Eyewitness Misidentification

In an everyday scene, telling a story to a friend that might not be accurate when explaining all the details of a specific scene would not have repercussions. On the contrary, in the criminal justice system, an eyewitness person has a crucial role in describing the exact details of the suspect in a criminal case. In the movie “What Jennifer Saw” the police officers, the defendant’s criminal record, the eyewitness’s high level of memory confidence, emotions and constant alibis, contributed to the wrongful sentencing of Ronald Cotton for 11 years. Many individuals unconsciously may contribute to a false sense of confidence in the eyewitness. Eyewitness misidentification has great impacts in the legal system and in our society. In recent years,

One contributor can be found when analyzing the time and location of the environmental context in which the crime occurred. For example, Jennifer Thompson stated “brief pieces of light that I could piece together as much as I could piece together” (Innocence Project). The crime occurred at three a.m. in the morning; there was poor lighting visibility, and Jennifer was sleeping when the crime occurred. This helps us determine that the victim was experiencing a lack of conscious alertness. Moreover, Jennifer states that she was feeling “sick stomach, enraged” [Pollyanna Principle]. These emotions determine that individuals can better remember pleasant stimuli than terrifying stimuli, which might have a greater propensity to cause memory-accuracy errors during facing a stressful situation. Another contributor is the knife, which causes the “eyewitness make more errors if they saw a crime committed during a stressful circumstance, for instance, when someone was carrying a weapon” (Matlin & Farmer, 2016, p. 174). These contributors might affect the memory accuracy when encoding the criminal’s physical

In this case, Jennifer states that she was confident to describe her rapist. Also, police officers, such as Mike Gauldin, believed in the victim’s high sense of confidence before making the sketch. However, the reality is that when a victim is allowed to make a composite sketch, this high sense of confidence might be affected because of the environmental contributors (emotional, weapon, racial ethnicity bias etc.) when observing multiple facial structures. Another important contributor to eyewitness misidentification is the knowledge of the defendant’s criminal background. The suspect’s past criminal record of being convicted for similar circumstances, attempted rape, breaking into a house might, and evidence found (despite the fact that multiple individuals can have similar clothing items) at Cotton’s residency contributed to give reasons to the police to believe the suspect was guilty. This evidence could have contributed to make an automatic connection (police) between the suspect and the crime. The power of schemas can affect the individual’s actions or decisions when we are trying to fill in the gaps, but also suggestibility can lead to a change of statements during a crime investigation. Finally, the criminal justice system, is usually implied to automatically condemn suspects without properly conducting a balanced investigation in which usually the eyewitness information is never