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The murder happened a little over 21 years ago,

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January the 18th, 1991,

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in a small

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bedroom community

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of Lynwood, California, just a few miles

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southeast of Los Angeles.

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A father came out of his house

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to tell his teenage son and his five friends

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that it was time for them to stop horsing around

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on the front lawn and on the sidewalk,

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to get home, finish their schoolwork,

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and prepare themselves for bed.

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And as the father was administering these instructions,

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a car drove by, slowly,

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and just after it passed the father and the teenagers,

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a hand went out from the front passenger window,

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and -- "Bam, Bam!" -- killing the father.

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And the car sped off.

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The police,

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investigating officers, were amazingly efficient.

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They considered all the usual culprits,

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and in less than 24 hours, they had selected their suspect:

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Francisco Carrillo, a 17-year-old kid

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who lived about two or three blocks away

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from where the shooting occurred.

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They found photos of him. They prepared a photo array,

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and the day after the shooting,

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they showed it to one of the teenagers, and he said,

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"That's the picture.

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That's the shooter I saw that killed the father."

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That was all a preliminary hearing judge had

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to listen to, to bind Mr. Carrillo over to stand trial

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for a first-degree murder.

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In the investigation that followed before the actual trial,

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each of the other five teenagers was shown

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photographs, the same photo array.

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The picture that we best can determine was probably

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the one that they were shown in the photo array

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is in your bottom left hand corner of these mug shots.

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The reason we're not sure absolutely is because

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of the nature of evidence preservation

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in our judicial system,

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but that's another whole TEDx talk for later. (Laughter)

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So at the actual trial,

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all six of the teenagers testified,

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and indicated the identifications they had made

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in the photo array.

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He was convicted. He was sentenced to life imprisonment,

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and transported to Folsom Prison.

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So what's wrong?

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Straightforward, fair trial, full investigation.

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Oh yes, no gun was ever found.

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No vehicle was ever identified as being the one

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in which the shooter had extended his arm,

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and no person was ever charged with being the driver

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of the shooter's vehicle.

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And Mr. Carrillo's alibi?

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Which of those parents here in the room might not lie

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concerning the whereabouts of your son or daughter

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in an investigation of a killing?

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Sent to prison,

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adamantly insisting on his innocence,

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which he has consistently for 21 years.

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So what's the problem?

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The problems, actually, for this kind of case

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come manyfold from decades of scientific research

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involving human memory.

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First of all, we have all the statistical analyses

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from the Innocence Project work,

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where we know that we have, what,

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250, 280 documented cases now where people have

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been wrongfully convicted and subsequently exonerated,

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some from death row, on the basis of later DNA analysis,

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and you know that over three quarters of all of those cases

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of exoneration involved only eyewitness identification

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testimony during the trial that convicted them.

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We know that eyewitness identifications are fallible.

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The other comes from an interesting aspect

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of human memory that's related to various brain functions

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but I can sum up for the sake of brevity here

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in a simple line:

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The brain abhors a vacuum.

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Under the best of observation conditions,

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the absolute best,

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we only detect, encode and store in our brains

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bits and pieces of the entire experience in front of us,

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and they're stored in different parts of the brain.

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So now, when it's important for us to be able to recall

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what it was that we experienced,

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we have an incomplete, we have a partial store,

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and what happens?

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Below awareness, with no requirement for any kind of

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motivated processing, the brain fills in information

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that was not there,

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not originally stored,

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from inference, from speculation,

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from sources of information that came to you,

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as the observer, after the observation.

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But it happens without awareness such that

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you don't, aren't even cognizant of it occurring.

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It's called reconstructed memories.

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It happens to us in all the aspects of our life, all the time.

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It was those two considerations, among others --

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reconstructed memory, the fact about the eyewitness fallibility --

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that was part of the instigation

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for a group of appeal attorneys

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led by an amazing lawyer named Ellen Eggers

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to pool their experience and their talents together

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and petition a superior court

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for a retrial for Francisco Carrillo.

