Cotton's case

EYEWITNESS

This Ronald Cotton case is basically on the importance of eyewitness. Jennifer Thompson, who is a college student lives by herself. While living alone, suddenly one day some raper comes into her room, and he tries to rape her. During the time, she doesn't try to call, but she tries to remember the details of the rapers face. She looks carefully, and studies the rapers face. After the raper goes away, she goes to the police, and then tells exactly what she saw. She tells everything, and the police tries to match up the face. When the police got the face matched up by guessing, they got people that looked alike the matched up photo. They were lined up in front of Jennifer, and she looked closely at the 6 people that were there. She chose one person, who was Ronald Cotton. However, the truth was that he wasn't the one that raped Jennifer Thompson, but he went to jail for 10 years due to eyewitness. After the jailed years, Jennifer and the police found that Ronald Cotton wasn't the one that raped, and Bobby Poole was the one guilty. As can be seen in this case, eyewitness was the important material used for the case. Eyewitness has a definition of someone who has a knowledge about a crime or dramatic event through seeing it firsthand. However, the problem about eyewitness is that it's just doesn't long that long. Also it is said that it is mostly wrong or not even close to the answer the person is reporting within the numerical details. This is a real research about the memories people have when they remember things. I personally don't think using eyewitness is useful in court because as it is said in the research it can't be accurate. Just because you have seen and remembered all the details like Jennifer Thompson, doesn't mean that she remembers the person exactly the same. Also like the case what will happen if the eyewitness went wrong, and a different person goes to jail like Ronald Cotton. Therefore, I think this eyewitness evidence won't be good proving way in court.