Being Wrong - Kathryn Schulz [113]
Most victims of violent crimes who have misidentified their assailants—a small and terrible fraternity—have tremendous difficulty accepting their mistake. In 1991, a man named Glen Woodall was released from prison in West Virginia after serving four years of two life sentences for two rapes he did not commit. In Woodall’s case, the workings of justice had gone particularly awry. It was bad enough that the victims, who had barely been able to see their masked attacker, had been hypnotized to “enhance” their memory, a practice dismissed by most legal professionals as manipulative and unreliable. Far worse, though, was this: the conviction hinged on an act of scientific fraud. The man responsible for blood work at the West Virginia crime lab had simply faked the results. Woodall was exonerated by DNA testing and awarded a million-dollar settlement by the state—itself a remarkable acknowledgment of error, since people who have been wrongfully convicted seldom receive significant compensation for their ordeal. Coverage of the case filled the local newspapers and airwaves. Discussion of what had gone wrong dominated the state legislature. Multiple investigative committees were formed. Nonetheless, on the day that Woodall left prison, one of the two victims ran up to the van that was transporting him and, weeping and banging on the door, prevented it from being opened. Despite the discredited scientist, the massive public outcry, the legislative hearings, and the DNA, she remained convinced that Woodall was the attacker she had never seen.
This woman’s response was unusual in that it was exceptionally public—and, in a sense, exceptionally brave. But enduring belief in the guilt of the exonerated is common among those who have faced similar situations. It’s easy to understand why, and impossible not to sympathize. To go through your own terrible ordeal only to learn that you have played a starring role in someone else’s terrible ordeal; to see somebody as the perpetrator of an atrocity only to find out that he is, like you, a victim; to assign all of your rage and terror and pain to the wrong person; to have whatever “closure” you may have reached be wrenched open again—who among us is confident that we could face all this with acceptance and grace? Indeed, who could be expected to? It is far more likely that we would face it awkwardly and in agony; far easier to choose, through denial, not to face it at all.
Denial has a bad reputation. We are quick to sneer at it, to regard it as the last, sorry refuge of those who are too immature, insecure, or pig-headed to face the truth. But, as we see in the story of the rape victim who tried to stop Glen Woodall’s ride to freedom, denying our mistakes is sometimes an understandable reaction, one that deserves sympathy rather than censure. Denial is not, after all, a response to the facts. It is a response to the feelings those facts evoke—and sometimes, those feelings are simply too much to bear.
This understanding of denial, like so many of our current ideas about human nature, was originally formulated by Freud. Freud defined denial as the refusal to recognize the existence or truth of unwelcome facts, and classified it among the defense mechanisms we unconsciously employ to protect ourselves from anxiety or distress. With various minor emendations,