“It is the honest, but mistaken, eyewitness who creates the real challenge for the [justice] system,” said James Stribopoulos of York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School, in The Globe and Mail Feb. 17 in a story about the case of Joe Webber who was wrongfully convicted of robbery and forcible confinement in 2008. Stribopoulos said eyewitnesses usually appear sincere, making their testimony compelling, yet their evidence can all too often “be inherently flawed and completely unreliable.”
Stribopoulos praised the fact that trial judges now routinely issue warnings to juries about the frailties of eyewitness testimony, but he said the next step must be a prohibition on all in-court identifications. “That sort of identification evidence is really worthless,” he said. “Appellate courts have recognized it as such, but there is still a puzzling reluctance to exclude it from evidence.”
Stribopoulos teaches Criminal Procedure and Evidence in Osgoode's JD Program, while also serving as director of the Intensive Program in Criminal Law and as co-director of the Part-Time LLM Program Specializing in Criminal Law. In the past, he has served as director of Clinical Education at the Law School and as editor-in-chief of the faculty's blog, TheCourt.ca.
Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, with files courtesy of The Globe & Mail.