16 different details of his person, even to the size of his hand, the length of his hair as being between two and 2½ inches long, and the shade of his eyebrows! Such perception and memory under such conditions can be easily proved to be psychologically impossible. Every psychologist knows that—so does Houdini. And what shall we think of the animus and honesty of the state that introduces such testimony to convict, knowing that the jury is too ignorant to disbelieve?
How came Miss Splaine to become acquainted with these personal characteristics of Sacco?
The answer is simple. Sacco had been shown to her on several occasions. She had had an opportunity to study him carefully. More than this, he sat before her in the court. At the preliminary hearing in the police court she was not asked to pick Sacco from among a group of other men. Sacco was shown alone to her. Every one knows that under such circumstances the image of a person later develops, or may develop, in an observer's mind and becomes a false memory. Such a memory is produced by suggestion. Every lawyer knows the unconscious falsification of memory due to later acquired knowledge, though ignorant of the psychology of the phenomenon. And yet Miss Splaine's testimony was offered by the state to the jury.
Why was not Miss Splaine asked to pick out Sacco from among a group of men? If this had been done, this unconscious falsification of memory would have been avoided.[1]
As a matter of fact "the good-sized hand" by which Splaine identified Sacco and on which, in a later affidavit, she rests her identification almost entirely, did not exist. Sacco has hands smaller than the average. (M.R. 165.) Also, since the trial it has been shown that Splaine had identified another person as the man whom she later identified as Sacco, after it appeared
- ↑ Letter, "A Psychologist's Study," Boston Herald, October 30, 1926.
