Saturday’s editorial urges S.C. courts to follow the lead of those in New Jersey and give juries more information about the fallibility of eyewitness testimony before they deliberate:
“Trial lawyers have known for years that eyewitness testimony is probably the least reliable of almost any testimony.”
– Tommy Brittain, Myrtle Beach attorney
Perry Mitchell of Lexington spent nearly 15 years marking time behind bars for a rape he didn’t commit. According to the nonprofit Innocence Project, which worked on his case, Mitchell was arrested after a 17-year-old girl was attacked in the woods near where he lived. The Midlands resident was picked up by police because he vaguely fit the description given by the victim, and she subsequently picked him out of a photo lineup.
That eyewitness testimony, combined with some faulty forensic evidence, was enough to convince an S.C. jury that he was guilty, convicting him in January 1984. He continued to protest his innocence for years, and eventually succeeded in having a semen sample from the crime tested for DNA. It did not match Mitchell, and he left prison behind in August 1998. (He has yet to be compensated for the 15 years of his life that were unfairly taken away.)
Had court rules such as those that were handed down last week by the New Jersey Supreme Court been in place, perhaps things would have gone differently for Mitchell.
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