Eyewitness evidence is more reliable than has been thought

THE “SATANIC PANIC” that swept through America in the 1980s and 1990s held that thousands of ordinary people up and down the country were secretly members of devil-worshipping cults which were abusing, raping and murdering children on an industrial scale. Alleged victims made detailed allegations, often after therapy designed to “recover” memories that had supposedly been buried in the aftermath of trauma. Many people went to prison. None of it was true.One after-effect of the panic was to cement in the minds of both the public and the justice system the idea that eyewitness testimony is unreliable. That fitted with experiments by psychologists such as Elizabeth Loftus, which demonstrated just how malleable memories can be. The Innocence Project, an American charity, examined 375 cases of wrongful conviction for all sorts of crimes, and found misidentification of suspects by witnesses was a factor in around 70% of them.