True Crime False Memory

Joseph was a 19-year old kid in New Orleans who was walking down the street with his friends, when a local police officer decided that he matched the description of someone who had committed an armed robbery the previous day. The officer decided to use the most suggestive identification procedure possible, which predictably resulted in Joseph being falsely identified, and facing the prospect of 60-years hard labor.

Danny was a tough kid from a local tagging crew, but he was no gunman. One day his life was turned completely upside down when he was accused of robbing seven taco stands at gunpoint. Learn how the police used faulty identification procedures which lead to Danny being misidentified by 13 different eyewitnesses! Listen to the story of how he and his lawyer Damon Hobdy used psychological science to fight these wrongful allegations against all odds.

Imagine walking down the street minding your own business when the police stop you, say you match the description of someone who just committed a serious crime, put you in handcuffs, and present you to a witness in the field. Before you could blink an eye, you have been misidentified and find yourself in a jail cell. The real kicker is, the witness who identified you actually went to high school with you years ago but does not remember you from those days. Rather, he figures that the reason you look familiar is because you’re the culprit.

A small town police officer in the San Diego area believes Michael committed a series of crimes and uses highly suggestive procedures in an attempt to obtain identifications from several eyewitnesses. Michael spends months in jail awaiting trial as the defense gradually pulls away at the layers of the government’s thin case to expose the wrongful prosecution.

A pizza is ordered to be delivered to a vacant apartment in a tough neighborhood, and when the 19-year old deliveryman walks up to the apartment complex he is rushed by two hooded gunmen who demand his money, food and phone. The apartment manager suggests that the police focus their investigation on Marvin, a 20-something year old tenant that she has been having trouble with and wants out of the complex. The only problem is, Marvin had nothing to do with the crime, and after being falsely identified from a suggestive photographic lineup he is thrown into jail and spent the next several months fighting for his freedom.

Two young gang bangers ride up to a couple of teens ask where they’re from, and when they don’t get the right answer they pull out guns and start shooting. One teen is killed and the other gets away. Johnny Sanchez is a 14-year old kid who lives in the neighborhood and he happens to match the description of one of the shooters, and because Johnny has a friend from school who is in the gang, the police consider him a suspect. Although Johnny had never been in trouble before, they put his picture in a lineup and he is identified as the killer. The only problem is, the lineup was obviously suggestive.

Two muggers assault an older woman and drag her down the street as she desperately holds onto her purse. The witness describes the main culprit as having long hair and no- tattoos, but after participating in a highly suggestive identification test, she falsely identifies Johnny Smith, a juvenile who is who is covered in tattoos and has short hair. This mistaken identification was then reinforced by the officer, which lead the witness to change her memory to match Johnny, now falsely remembering that the culprit actually had short hair and tattoos.

A hooded gunman on a bicycle rides up to Pedro and Alma, pulls out a silver automatic handgun, and demands their money. The next day, Pedro went out searching for the gunman and found Ronny; a 13-year old African-American boy with a hooded sweatshirt on a bicycle who had never been in trouble with the law, and at that moment decided that Ronny was the culprit. The only problem was, Ronny did not match the description of the gunman they had provided right after the robbery. Over the course of the next few months Pedro and Alma’s memory for the gunman evolved to match Ronny, as they doubled down on their belief that Ronny was the robber.

Joe was a 14-year old honors student who had never been in trouble with the law. In this episode, we examine how this short skinny bookworm happened to resemble the sketch of a rapist that was posted around his school and came to be misidentified by the witness and charged as an adult. The only problem was, the rapist was described as being 6’2” and weighing over 200 pounds, while Joe was a skinny freshman who was only 5’4”. Yet, memory plays tricks on witnesses, and in retrospect this witness now recalled her attacker as being much smaller than she originally recalled.

Two men walk into a crowded barbershop, murder one of the employees in cold blood and flee, leaving a room full of stunned witnesses trying to make sense of what just occurred. Tanika, the owner of the shop, is traumatized by the horrific incident. A couple of days later she sees Mike in a restaurant and is overwhelmed by fear – leading her to believe that he may be the killer. Tanika calls the police to report her suspicion, and Mike is thrust into a three-year ordeal to defend himself against the charge of special circumstance murder.

Nineteen year old Mark was riding his bike him from the community college library on a sunny afternoon when he was stopped by police because he matched some elements of a description provided by two eyewitnesses of a man who was exposing himself to women in the area. Learn how faulty police procedures used by inexperienced officers in the field lead to Mark being misidentified as the culprit and arrested, despite the fact that he did not match key elements of the description provided by the witnesses. The stakes were high, as a guilty verdict would put Mark’s picture on a publicly displayed list of sex offenders, that includes rapists and child molesters for the rest of his life.

A Gun shot, Murder and Police interrogations. Johnny was the sole eyewitness to his friend’s murder. He desperately wanted to help the police prosecute the killer, but he had no memory for ever seeing the culprit pull out the gun or shoot. Over the course of several weeks he was interviewed repeatedly by the police - pushing him to remember details of the crime that he never saw; and over time his memory began to change, to the point where he developed a detailed false memory for seeing the crime go down. How did this happen?

An armed robbery in a Bodega in Los Angeles leads the police and witnesses to search the area for the culprit. Learn how this search took an odd turn as one of the witnesses decided she ‘found the guy’, setting in motion a series of events that lead Mr. Norris to be falsely identified by three separate witnesses. How is that possible? How can three different people all make the same mistake? The science of eyewitness memory is used to explain how this series of events lead to this egregious error and how this played out at trial.

This is the story Luige, an elderly tailor and Leon, an African American young man who worked nearby in a local coffee shop. One day while working in his shop, an armed gunman came into his store, robbed him and brutally beat him in the process, and through a variety of circumstances Leon came to be arrested for this senseless violent crime. In this episode, we learn about how trauma and other factors affect eyewitnesses, and how Luige came to mistakenly believe with 100% confidence that Leon was the gunman, when in fact he was not.

A man steps into the intersection of a busy street and shoots several times into a public bus, hitting the driver. Carlos Cruz lived in the area, and his life was turned upside down when he was falsely identified by an eyewitness as being the shooter. Learn about Carlos’s year-long odyssey as his defense team used science of eyewitness memory to defend him against this wrongful prosecution.

True crime stories of innocent people who were mistakenly identified, and put on trial for crime they didn’t commit. How the waxy nature of eyewitness memory presents major challenges for the criminal justice system. Subscribe to True Crime False Memory on Apple Podcasts for new episodes coming soon.