Eyewitness testimony plays a crucial role in criminal investigations. It is therefore important to know how to eliminate factors that can negatively impact eyewitnesses' memorization ability. The result of eyewitness misidentification can lead to many inaccurate and wrongful convictions. One study suggests that more than 75,000 people per year become criminal defendants based on eyewitness identifications (Schechel, O'Toole, Easterly, & Loftus, 2006, p. 178). Another study showed that about 100 convicted people were exonerated by forensic evidence. Furthermore, 75% of these people were known to have been victims of mistaken identification. Known DNA exoneration cases represent only a fragment of the innocent people who have been convicted based on eyewitness misidentification evidence (Wells & Olson, 2003). Eyewitness accounts are also valued unique factors that they can bring to criminal investigations. Nonetheless, eyewitness testimony may also raise several factors that threaten one's credibility, particularly for those who have not received prior training in assessing the reliability of witnesses. It has been suggested, for example, that jurors only use common sense when their witnesses make difficult claims (Schechel et al., 2006, p. 178). In the event that a crime scene does not contain relic DNA or other forensic evidence, eyewitness identification plays a central role in criminal investigations. Biometric evidence such as DNA is rarely available for murders, robberies, drive-by shootings and other common crimes, forcing reliance on eyewitness identification evidence. When biometric identification is not possible, we must rely solely on eyewitness accounts. Eyewitness accounts can help describe the...... middle of paper ...... from http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/~glwells/Wells_articles_pdf/Eyewitness_Testimony_Ann_Rev.pdfWells, GL and Quinlivan, DS (2009, February). Suggestive Eyewitness Identification Procedures and the Supreme Court's Reliability Test in Light of Eyewitness Science: 30 Years Later. Medline. Retrieved April 8, 2011 from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18302010 Wells, G., Small, M., Penrod, S., Malpass, RS, Fulero, SM and Brimacombe, C. . (1998, November 6). Eyewitness identification procedures: recommendations for lineups and photo essays. Law and human behavior. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/pss/1394446Zaragoza, MS, Belli, RF and Payment, KE (2009). Effects of misinformation and suggestibility of eyewitness memory. Zaragoza Publications. Accessed April 8, 2011 from http://www.personal.kent.edu/~mzaragoz/publications.html