In Canadian law eyewitness identification is treated as intrinsically unreliable. Judges are required now to instruct themselves or instruct juries that they must be very cautious about relying on eyewitness testimony alone to find anyone guilty of any criminal offence. Canadian legal history has demonstrated many miscarriages of Justice whereby innocent persons have been wrongly convicted based on eyewitness testimony. It is generally accepted that the false identifications have often emanated from witnesses who made innocent mistakes in identifying the person they believed committed a crime. There have been so many proven cases of false identification in criminal trials such that our courts have now become very wary of eyewitness identification evidence.
Our courts have concluded that eyewitness identification error is one of the primary contributors to wrongful convictions. Eyewitness evidence is often unreliable for many reasons including, lighting and distance issues, limited opportunities for observation, poor memory recall, stress, emotions, and different race identifications. Research has shown that as many as 75% of false convictions have been caused by inaccurate eyewitness testimony. Sometimes the mistakes made by eyewitnesses are unintentional. There are many other factors that cause eyewitnesses to be inaccurate including poor memory, stress, poor eyesight, and limited time of observation.
The above is the an excerpt of Patrick J Ducharme’s book, Canadian Criminal Procedure, available at Amazon or in bulk through MedicaLegal Publishing along with Criminal Trial Strategies.
Subscribe to Patrick Ducharme’s Youtube Channel