ABSTRACT
Observations of other-race and other-age effects have astonishingly important legal implications. The impressive, if worrying, Innocence Project (https://www. innocenceproject.org) campaigns for individuals wrongfully convicted in the USA, often on the basis of eyewitness testimony, and seeks exonerations, usually using DNA evidence. Of the first 200 convictions overturned as a result of Innocence Project campaigns, 75% reportedly hinged originally on evidence from eyewitness testimony (Davies & Griffiths, 2007). Many of these cases involved witnesses attempting to identify someone of another race. Wilson, Hugenberg, and Bernstein (2013) cite evidence that about a third of DNAexonerated cases involved cross-race eyewitness identification even though cross-race crimes are relatively rare.
