(Washington) The US Supreme Court on Monday refused to take up the appeal of a death row inmate, which could have given him the opportunity to rule on the legality of the use of hypnosis by the police.
Posted on January 25, 2021 at 6:11 p.m.
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The choice of the high court, which it has not justified in accordance with custom, leaves in place the death sentence of Charles Flores for the murder of a sexagenarian in 1998 in Texas.
During his trial, he was identified by a neighbor of the victim who said she remembered him after a hypnosis session carried out by the police.
The state of Texas “has used a now discredited ‘science’ to present the jury with unreliable testimony,” in violation of Mr. Flores’ rights to a fair trial, argued his lawyers in an argument sent to high Court.
Hypnosis is supposed to promote the emergence of memories, and especially details potentially useful to investigators.
It had gained popularity with US law enforcement after the 1976 kidnapping of a school bus, the driver of which then hypnotized the license plate of an abductor.
But the scientific community has become, over the years, increasingly skeptical of its use in criminal investigations.
She “creates opportunities to twist reality, fill in gaps” and “creates” super “witnesses who have unnatural confidence in their memories. […] and therefore have a disproportionate impact on jurors, ”wrote 28 cognitive scientists to the High Court.
The Department of Justice also calls for the greatest caution in the use of this practice. Information obtained under hypnosis “cannot be taken as accurate. It must be verified and corroborated, ”according to guidelines addressed to federal prosecutors.
Several American states, including Texas, however authorize – under conditions – the use during trials of information obtained under hypnosis.
Opponents of the practice, and especially miscarriage of justice organizations, hoped Mr Flores’ case would provide an opportunity to ban it.
One of them, The Innocence Project, had thus asked the Supreme Court of the United States to answer the question of “the fundamental unreliability of the identification of suspects by witnesses under hypnosis”.
But by refusing to take up Mr. Flores’ file, his nine wise men are letting the elected officials of the States take their hands.
In Texas, two parliamentarians recently introduced a bill to ban the use of information obtained under hypnosis in local courts. “We need the maximum integrity in the penal system”, justified the democrat Eddie Lucio III quoted by the newspaper Dallas News.
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