Case Studies
With genetic fingerprinting and DNA evidence now commonplace, many convictions based on eyewitness testimony are being re-examined. According to statistics, over 75% of the cases of DNA exonerations have involved mistaken eyewitness identification.
Abraham Lincoln used mistaken identity to defend William "Duff" Armstrong in 1858. He used a farmer's almanac to prove that a witness could not have seen Armstrong in the moonlight, as the position of the moon that night would not have provided sufficient illumination. Armstrong was acquitted.
Read more about this topic: Mistaken Identity
Famous quotes containing the words case and/or studies:
“Unaffected by “the march of events,”
He passed from men’s memory in l’an trentiesme
De son eage; the case presents
No adjunct to the Muses’ diadem.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of insects; the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)