Eye Witnesses In Criminal Cases

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In criminal cases there are many people, tools, and techniques used to determine who the culprit of the crime actually is. One of most difficult, but useful thing to actually use in criminal cases are eye witnesses. Witnesses are those who were part the crime scene somehow, whether it be just seeing the crime occur or actually experiencing it. One would think that having a witness means that the case is automatically solved because someone was there to identify the criminal and in some cases this is true. However, when a cases actually has an eye witness they have to make sure that the person is telling the truth and is a valid source of information. This is one of major reasons why people think children don’t make proper eye witnesses. They believe that they are not capable of providing such vital information, solely on the fact that they are a child. It is true that maturity does play a vital role when determining if a witness is valid or not , but there have been many studies that have point out how some children can be as …show more content…

The majority of cases that involve children witnesses are cases that are prosecuting domestic or sexual abuse (Thomson, 1991). This means that the child could either be a person who simply witnessed the crime or someone who was affected by it. This is important because in previous studies people have measured the accuracy of children who just witnessed a crime and those who were involved in it and found that children who had some involvement in it provided more accurate statements (The citation that can be found on your MAC). This is because the child feels some sort of attachment to the case and what actually occurs the culprit of the crime. So when determining whether a child is capable of testifying in a case, looking at the case in whole can let you know if the child qualified to provide a

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