PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION

The untrustworthiness of the eye-witness as to detail was recently demonstrated by Professor McKeever at the Kansas State College in the following manner.[2] He asked twenty-five students at the college to witness a short drama, and immediately afterwards to write a detailed description of the characters and incidents.

This little drama, which was supposed to take place in one of the class-rooms, ran as follows:—

These discrepancies illustrate how difficult it is for the eye and ear to record accurately the impressions received in a rapid succession of events, one of which may focus the attention to such an extent that events simultaneously occurring are only imperfectly or partially observed.

The fallibility of identification by eye-witnesses was strikingly demonstrated at the trial of Benjamin Bates and John Green at the Old Bailey in 1776, on the charge of burglary.

The house of James Penleage had been broken into, and plate to the value of four or five hundred pounds had been stolen.

Mrs. Penleage swore that four men had entered her bedroom, one of whom carried a dark lantern; that two of these men came, one on each side of the bed, and held pistols to her head, and that of these men of whom she had a perfect view, she recognised one as Green and the other as Bates.

Her husband testified as to the house having been entered, and as to his loss, but stated that as he was near-sighted he would not swear to the men, though he believed Bates had presented a pistol to his head.

Evidence was also given by a servant and by another woman, and notwithstanding the good character given to the prisoners by a number of witnesses, the jury brought in a verdict of “Guilty.”

The newspapers of the day called attention to the inconclusive evidence of identification, and as a result the prisoners were respited from month to month.

At last another man, who was executed in the country, confessed that he had also been the author of this burglary at the house of Penleage, and that the two men who had been convicted had had nothing to do with it. In consequence of this Bates and Green received a free pardon, but not until they had been in prison for many months.

A contemporary comment upon this trial richly warrants quotation:—“On this occasion Britons have cause to triumph in the Liberty of the Press. If newspapers had not been printed in this country, the lives of two honest men would have been sacrificed to the rigour of the laws, yet no party concerned have been the least to blame. The ways of Providence are mysterious; casual circumstances frequently produce great effects; and a life may be saved or lost by an accident apparently beneath the notice of a common observer.”

Another very curious instance of mistaken identity was that brought out in a trial for robbery in 1784. A barrister had been attacked and robbed in broad daylight, and he positively swore that he had recognised two men named Wood and Brown as his assailants. Fortunately for them the prisoners were able to prove an alibi, which showed beyond all doubt that they were far from the spot at the time, and they were accordingly acquitted. Subsequently the real robbers were discovered and found in possession of the missing property. In this case there was a man of trained observation, being absolutely certain of the identity of two men, who had never been near the place.

The case of the Perreaus, related in a subsequent page, was another example of the kind. The two brothers, who were twins, were so exactly alike that a money scrivener who had drawn up bonds by order of one or the other of them hesitated to fix upon either. At last, when pressed to make a positive declaration, he fixed upon Daniel as the brother who had come to him in connection with the forged bond.

In 1797 a mistake as to identity resulted in the death of two men. Martin Church, a bookseller, and James Mackley, a printer, were tried that year at the Old Bailey on the charge of murdering Sydney Fryer, at the back of Islington workhouse. Miss Anne Fryer, who was with her cousin at the time he was attacked, swore positively that the two prisoners were the assailants.

Some years later Burton Wood, who was executed at Kennington Common, and Timmins, who was hanged at Reading, confessed separately that they had done the deed for which the other men had suffered.

In modern times the case of Adolph Beck, who was twice wrongfully convicted through his unfortunate resemblance to another man is notorious, and has been the subject of a special report.

The most recent and strangest instances of wrong identification arose out of the mysterious crime which became known as the “Gorse Hall” murder.

In November, 1909, Mr. Storrs, a wealthy mill-owner, who lived at Gorse Hall, in a lonely district in Cheshire, was attacked by a man who had forced his way into the house. A desperate struggle followed, in the course of which Mr. Storrs was repeatedly stabbed with a knife and fatally wounded. His assailant also attempted to shoot him with a revolver, but this was snatched from him by Mrs. Storrs.

A relation of Mr. Storrs, named Howard, who was an ex-soldier, was arrested and charged with the murder. At the trial that took place at the Chester Assizes in March, 1910, he was positively identified by the widow of the murdered man, who swore that she recognised him by “the look in his eyes.” He was also identified by some of the servants at the Hall as the assailant of Mr. Storrs.

Fortunately Howard was able to prove conclusively that he was somewhere else at the time of the murder.

Some time later, another ex-soldier named Mark Wilde was arrested upon the same charge, and once more evidence of identification was given by the same witnesses as in the previous trial, though they were now less positive in their assertions.

The two men, Howard and Wilde, bore a singular resemblance to each other, and evidence was given that at the time of the murder Wilde was dressed in dark clothes, dark cap and muffler, which was the description of the clothes of Mr. Storrs’ assailant given by witnesses at the first trial.

Stains upon the prisoner’s clothing were identified as human blood by the serum test. The revolver which Mrs. Storrs had snatched from the murderer was also identified as having belonged to Wilde, for it was recognised by two ex-soldiers who had, they alleged, frequently seen it in his hands, by its broken spring and marks upon its barrel.

