She was "100 percent Sure

Story here. Excerpt:

'Michele Mallin said she was "100 percent sure" when she identified Timothy Brian Cole as the man who raped her.

Her resolve never wavered, Ms. Mallin said, until she learned last May that DNA testing had invalidated her 1985 identification. The revelation came nearly nine years after Mr. Cole died at 39 in a Texas prison from an asthma attack.

The memory process works well when someone is shown a face repeatedly. But when the exposure is episodic, "we end up with the gist" of a person's looks, said Dr. Gary Wells, a nationally known expert on eyewitness testimony and a professor of psychology at Iowa State University.

She said she believes that Lubbock police and prosecutors manipulated her by repeatedly describing Mr. Cole as "a low-life hood." The Army veteran had a misdemeanor arrest record in Lubbock for gun and marijuana possession.

From everything she now knows, Ms. Mallin said, the law should not allow prosecutions based on eyewitness identifications without corroboration.

"Obviously, we're human," she said. "We make mistakes."'