(Recording) Sheila Phipps:
Before my son went to jail,
I used to see people be on television,
fighting, saying, "Oh, this person
didn't do it and this person is innocent."
And you know, you snub them
or you dismiss them,
and like, "Yeah, whatever."
Don't get me wrong,
there's a lot of people
who deserve to be in prison.
There's a lot of criminals out here.
But there are a lot of innocent
people that's in jail.
EA: Sheila's son, McKinley,
is one of those innocent people.
He served 17 years of a 30-year sentence
on a manslaughter charge.
He had no previous convictions,
there was no forensic
evidence in the case.
He was convicted solely
on the basis of eyewitness testimony,
and decades of research have shown
that eyewitness testimony
isn't as reliable
as we once believed it to be.
Scientists say that memory isn't precise.
It's less like playing back a video,
and more like putting together a puzzle.
Since 1989, when DNA testing
was first used to free innocent people,