For the defence, however, witnesses were called to prove that the revolver taken from the murderer was not identical with that of Wilde, and that the blood upon his clothes was the result of a fight he had had upon the night of the crime.

No motive could be alleged, and the jury distrusting the evidence of identification, found the prisoner “Not guilty.”

The murder was thus unique in the fact that two innocent men were in succession identified as the assailant and acquitted.

With regard to the amount of light needed for the recognition of a person, curious scientific evidence has been given in trials, and several cases are on record where witnesses have claimed to identify a person by a momentary flash. A notable instance of this kind was seen at the trial of Joseph Brook for burglary at the York Assizes in 1813.

The prisoner, it was alleged, had broken into the house of a farmer named Strickland at Kirk Heaton.

Anne Armitage, a niece of the farmer, deposed that he had struck upon the stone floor with something she took for a sword to intimidate her, that it produced a flash, and gave a light by which she could see his face. She swore that she had seen enough by the momentary flash to recognise him again. She had also heard his voice, and knew it again when she heard it later, and thought she could undertake to say that it was the voice of the accused man.

The prisoner set up an alibi, and the jury, although as they stated subsequently, not believing in this alibi, returned a verdict of “Not guilty.”

The question of the possibility of a person firing a gun or pistol being identified by the light of the flash was submitted to a committee of scientific men in Paris, in 1809, and their conclusion was that such identification was not possible.

On the other hand, the evidence in a case that was tried shortly afterwards in France indicated that under favourable conditions the face of the person who had fired a gun might be recognised. A man had fired at another at night, and a woman who was near at the time, swore at the trial that the flash had plainly shown her the face of the assailant. Similar evidence was also given by the man who had been wounded.

Experiments to determine this point were made by Desgranges, at Lyons, and from the results of these he concluded that there was a possibility of such identification at a short distance from the flash of the gun, provided that the night was very dark and that there was no other source of light to interfere with the gun-flash; but that if the flash was very pronounced, or much smoke was produced it was not possible to recognise the person firing the gun.

Juries have always been reluctant to convict a prisoner upon evidence of this kind. For instance, at the trial of a man named White at Croydon in 1839, the prisoner was accused of firing at a gentleman while he was driving home in an open trap, and his intended victim, who was shot in the elbow, swore positively that the flash of the gun showed so clearly the features of his assailant that he was absolutely certain that he was the prisoner. The defendant denied the charge and, notwithstanding the positive statement of the principal witness, was acquitted.

There are other instances, however, where convictions have resulted from such momentary glimpses. Thus, at the trial of some highwaymen in 1799, which is quoted by Paris and Fonblanque (1823), it was stated by a Bow Street officer that he, together with some of his companions, had been fired at by the prisoners upon a dark night, upon Hounslow Heath. He swore that the flash of the pistol enabled him to see that one of the assailants, a man named Haines, who had come up to the side of the coach, was riding upon a dark brown horse which had certain peculiarities about its head and shoulders, and that the rider was wearing a rough brown coat. Afterwards, said the witness, he had seen the same horse in a stable in Long Acre, in London, and had recognised it as the one upon which the man was riding by its curious square head and thick shoulders. The jury believed the evidence of this witness, and the prisoner was convicted.

A case within the experience of a former Recorder of Birmingham (Hill) is mentioned in Wills’ Circumstantial Evidence. A man was committed for trial at the Assizes at Derby, in 1840, on the charge of shooting at a young woman.

She was prepared to swear that she had recognised him by the momentary flash of the gun.

Experiments were made to determine to what extent reliance could be placed upon such identification, and the conclusion drawn from these was that “all stories of recognition from the flash of a gun or pistol must be founded on a fallacy.”

In addition to these, several instances, collected from different sources, are referred to in Taylor’s Medical Jurisprudence, where the general conclusion is drawn that occasionally it may be possible to identify an assailant in this way.

From the same source comes the amusing story of a man who swore that he recognised an assailant who attacked him in the dark, by the flash produced by a blow upon his eye! The absurdity of the claim is self-evident, for the “flashes” due to a blow do not emit light, and can therefore never cause any external object to be visible.

A curious factor influencing the value of evidence of personal identification is the readiness with which credulous humanity will accept any story however improbable. But for this the notorious Tichborne case, which dragged on for years, would have been settled in a few days. It is difficult now, recalling the facts, to understand how anyone could have believed in the identity of the butcher, Arthur Orton, with the missing heir to the estates, Roger Tichborne. The latter was of a slim build, while the claimant was a couple of inches taller and weighed twenty-five stones. The real Roger had had the education of a gentleman, while the claimant could neither write nor speak correctly.

Yet, notwithstanding the enormous dissimilarity in appearance and manners of the two men, the mother of Roger Tichborne recognised Orton as the son whom she and everyone else had believed to have been drowned when the ship was wrecked. When he came to England to see her he had thought it prudent to feign illness. Lady Tichborne, therefore, went to see him, and he got on the bed, and turned his face to the wall. His adopted mother, however, recognised him by his “ears so like his uncle’s.”

This must have been an instance of self-deception, for there was evidence that the lobes of the ears of the two men were absolutely different.

It was this recognition, however, that encouraged Orton to persevere with his claim to the estates, and assisted in aiding the recollection of other people, who swore that he was Roger.