Eyewitness Testimony and Epistemic Agency

Abstract

Abstract Eyewitness testimony is a powerful form of evidence, and this is especially true in the United States criminal legal system. At the same time, eyewitness misidentification is the greatest contributing factor to wrongful convictions proven by DNA testing. This chapter offers a close examination of this tension between the enormous epistemic weight that eyewitness testimony is afforded in criminal proceedings and the fact that there are important questions about its reliability as a source of evidence. It is argued that lineups and interrogations often function by way of extracting testimony from an eyewitness through practices that are manipulative, deceptive, or coercive. This chapter then shows that this extracted testimony is systematically afforded an unwarranted excess of credibility that leads to not only life-altering wrongs perpetrated against suspects and defendants, but also to the eyewitnesses themselves being victims of agential testimonial injustice.