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They retained me, as a forensic neurophysiologist,

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because I had expertise

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in eyewitness memory identification,

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which obviously makes sense for this case, right?

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But also because I have expertise and testify about

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the nature of human night vision.

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Well, what's that got to do with this?

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Well, when you read through the case materials

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in this Carrillo case,

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one of the things that suddenly strikes you is that

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the investigating officers said the lighting was good

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at the crime scene, at the shooting.

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All the teenagers testified during the trial

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that they could see very well.

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But this occurred in mid-January,

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in the Northern Hemisphere, at 7 p.m. at night.

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So when I did the calculations

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for the lunar data and the solar data

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at that location on Earth at the time of the incident

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of the shooting, all right,

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it was well past the end of civil twilight

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and there was no moon up that night.

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So all the light in this area from the sun and the moon

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is what you see on the screen right here.

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The only lighting in that area had to come

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from artificial sources,

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and that's where I go out and I do the actual reconstruction

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of the scene with photometers, with various measures

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of illumination and various other measures of

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color perception, along with special cameras

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and high-speed film, right?

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Take all the measurements and record them, right?

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And then take photographs, and this is what the scene

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looked like at the time of the shooting

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from the position of the teenagers

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looking at the car going by and shooting.

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This is looking directly across the street

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from where they were standing.

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Remember, the investigating officers' report said

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the lighting was good.

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The teenagers said they could see very well.

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This is looking down to the east,

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where the shooting vehicle sped off,

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and this is the lighting directly behind the father

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and the teenagers.

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As you can see, it is at best poor.

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No one's going to call this well-lit, good lighting,

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and in fact, as nice as these pictures are,

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and the reason we take them is I knew I was going to have to testify in court,

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and a picture is worth more than a thousand words

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when you're trying to communicate numbers,

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abstract concepts like lux, the international measurement

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of illumination, the Ishihara color perception test values.

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When you present those to people who are not well-versed

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in those aspects of science and that, they become

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salamanders in the noonday sun. It's like

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talking about the tangent of the visual angle, all right?

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Their eyes just glaze over, all right?

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A good forensic expert also has to be a good educator,

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a good communicator, and that's part of the reason

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why we take the pictures, to show not only

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where the light sources are, and what we call the spill,

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the distribution, but also so that it's easier

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for the trier of fact to understand the circumstances.

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So these are some of the pictures that, in fact,

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I used when I testified,

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but more importantly were, to me as a scientist,

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are those readings, the photometer readings,

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which I can then convert into actual predictions

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of the visual capability of the human eye

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under those circumstances,

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and from my readings that I recorded at the scene

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under the same solar and lunar conditions

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at the same time, so on and so forth, right,

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I could predict

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that there would be no reliable color perception,

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which is crucial for face recognition,

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and that there would be only scotopic vision,

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which means there would be very little resolution,

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what we call boundary or edge detection,

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and that furthermore, because the eyes would have been

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totally dilated under this light, the depth of field,

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the distance at which you can focus and see details,

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would have been less than 18 inches away.

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I testified to that to the court,

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and while the judge was very attentive,

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it had been a very, very long hearing

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for this petition for a retrial, and as a result,

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I noticed out of the corner of my eye

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that I thought that maybe the judge was going to need

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a little more of a nudge

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than just more numbers.

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And here I became a bit audacious,

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and I turned

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and I asked the judge,

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I said, "Your Honor, I think you should go out

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and look at the scene yourself."

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Now I may have used a tone which was more like a dare

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than a request — (Laughter) —

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but nonetheless, it's to this man's credit and his courage

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that he said, "Yes, I will."

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A shocker in American jurisprudence.

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So in fact, we found the same identical conditions,

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we reconstructed the entire thing again,

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he came out with an entire brigade of sheriff's officers

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to protect him in this community, all right? (Laughter)

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We had him stand actually slightly in the street,

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so closer to the suspect vehicle, the shooter vehicle,

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than the actual teenagers were,

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so he stood a few feet from the curb

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toward the middle of the street.

