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eyewitness testimony accuracy
eye witness testimony credibility essay
problems with eye witness testimony
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The prosecutorial process must deal with limiting factors in obtaining evidence and subsequently using it in investigations. Limiting factors could include eyewitness statements and scientific evidence admissibility. The prosecutor must weigh the importance of the evidence against the reliability of the evidence. Eyewitness statements can be affected by viewing conditions and post-event information (Busey & Loftus, 2007). If the witness’ initial account is limited by poor eye sight or poor lighting, and then exposed to post-event suggestion, the witness may alter their account of the event. The witness may believe that they are stating the truth, without realizing their memory has been supplemented with the additional information. In
This paper will consider eye witness testimony and its place in convicting accused criminals. Psychology online (2013) defines “eye witness testimony” as a statement from a person who has witnessed a crime, and is capable of communicating what they have seen, to a court of law under oath. Eye witness testimonies are used to convict accused criminals due to the first hand nature of the eye witnesses’ observations. There are however many faults within this system of identification. Characteristics of the crime is the first issue that will be discussed in this paper, and the flaws that have been identified. The second issue to be discussed will be the stress impact and the inability to correctly identify the accused in a violent or weapon focused crime. The third issue to be discussed is inter racial identification and the problems faced when this becomes a prominent issue. The fourth issue will be time lapse, meaning, the time between the crime and the eye witness making a statement and how the memory can be misconstrued in this time frame. To follow this will be the issue of how much trust jurors-who have no legal training-put on to the eye witness testimony, which may be faltered. This paper references the works of primarily Wells and Olsen (2003) and Rodin (1987) and Schmechel et al. (2006) it will be argued that eye witness testimony is not always accurate, due to many features; inter racial identification, characteristics of the crime, response latency, and line up procedures therefore this paper will confirm that eyewitness testimonies should not be utilised in the criminal ju...
This trial was between a group called the Mau Mau and Great Britain. Great Britain colonized Kenya in 1895. Great Britain's colonization of Kenya had major effects, good and bad.But in the early 1900’s, the Kenyans wanted independence. They formed a independence group called the Mau Mau. The Mau Mau were mostly made up of a tribe called the Kikuyu. As they tried peaceful protests and demonstrations, the Mau Mau were usually attacked by the British. Britain believed in order to stop the Mau Mau from their independence movement and the violence they were causing on the Britain's, Britain needed to use force. The purpose of this trial was not to make a decision about if Britain's violence was justifiable or not, but to figure out if the Mau Maus
Pezdek, K. (2012, March). A Preliminary Study of How Plea Bargaining Decisions by Prosecution and Defense Attorneys Are Affected by Eyewitness Factors. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/238136.pdf
(Kennedy & Haygood, 1992; Williams & Loftus, 1994), which is worrying considering the growing and substantial body of evidence from laboratory studies, field studies, and the criminal justice system supporting the conclusion that eyewitnesses frequently make mistakes (Cutler & Penrod, 1995; Huff, 1987; Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1986; Innocence Project, 2009; Wells, Small, Penrod, Malpass, Fulero, & Brimacombe, 1998). According to a number of studies, eyewitness misidentifications are the most common cause of wrongful convictions (Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1986; Wells et al., 1998; Yarmey, 2003) and, through the use of forensic DNA testing, have been found to account for more convictions of innocent individuals than all other factors combined (Innocence Project, 2009; Wells, Memon, & Penrod, 2006).
(a) Prosecutors have nearly limitless discretion in the most critical matters they must consider, yet they are held to very high ethical standards.
Eyewitnesses are primarily used by the criminal justice system for investigating and prosecuting crimes, particularly in circumstances where it is the only evidence available (Wells & Olson, 2003). Their testimony is highly regarded as it allows for police, prosecutors, judges and juries to establi...
The justice system depends on eyewitness evidence to convict offenders. Eyewitness is a difficult task to achieve in the justice system. According to Wise, Dauphinais, & Safer (2007), in 2002 one million offenders were convicted as felons in America. Out of those one million offenders, 5000 of them were innocent in 2002 (Dauphinais, 2007). The Ohio Criminal Justice survey states that 1 out of 200 felony criminal cases is a wrongful conviction (Dauphinais et al., 2007). According to Dauphinais et al., (2007), Dripps said that eyewitness error is a huge factor in cases of wrong convictions. A study conducted in 1987 indicated that in roughly 80,000 criminal cases, eyewitness error was the only sole evidence against the defendant
In the court of law, eyewitnesses are expected to present evidence based upon information they acquired visually. However, due to memory processing, presenting this information accurately is not always possible. This paper will discuss the reliability of eyewitness testimony, its use in a relevant court case, and how the reasonable person standard relates to eyewitness testimony.
