Henry James was released last month from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola after 30 years of imprisonment when DNA evidence exonerated him from the 1981 rape of his neighbor.
James reportedly maintained his innocence during his three-decade incarceration, continually appealing his case until his acquittal with the help of the Innocence Project, a non-profit group dedicated to ending false imprisonment through DNA evidence.
According to the Innocence Project, James’ accuser originally told police she did not know her attacker, but later picked James out of a lineup, resulting in his wrongful incarceration. After 30 years in Angola, James was released when a DNA test showed the bodily fluids obtained through a rape kit of the victim were not his.
James’ case shows just how unreliable the memories of eyewitnesses can be, especially after traumatic events. According to The New York Times, some memory researchers believe witness testimony should even be treated as trace evidence rather than hard proof.
The first man to be exonerated via DNA evidence was freed in 1989. Since then, 280 people have been freed, of which about 75 percent of single perpetrator crimes were wrongfully accused based on faulty eyewitness testimony.
Experiments over the past few decades have shown how susceptible memories are to suggestion and misinterpretation and how easily the mind can miss important details when occupied with other tasks.
A famous experiment conducted at Harvard University involved a group of test subjects watching a video of people dressed in either white or black passing basketballs. Participants were asked to keep track of how many times a person in white passed a ball.
A few seconds into the video something unusual happens. A woman in a gorilla suit walks through the group of people dodging basketballs as they fly left and right.
Most people are successfully able to count the number of passes, but only about half of test subjects notice the gorilla walking through the group of players. The experiment was spoiled for me since I read about it before watching the video, which you can find on YouTube by searching for “selective attention test.” I showed the video to friends and was astounded when half of them completely missed the gorilla walking through the brief clip.
The gorilla test exhibits the challenges our memories face when recalling past events. If half of us are unable to notice a gorilla right in front of our noses because our minds are too busy counting basketball passes, we cannot rely solely on eyewitness testimony of a traumatic event.
Many people believe our memories operate as a kind of video camera or filing cabinet, storing memories away until they are recalled. Scientists are now discovering our memories are incredibly susceptible to suggestion, and even the act of recounting a memory can have effects on our recollection over time.
In James’ case, he lived next door to his accuser and had helped her husband with car repairs the day before the rape occurred. Later that day, James and the husband were involved in a car accident, which resulted in the husband’s arrest. James visited his accuser around 8 p.m. to inform her of the arrest.
At around 6 a.m., a man broke into the woman’s house and raped her at knifepoint. Immediately after the rape, the woman told police she did not know her attacker but gave a brief description to police. James was picked up for fitting the description and was eventually picked out of a lineup by the victim multiple times despite having an alibi corroborated by three witnesses. After 30 years in prison, DNA evidence overruled the accuser’s memory and James was finally released.
The victim was unable to identify her attacker during a traumatic experience, but her mind tricked her into accusing the wrong man.
Hopefully cases like this will impact our legal system and make it more difficult for a man to spend more than half his life in prison for a crime he did not commit.
 
Andrew Shockey is a 21-year-old biological engineering junior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Ashockey.
 
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Contact Andrew Shockey at [email protected]