An identification after seeing a person’s entire face is itself a difficult task. The initial process of seeing a perpetrator and capturing a memory may be impaired by a multitude of factors—the presence of a weapon, high stress, poor lighting, whether the witness and perpetrator are of different races, the duration of observation and possible post-event memory contamination. But at least some facial identifications are reliable (see, e.g., familiar identifications of a previously well-known individual). The question is—can the same be said when the perpetrator was fully masked and all that was visible were his eyes?

The Pennsylvania Superior Court let this issue slide in a recent decision, taking the easy route out by noting that the identification of a person solely by eyes did not matter given the other circumstantial evidence of guilt. See Commonwealth v. Wright, No. 124 MDA 2023 (April, 15, 2024). As far as the overall outcome of this case, that approach may be reasonable. But perhaps a little bit of science and pause should be considered before another trial has an eyes-only identification.