Alibi witnesses.

Abstract

The stories of the wrongly convicted are often heartbreaking. Walter Swift was exonerated in May 2008, twenty-six years after he was first sent to prison for rape. His conviction was particularly puzzling given the presence of a strong alibi witness who corroborated his alibi. At the time of the rape, Swift was dating a woman who told police he was with her at the time the crime was committed, and she even produced shopping receipts to support this claim. Although her relationship with Swift ended, she continued to maintain his innocence during the intervening years, years in which she herself became a police officer. This alibi witness was not believed despite supporting physical evidence until new DNA evidence helped to convince the courts that the conviction was in error.An examination of the first 40 DNA exoneration cases determined that for 11 of those individuals, their "weak" or "absent" alibi contributed to their wrongful conviction (Connors, Lundregan, Miller, & McEwen, 1996;Wells et al., 1998). In many instances, it appears that exonerees face conviction despite providing alibis during the trial, perhaps due to the presence of compelling eyewitness evidence. Such findings allow us to see the ultimate paradox in these cases. The alibi, deemed weak by those in a position to judge,

The illusion of the perfect alibi: Establishing the base rate of non‐offenders' alibis

“…Over the years, multiple people have been wrongfully convicted all over the world (e.g., Saks & Koehler, ) of which some had an alibi for the moment that the crime was committed to prove their innocence but were not believed (Burke & Marion, ; Burke, Turtle, & Olson, ; Dahl & Price, ; Simon, ). In the criminal justice system, there appears to be an assumption that innocent people can generate an accurate and believable alibi (Olson & Charman, ), which means that the alibi should be correct and be supported by strong evidence.…”

“…Even the weakest form of physical evidence is still considered stronger evidence than the strongest type of witness evidence (Olson & Wells, ). The rationale is that witnesses can either be motived to lie in favor of the suspect or that they can be mistaken (Burke & Marion, ).…”

What You Say Matters: The Influence of Alibi Content on Memory and Forensically Relevant Judgments

“…Lindsay, 2007), a domain that has led to positive changes in the administration of eyewitness identification procedures. Many of the findings from the eyewitness literature are also relevant to issues surrounding alibi providers and alibi witnesses (Burke & Marion, 2012), as discussed in the following sections.…”

“…In terms of both physical and person evidence, the majority of alibis are likely to be considered weak by evaluators (Burke & Marion, 2012;Burke, Turtle, & Olson, 2007;Olson & Charman, 2011). Physical evidence is frequently not available and when an alibi witness is presented, that person will likely be perceived to be motivated to lie and, therefore, will not be considered credible.…”

Children as alibi witnesses: the effect of age and confidence on mock-juror decision making

“…Moreover, witness confidence has long been demonstrated to be a key factor in jurors' decision making (Wheatcroft, Wagstaff, & Manarin, 2015). Alibi evidence is a rapidly growing area of research (Burke & Marion, 2012) with research demonstrating that alibi evidence is commonly perceived as deceptive (Allison, Jung, Sweeney, & Culhane, 2014) and something to be suspicious of (Olson, 2013;Olson & Wells, 2004;Price & Dahl, 2014). However, relatively little research has examined evaluations of children in the role of alibi witnesses (Dahl & Price, 2012), rather than eyewitnesses for the prosecution, so it is unclear as to whether this common view of adult alibi witnesses also extends to evaluations of child alibi witnesses.…”