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We had a car that came by,

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same identical car as described by the teenagers, right?

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It had a driver and a passenger,

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and after the car had passed the judge by,

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the passenger extended his hand,

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pointed it back to the judge as the car continued on,

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just as the teenagers had described it, right?

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Now, he didn't use a real gun in his hand,

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so he had a black object in his hand that was similar

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to the gun that was described.

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He pointed by, and this is what the judge saw.

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This is the car 30 feet away from the judge.

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There's an arm sticking out of the passenger side

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and pointed back at you.

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That's 30 feet away.

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Some of the teenagers said that in fact the car

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was 15 feet away when it shot.

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Okay. There's 15 feet.

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At this point, I became a little concerned.

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This judge is someone you'd never want to play poker with.

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He was totally stoic. I couldn't see a twitch of his eyebrow.

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I couldn't see the slightest bend of his head.

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I had no sense of how he was reacting to this,

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and after he looked at this reenactment,

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he turned to me and he says,

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"Is there anything else you want me to look at?"

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I said, "Your honor," and I don't know whether I was

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emboldened by the scientific measurements that I had

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in my pocket and my knowledge that they are accurate,

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or whether it was just sheer stupidity,

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which is what the defense lawyers thought — (Laughter) —

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when they heard me say,

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"Yes, Your Honor, I want you stand right there

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and I want the car to go around the block again

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and I want it to come and I want it to stop

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right in front of you, three to four feet away,

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and I want the passenger to extend his hand

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with a black object and point it right at you,

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and you can look at it as long as you want."

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And that's what he saw. (Laughter)

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You'll notice, which was also in my test report,

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all the dominant lighting is coming from the north side,

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which means that the shooter's face would

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have been photo-occluded. It would have been backlit.

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Furthermore, the roof of the car

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is causing what we call a shadow cloud inside the car

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which is making it darker.

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And this is three to four feet away.

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Why did I take the risk?

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I knew that the depth of field was 18 inches or less.

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Three to four feet, it might as well have been

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a football field away.

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This is what he saw.

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He went back, there was a few more days of evidence

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that was heard. At the end of it,

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he made the judgment that he was going to grant

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the petition for a retrial.

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And furthermore, he released Mr. Carrillo

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so that he could aid in the preparation of his own defense

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if the prosecution decided to retry him.

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Which they decided not to.

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He is now a freed man. (Applause)

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(Applause)

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This is him embracing his grandmother-in-law.

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He -- His girlfriend was pregnant when he went to trial,

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right? And she had a little baby boy.

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He and his son are both attending Cal State, Long Beach

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right now taking classes. (Applause)

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And what does this example --

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what's important to keep in mind for ourselves?

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First of all, there's a long history of antipathy

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between science and the law

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in American jurisprudence.

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I could regale you with horror stories of ignorance

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over decades of experience as a forensic expert

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of just trying to get science into the courtroom.

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The opposing council always fight it and oppose it.

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One suggestion is that all of us become much more

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attuned to the necessity, through policy,

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through procedures,

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to get more science in the courtroom,

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and I think one large step toward that

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is more requirements,

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with all due respect to the law schools,

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of science, technology, engineering, mathematics

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for anyone going into the law,

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because they become the judges.

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Think about how we select our judges in this country.

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It's very different than most other cultures. All right?

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The other one that I want to suggest,

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the caution that all of us have to have,

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I constantly have to remind myself,

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about just how accurate are the memories

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that we know are true, that we believe in?

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There is decades of research,

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examples and examples of cases like this,

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where individuals

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really, really believe. None of those teenagers

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who identified him

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thought that they were picking the wrong person.

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None of them thought they couldn't see the person's face.

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We all have to be very careful.

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All our memories are reconstructed memories.

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They are the product of what we originally experienced

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and everything that's happened afterwards.

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They're dynamic.

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They're malleable. They're volatile,

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and as a result, we all need to remember to be cautious,

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that the accuracy of our memories

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is not measured in how vivid they are

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nor how certain you are that they're correct.

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Thank you. (Applause)