Stephen’s Story
Stephen Patterson was a friendly young man who grew up in Alabama before his family moved to South Central Los Angeles. In 2005, a gang shooting in their neighborhood left one person dead. Stephen heard the gunshots and saw the perpetrators fleeing the scene. When police arrived to investigate, he shared what little information he knew.
About a year later, Stephen was arrested for that same murder after an eyewitness falsely identified him as the shooter. The identification was cross-racial and made at a distance—through window blinds, from inside a house. In addition to the visual obstructions, cross-racial identifications have been scientifically shown to be less reliable than same-race identifications.
Setting aside any notions of racism, human beings naturally struggle to identify people of other races. According to Justin Brooks, founder and former director of the California Innocence Project, our ability to recognize faces develops when we are very young. As a biological imperative for survival, it’s crucial for children to know who their parents are. As a result, we tend to recognize facial features associated with our family’s racial background more easily. Unfortunately, this recognition skill doesn’t develop to the same degree as we get older and venture out into the world. Consequently, people are less adept at identifying individuals whose race differs from their own.
Stephen Patterson was exonerated on March 13, 2024, through the hard work of The Innocence Center and the cooperation of the Conviction Integrity Unit at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. He spent 18 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit.
The mini-documentary 🎥 above tells the story of Stephen Patterson, his legal team, the Conviction Integrity Unit, and his fight for freedom.
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