Op-Ed: Inmate May Die Over Hypnotized Witness

A Texas death row inmate's fate hinges on a witness who was put under hypnosis—and a woman who once made a devastating mistake is now asking the Supreme Court to step in. In a Washington Post opinion piece, Jennifer Thompson recounts how her own confident but mistaken eyewitness ID sent an innocent man, Ronald Cotton, to prison for more than a decade, a case later overturned by DNA. She uses that experience to question the conviction of Charles Flores, sentenced to die for a 1998 murder largely on the strength of a neighbor's in-court claim that she was "100 percent sure" she saw him at the scene.

Thompson notes that Flores' jury never saw the video of police subjecting the neighbor to "investigative hypnosis" six days after the crime—a technique now widely discredited and banned in Texas courts, though not retroactively. The witness initially described a thin white man with long hair. Flores, by contrast, is Hispanic and was stocky with a shaved head. With groups including the American Psychological Association backing him, Flores argues his due process rights were violated. "The Supreme Court has the power to intervene and ensure an innocent man is not executed based on an unreliable identification," writes Thompson. Read her full piece.