Eyewitness Testimony

DNA exoneration is only possible in a fraction of cases, mostly sexual assault cases. Crimes such as murders, muggings and robberies rarely leave DNA trace evidence, so it is not possible to use this type of evidence in these crimes to question the reliability of witness evidence (Wells et al., 2000). A large part of what we know about eyewitness identification comes from empirical research on the factors influencing eyewitness performance.