We are all witnesses
Anne Driscoll |
TEDxJacksonville
• October 2018
For more than a decade, Anne Driscoll has been investigating wrongful convictions in two countries on two continents on both sides of the Atlantic. She knows firsthand how a wrongful conviction can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere in any jurisdiction, most often due to bad eyewitness identification, police misconduct or prosecutorial misconduct. She has helped free an innocent man serving a life sentence without parole for murder who was misidentified by an eyewitness, and she also has been the victim of a crime where she nearly misidentified her own attacker. As both a social worker and a journalist, she learned that the power of bearing witness is both profound and impactful in the pursuit of justice. If we want a truly just society, then all of us need to be witnesses. Only by being an informed witness can we understand the limitations of eyewitness testimony and memory as well as the human fault lines and fallibility in police investigations and prosecutions. Only when we are all witnesses can we achieve justice for all.