Abstract
The topic of wrongful convictions is no stranger in criminal justice and cognitive psychology. There are multiple causes for wrongful convictions, such as misconduct, false confessions, improper forensic science, etc., but eyewitness misidentification is the most prevalent cause for a wrongful conviction. According to an Association for Psychological Science article by Toglia and Berman (2021), 68% of wrongful convictions are caused by eyewitness misidentification. This means that over half of those wrongful convictions are due to an error in recollecting a memory of that event. The case of Steve Titus, who was misidentified as a rapist of an underage female, is a well-known example of a wrongful conviction due to eyewitness misidentification. Despite having solid evidence proving his innocence, the victim identified him as her attacker in the courtroom and he was wrongfully convicted. He shared discrepancies in his case with the Seattle Times, successfully receiving attention from Paul Henderson, who eventually managed to overturn his conviction, proving the eyewitness’ mistake in memory retrieval. This particular type of error in the retrieval of memory is known as False Memory Syndrome.
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