Eyewitness Testimony: Civil and Criminal

Elizabeth F. Loftus, Ph.D. is Distinguished Professor at the University of California - Irvine. She holds faculty positions in three departments (Psychology & Social Behavior; Criminology, Law & Society; and Cognitive Sciences). She is also Professor of Law. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University. Since then, she has published 20 books (including the award winning Eyewitness Testimony) and over 400 scientific articles. Loftus's research of the last 30 years has focused on the malleability of human memory. She has been recognized for this research with five honorary doctorates and election to the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the American Philosophical Society. She is past president of the Association for Psychological Science, the Western Psychological Association, and the American Psychology-Law Society.

Jennifer Dysart, Ph.D. received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Queen's University in 2004 and is now an Associate Professor of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. She has conducted research on many issues related to eyewitness performance including, but not limited to, various types of identification procedures (simultaneous and sequential lineups, show-ups, mug-shot searching, etc.), the effects of alcohol intoxication on eyewitness identification performance, double-blind administration, and cross-race identification. She is regularly invited to speak at judicial education, public defender and police conferences on the fallibility of eyewitness identification. Dysart has published in top peer-reviewed journals in the field and has written several book chapters on eyewitness identification accuracy.

James M. Doyle, Esq., an experienced trial and appellate litigator, has more than three decades of experience in teaching trial advocacy, including stints on the faculties of Georgetown University Law Center,and Boston University School of Law. He has authored a series of frequently cited articles on the legal aspects of eyewitness identification testimony, and the book, True Witness: Cops, Courts, Science, and the Battle Against Misidentification, a history of the legal system's struggles with eyewitness unreliability. He was a member of the United States Department of Justice Technical Working Group on Eyewitness Evidence. Between 1991 and 1997 he headed the Public Defender Division of the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services. He currently serves as the Director of the Center for Modern Forensic Practice of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Karen A. Newirth graduated magna cum laude, with Honors, from Brown University in 1996 and received her law degree from New York University in 2002. For nearly a decade, she represented criminal defendants in all stages of state and federal prosecutions. Interested in creating systemic change, she joined the Innocence Project to plan and execute impact litigation to address eyewitness misidentification, the leading contributing cause of wrongful convictions established through DNA. While at the Innocence Project, Ms. Newirth helped form its strategic litigation unit, whose goal is to use the courts to address the leading contributing causes of wrongful conviction, particularly by incorporating valid scientific research into judicial decision making. During her eight years at the Innocence Project, she was responsible for the organization's law reform litigation in the area of eyewitness misidentification, including training judges and attorneys, case consultation, and filing amicus briefs. She has published articles about various topics relating to eyewitness evidence and its treatment in the judicial system in peer reviewed journals and in popular media.