Earwitness Law and Legal Definition

Earwitness means a person who testifies about something that s/he heard and did not see. In Long v. Dutton, 621 F. Supp. 1209 (D. Tenn. 1985), the court held that “Earwitness-identification, the same as eyewitness-identification, presents a substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification: Usually a witness must testify about an encounter with a total stranger under circumstances of emergency or stress. The witness' recollection of the stranger can be distorted easily by the circumstances just as it may be distorted by later actions of the police.”