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In the winter of 2009, six weeks after she was the victim of a home invasion, Stephanie Reeves was in a London, Ont., convenience store when Kaylei Marie MacDonald walked in and instantly became a cautionary tale in forensic eyewitness psychology.

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Security footage shows the two women in a strange standoff for a few seconds, before Ms. MacDonald turned around and walked out.

“I know her. Those eyes,” Ms. Reeves told the store clerk. “I’ll never forget those eyes.”

The clerk took Ms. MacDonald’s licence plate, and Ms. Reeves told police this was the woman who ransacked her home while a masked man, as yet unidentified, held her at knifepoint.

“I think we both realized we were looking at each other in the face,” Ms. Reeves, now 34, told police a few days later, when she picked Ms. MacDonald’s face out of a lineup. “I guess her reaction was to leave the store.”

This chance meeting seemed to have cracked the case, but Ms. MacDonald, then aged 20, denied any knowledge of the crime. She told police she left the store without buying anything because she recognized the clerk as someone who would not sell her cigarettes without the ID she did not have. A jury, however, found her guilty as charged.

Now, in a judicial ruling that illustrates how vexing the supposedly simple task of facial recognition can be when someone’s freedom is on the line, the Ontario Court of Appeal has overturned Ms. MacDonald’s convictions for armed robbery and break and enter, and ordered a new trial.