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Your Lyin' EyesWhat to do about eyewitnesses who get it wrong.

Posted Friday, Oct. 18, 2002, at 2:57 PM ET

The police suffered a big setback in the D.C. sniper case yesterday when it was determined that a witness was lying. (That man could now face up to six months in jail, according to MSNBC.com.) But even honest eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. In May, Steve Chapman argued in Slate, "[I]t's time the criminal justice system recognized that, in some instances, the very last thing you can believe is what you saw."

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