The use of evidence and witnesses is a mechanism in which the law attempts to balance the rights of victims and offenders in the criminal trial process. Evidence used in court are bound by the Evidence Act 1995 (NSW) and have to be lawfully obtained by the police. The use of evidence and witnesses balance the victims’ rights to a great extent. However, it is ineffective in balancing the rights of offenders. The law has been progressive in protecting the rights of victims in the use and collection of evidence and witness statements. The Criminal Procedure Amendment (Domestic Violence Complainants) Bill 2014, which amends the Criminal Procedure Act 1986, passed the NSW Legislative Council on 18 November 2014. The amendment enables victims of
In this paper, I will look at what can go wrong in eyewitness identification. We will discuss if eyewitness identification can be considered valid evidence for convicting individuals of a crime. And what precautions can be put into place to protect individuals from wrongful conviction and help make the process more trustworthy.
In July 2003, Sheriff’s Deputy Todd Shanks of Multnomah County Oregon was performing a routine traffic stop on a vehicle driven by William Barrett. During this stop, Shanks arrested Barrett because of an outstanding warrant and then searched the car. A pressure-cooker found in the trunk was believed to be used in the making of methamphetamine. Barrett informed Shanks that the owner of the pressure-cooker was “Gunner Crapser,” and that he could be found at the Econolodge Motel in a room registered to a woman named Summer Twilligear (FindLaw, 2007, Factual and Procedural Background section, para. 2). Deputy Shanks quickly learned that there was an outstanding warrant for a “Gunner Crapser” but to not confuse the wanted man, whose name was not actually “Gunner Crapser,” with someone else using this name.
The criminal trial process is able to reflect the moral and ethical standards of society to a great extent. For the law to be effective, the criminal trial process must reflect what is accepted by society to be a breach of moral and ethical conduct and the extent to which protections are granted to the victims, the offenders and the community. For these reasons, the criminal trial process is effectively able to achieve this in the areas of the adversary system, the system of appeals, legal aid and the jury system.
The reliability of eyewitness testimony has become a popular research topic in applied and social psychology since Loftus and Palmer’s study in 1974 (see Steblay, 1997; Wright & Loftus, 1998; Deffenbacher, Bornstein, Penrod, & McGorty, for reviews). Participants viewed videos or slides of traffic accidents (Loftus & Palmer, 1974) or a criminal act (Roediger, Jacoby, McDermott, 1996; Cutler, Penrod, & Martens, 1987) and afterwards were asked several questions about what they had just seen. The manipulation in studies was that the researchers did not ask the same question to all participant, but instead changed the wording of one critical detail in the question. In Loftus and Palmer’s study, some of the subjects were asked “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”, while other subjects were asked the same question with the verbs smashed, collided, bumped and contacted instead of the verb hit. Loftus and Palmer (1974) showed that changing a single verb induced the different participant groups to give different estimations of the car’s speed, and additionally to produce more false claims of having seen broken glass during later interrogation.
Eyewitness identification and testimony play a huge role in the criminal justice system today, but skepticism of eyewitnesses has been growing. Forensic evidence has been used to undermine the reliability of eyewitness testimony, and the leading cause of false convictions in the United States is due to misidentifications by eyewitnesses. The role of eyewitness testimony in producing false confessions and the factors that contribute to the unreliability of these eyewitness testimonies are sending innocent people to prison, and changes are being made in order to reform these faulty identification procedures.
Eyewitness testimony is especially vulnerable to error when the question is misleading or when there’s a difference in ethnicity. However, using an eyewitness as a source of evidence can be risky and is rarely 100% accurate. This can be proven by the theory of the possibility of false memory formation and the question of whether or not a memory can lie. For instance, a group of students saw the face of a young man with straight hair, then heard a description of the face supposedly written by another witness, one that wrongly mentioned light, curly hair. When they reconstructed the face using a kit of facial features, a third of their reconstructions contained the misleading detail, whereas only 5 percent contained it when curly hair was not mentioned (Page 359). This situation shows how misleading information from other sources can be profoundly altered.