When eyewitness memory reliably exonerates the wrongfully convicted

We challenge the longstanding belief that wrongful convictions mainly reflect the unreliability of eyewitness memory, arguing instead that they often reflect the criminal justice system's failure to heed the witness's initial identification decision. The initial memory test is special because it minimises the two main threats to accuracy - forgetting and contamination. Several lines of evidence suggest that eyewitnesses are more reliable on the initial test than previously recognised. First, laboratory studies show that initial confidence strongly predicts accuracy. Second, field studies using pristine lineups report few high-confidence misidentifications of innocent suspects. And third, analyses of DNA exoneration cases suggest that confident misidentifications at trial often contradict the witness's initial decision. On the initial test, these eyewitnesses often provided reliable evidence of innocence. This understanding offers a new approach to exonerating the innocent and preventing wrongful convictions: evaluate only the initial test, whether or not it was properly conducted.