The Inner Monologue

Let’s play a game. Gather ten people in a room, show them a 30-second video of a crime, then ask them to describe what happened. Spoiler alert: You’ll get twelve different versions of events, half of them wildly contradictory, and at least one person will swear the perpetrator was a 6’5″ blonde when the suspect was actually a 5’7″ brunette.

And yet, despite the fact that human memory is about as reliable as a politician’s promise, courts across the land treat eyewitness testimony like it’s gospel. Juries eat it up. Prosecutors build entire cases on it. Innocent people go to prison because some frazzled bystander felt really sure in the moment.

Here’s the truth: Eyewitness testimony isn’t just flawed—it’s worse than useless. It’s actively dangerous. And it should be inadmissible in court, full stop.

1. Human Memory Is a Creative Writing Exercise

Science has known for decades that memory doesn’t work like a video recording. It’s more like a game of Telephone, where every retelling distorts the original a little more. Stress? Weapon focus? Cross-racial identification? All of these things make eyewitness accounts even less reliable. And yet, courts act like if someone points at the defendant and says, “Yeah, that’s the guy,” case closed.

2. Cops (Unintentionally or Otherwise) Manipulate It

Lineups are a joke. If a detective subtly nudges a witness (“Take another look at Number 3…”), that witness is far more likely to “remember” that person as the culprit. Even without outright coercion, confirmation bias does the work for them. And once that faulty ID is made, the witness’s brain rewrites its own memory to cement the mistake.

3. It’s Led to Countless Wrongful Convictions

The Innocence Project has exonerated hundreds of people, many of whom were put away solely because some eyewitness got it wrong. DNA doesn’t lie. People do—even when they’re not trying to.

4. If It Were Any Other Evidence, It Would Be Thrown Out

Imagine if a detective presented a bloody knife in court, then admitted, “Oh, by the way, I left it in a damp basement for six months, let five people handle it without gloves, and also I might’ve mixed it up with another knife at some point.” That evidence would be laughed out of the room. But when it’s a human brain—an organ that misremembers what it had for breakfast—suddenly we treat it as unimpeachable?

The Solution? Ban It. Retroactively.

If a case hinged entirely on eyewitness testimony with no physical evidence, the defendant should walk. No exceptions. And frankly, every person currently in prison based on nothing but some shaky ID should get a retrial or a one-way ticket to freedom.

Because here’s the thing: The legal system loves to pretend it values “reasonable doubt.” But if you’re willing to lock someone up because a stranger thinks they saw something, you don’t care about justice. You care about the illusion of certainty.

And that’s how innocent people end up in cages.