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PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: "Flores’s argument is that the hypnosis session essentially created an opening for the witness’s mind to move from her original description of a White man with long hair to her in-court “identification” of short-haired, Hispanic Flores more than a year later. And that is one way wrongful convictions happen."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "To be clear, the witness, who did the best she could under outdated and suggestive methods, is not to blame. It is the responsibility of the legal system to solve crimes using reliable techniques. It is also the responsibility of the legal system to correct its past mistakes when the scientific consensus changes. Investigative or forensic hypnosis, introduced to American jurisprudence after World War II, is now widely criticized as junk science. In fact, inspired by Flores’s case, the Texas legislature in 2023 banned evidence obtained through this method from criminal proceedings. But because that law is not retroactive, Flores remains at risk of execution."
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COMMENTARY: "Police hypnotized a witness. Now a Texas man faces death," by Jennifer Thompson, published by The Washington Post, on May 25, 2026.
SUB-HEADING: "My honest error once put a man in prison. Now I’m fighting for another innocent. (Jennifer Thompson is an author and advocate for criminal justice reform.).
GIST: "In 1984, a man broke into my home and brutally raped me. Under the influence of trauma and suggestive police procedures, I identified Ronald Cotton as my attacker. At trial, I was 100 percent confident.
I was wrong.
But the jury responded to my honest belief in Cotton’s guilt and convicted him. He spent more than a decade behind bars before DNA evidence revealed the truth — he was innocent of the crime, and the real perpetrator was someone else.
Cotton was exonerated and released. The scientific consensus now supports the belief that the procedures used in my case — suggestive lineups, repeated exposure to the same suspect and post-identification validation by detectives — contaminated my memory and manufactured the confidence I expressed at trial.
Wrongful conviction harms not only the person convicted but also the initial crime victim and the community as a whole.
Cotton spent more than 10 years in prison for something he hadn’t done.
The justice I thought I had received was ripped away, replaced first by fear, then by paralyzing sadness.
And my real attacker — a man named Bobby Poole, whose photograph was not shown to me in the aftermath of my rape — went on to commit numerous rapes, sexual assaults and burglaries while he remained free.
After Cotton’s exoneration, he and I became friends, and together we have written and spoken widely about the potential inaccuracy of eyewitness identification and the devastating impact of wrongful convictions.
Which brings us to the case of Charles Flores, who sits on Texas’s death row based on unreliable testimony by a witness who had been hypnotized — literally, hypnotized — by law enforcement.
The only evidence putting Flores at the site of the January 1998 murder of Betty Black was the in-court identification by this witness, the victim’s neighbor, who testified that she was “100 percent sure” she saw Flores there that day.
The jurors who convicted him never saw the video showing the witness being subjected to suggestive “investigative hypnosis” by a police officer six days after the crime.
The jury also never heard that on the day of the crime itself, and again soon afterward, this witness — whose name I am choosing not to use here — told police she had seen two White men with long hair outside Black’s house on the morning of the crime.
One she readily picked out of a photo lineup as Richard Childs, who was known to drive the showy pink and purple Volkswagen she also saw at the crime scene. The other, she said, looked “similar” to Childs — thin, White, longhaired.
Flores was a thickset Hispanic man, who in 1998 had short, shaved hair. His photo was placed in a lineup, but the witness did not pick him out.
Flores was implicated in the case by two people who immediately came under police suspicion — Childs and his girlfriend, who had children with Black’s incarcerated son.
Childs eventually pleaded guilty to shooting and killing Black; he was sentenced to 35 years in prison and paroled 17 years later. He is a free man today.
Flores is not. During his trial, 13 months after the crime, the neighbor-witness who had been hypnotized pointed to him as being the other person she saw outside Betty Black’s house.
Flores was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.
Here’s what the science of memory teaches is true: Our most reliable recollections are the first ones.
The original video of the witness’s hypnosis session was apparently lost, but a verified recording exists and has been admitted into the court record in Flores’s case.
If you watch that video — and I encourage you to do so — you will see how the witness’s memory might have been contaminated.
During the session the detective-hypnotist asked whether she had seen a man with short, shaved hair on the scene, though she had not previously mentioned such a man.
He also repeatedly suggested she might “recall other things” later on.
In the following weeks, police started referring to Flores as the chief suspect in the crime.
That was reported in the coverage along with his photograph, which the witness could easily have seen. Experts say that this kind of exposure has been shown to contaminate original memories.
Flores’s argument is that the hypnosis session essentially created an opening for the witness’s mind to move from her original description of a White man with long hair to her in-court “identification” of short-haired, Hispanic Flores more than a year later.
And that is one way wrongful convictions happen.
To be clear, the witness, who did the best she could under outdated and suggestive methods, is not to blame.
It is the responsibility of the legal system to solve crimes using reliable techniques. It is also the responsibility of the legal system to correct its past mistakes when the scientific consensus changes.
Investigative or forensic hypnosis, introduced to American jurisprudence after World War II, is now widely criticized as junk science.
In fact, inspired by Flores’s case, the Texas legislature in 2023 banned evidence obtained through this method from criminal proceedings. But because that law is not retroactive, Flores remains at risk of execution.
(Flores was scheduled to be executed in June 2016; a stay was entered only days before the scheduled date. More recent efforts by the state to execute him have been held in abeyance.)
The Texas courts have refused even to consider the evidence indicating that he is an innocent man, convicted with the aid of flawed forensic evidence and a witness’s contaminated memory.
Flores is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case. He argues that the Texas courts’ refusal to fairly apply state laws designed to protect the innocent from wrongful execution violated his right to due process.
In a supporting brief, I urge the Supreme Court to conduct the review and ensure that Flores is not wrongfully executed based on unreliable eyewitness identification.
Others who have filed briefs sharing this concern include the American Psychological Association, whose brief details the current scientific understanding of memory, and the renowned magicians and entertainers Penn & Teller, who stress that hypnosis can manipulate people into believing false memories are true.
According to the Innocence Project, misidentifications are the leading cause of wrongful convictions.
I know firsthand how suggestive procedures can produce such errors.
I also know that wrongful convictions inflict lasting harm on everyone involved. Crime victims, survivors and those who care about them do not want an innocent person to be convicted.
We want and deserve to know that the person who actually caused this harm is the one held accountable.
When the system gets it wrong, innocent people are torn from their families, and victims are led to believe justice has been done, only to learn that the true perpetrator has gone unpunished.
Meanwhile, the community remains at risk of being harmed by the true perpetrator.
Ronald Cotton was given a chance to prove his innocence in North Carolina.
Texas has created a pathway for people like Flores to do the same. Yet thus far the courts have refused to let him pursue it.
The Supreme Court has the power to intervene and ensure an innocent man is not executed based on an unreliable identification.
There is still time to correct this injustice before it becomes irreparable.""
The entire post can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;
