plays a major role in developing an investigation. Although witnesses are helpful in identifying the perpetrator, that does not mean they always identify the correct person. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayOnce a witness identifies himself There are hundreds of cases in which death row inmates have proven innocent even if they have spent most of their life in prison. The way the police handle this type of case is because they influence the victim to make a choice on the spot. In a few cases, they died in prison and their innocence was revealed after their death. Eyewitness misidentification is one of the most important and sometimes deadliest forms of identification because it leads police or investigators to take the witness's word for it and place the suspect in jail for major part of his life and sometimes until his death, as indicated by the innocence project. , many recently silenced people were imprisoned in the first place because of mistaken identification. Eyewitness identification is the leading contributor to wrongful convictions proven by DNA testing, and accounts for 70 percent of convictions overturned through DNA testing nationwide. More than 230 people, serving an average of 12 years in prison, have been exonerated through DNA testing in the United States, and 75% of these wrongful convictions were linked to misidentification. An example of this is the case of André Hackett. Before being imprisoned, he was recently the victim of a shooting and was seriously injured. The main witness described the murder as using a crutch to beat the victim to death. Andrew Hackett had a solid albi and was physically incapable of being the murderer, but thanks to the witness who identified him to the police and having horrible lawyers to support him in the courtroom, he was convicted and served 25 years in prison. . - There is growing evidence of serious problems in eyewitness identification procedures. In fact, faulty eyewitness testimony is the number one contributing factor to wrongful convictions. False eyewitnesses played a role in 75 percent of the 273 DNA exonerations nationwide, according to the Justice Brandeis Innocence Project at Brandeis University. And in 36% of these cases, multiple eyewitnesses made the same mistake. One of the most well-known cases of mistaken identity occurred in North Carolina. Someone broke into the apartment belonging to student Jennifer Thompson and began raping her. She said that after carefully studying her attacker's appearance, it was Ronald Cotton who raped her. After spending 10 years in prison, he was exonerated thanks to a DNA test. In the heat of the moment, many small details of the murder's appearance are not noticed, so the witness focuses only on the large details. The witness in Andre's case noticed that the murderer was a tall man and that he was using a crutch to beat the victim. Witnesses significantly changed their description of the attacker (including key information such as height, weight, and the presence of facial hair) after learning more about a particular suspect. A.