Psychological research shows that eyewitness testimony is not always accurate, therefore it should not be used in the criminal justice system. Discuss.
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...
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In summation, is can be identified in this paper that eye witnesses do not play a constructive role within the criminal justice system. This can be seen through a thorough discussion of the many issues portrayed through this paper. To conclude Schmechel et al. (2006) reiterates that statements this paper has presented and discussed;
“Accuracy-confidence correlation: an eye witnesses’ stated confidence is not a good predictor of identification accuracy; Stress effects: highly stressful situations may make an experience seem especially vivid, but such stressors can reduce the ability to recall details about a person’s face…Cross-race bias: eye witnesses are more accurate at identifying members of their own race than members of other races.”
Therefore this paper has confirmed that eye witness testimonies should not be utilised within the criminal justice system.
The use of eyewitness statements and testimony’s can be a great source of information, but can also lead to wrongful convictions. Due to eyewitness testimony, innocent people are convicted of crimes they have not committed. This is why the wording of a question is important to consider when interviewing witnesses. Due to the fact that eyewitness testimony can be the most concrete evidence in an investigation, witnesses may feel they are helping an officer by giving them as much information as possible, therefore they may tell them information that is not entirely true, just to please them. This is why there are advantages and disadvantages to using open and close ended questioning at different durations of an interview. The way you word a question may impact the memory of a witness, this is because a person cannot completely memorize the exact occurrences of an event.
“Eyewitness Identification: A Policy Review.” The Justice Project, Iowa State University. Web. 22 April 2014.
For example, when the victims want to remember something, or someone, strongly and with high confidence, the witness can still be wrong. The eyewitness is given all the photos of the suspects laid out to identify the person they remember committing the crime. Also the eyewitness is asked to identify each photo whether is the culprit or not. Prosecutors should look over the cases before relying on eyewitness. Prosecutors should not depend on eyewitness testimony because that will lead to wrongful convictions. The wrongful convictions span the criminal justice system from investigation and arrest to prosecution and trail(Ferrero). False conviction makes the justice system stronger and arresting innocent is wrong. And picking out person similar to the murder. Not catching the real suspect might cause the public risky. Public safety be in risk."Wrongful conviction is gravest violation of personal liberty and also poses severe public safety risks, as the real perpetrator could remain on the street," an innocence Project news release said. The real suspect might kill many people or if the eyewitness might be in risk. If the victim is still life might be kill again. Lying about someone is not good thing might have miserable life in their future.
During the identification and prosecution of a suspect, eyewitnesses are the most important. Eyewitness testimony needs to be reliable as it can have serious implications to the perceived guilt or innocence of a defendant. Unfortunately, the reliability of eyewitness testimony is questionable because there is a high number of eyewitness misidentification. Rattner (1988) studied 205 cases and concluded that eyewitness misidentification was the factor most often associated with wrongful conviction (52%). Eyewitness testimony can be affected by many factors. A substantial literature demonstrates own group biases in eyewitness testimony. For example, the own-race bias, in which people are better at recognizing faces of their own race versus another
For this book report, I decided to read Hugo Münsterberg's On the Witness Stand. This book contains essays on psychology and crime and eyewitness testimony. Today this book is used as a reference for many issues in forensic psychology. For this report, I focused on two chapters of the book: Illusions and the Memory of the Witness. I am going to first summarize the two chapters I read then talk about what was going on at the time this book was written. I will then report some of the research in the book, and finish with my opinion on how this book has contributed to the literature and how it relates to the current knowledge of forensic psychology.
There has been considerable debate worldwide, regarding the accuracy of eyewitness testimony in the criminal justice system. Particularly, arguments have surrounded wrongful convictions that have resulted from incorrect eyewitness evidence (Areh, 2011; Howitt, 2012; Nelson, Laney, Bowman-Fowler, Knowles, Davis & Loftus, 2011). The purpose of this essay is to consider psychological research about the accuracy of eyewitness testimony and its placement in the criminal justice system. Firstly, this essay will define how eyewitnesses and their testimonies are used within the criminal justice system and the current debate surrounding its usage. Secondly, the impact of post-identification feedback will be used to show the affect on the confidence of a witness. Thirdly, studies around gender related differences will show how a witnesses gender can affect memory recall and accuracy. Fourthly, empirical studies will be used to highlight how a psychological experience called change blindness can cause mistakes in eyewitness identification. Finally, the effect of cross-examination will be used to explore the impact on eyewitness accuracy. It will be argued, that eyewitness testimony is not accurate and highly subjective, therefore, the criminal justice system must reduce the impact that eyewitness testimony is allowed to have. Developing better policies and procedures to avoid wrongful convictions by misled judges and jury members can do this.
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
Fradella, H.F. (2006) Why judges should admit expert testimony on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. Federal Courts Law Review. Retrieved from http://www.fclr.org/fclr/articles/html/2006/fedctslrev3.pdf
The use of eyewitnesses has been a constant in of criminal justice system since its very beginning. Unfortunately, people do not make the best witnesses to a crime. The person may not have seen the actual criminal, but someone that looks similar to them. The witness may lie about what he or she may have scene. Also the witness can be influenced by the police as to who or what they saw at the time of the crime. The witness or victims memory of the person may have faded so that they don’t remember exactly what had seen, which could be disastrous for the accused.
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.
Have you ever been an eyewitness at the scene of a crime? If you were, do you think that you would be able to accurately describe, in precise detail, everything that happened and remember distinct features of the suspect? Many people believe that yes they would be able to remember anything from the events that would happen and the different features of the suspect. Some people, in fact, are so sure of themselves after witnessing an event such as this that they are able to testify that what they think they saw was indeed what they saw. 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.
The findings of Steblay et al. (2011) were based on the lab reports of other eyewitness researchers, while the focus of Wells et al. (2014) was field study. It must be kept in mind that the environment of both of the studies could be a crucial factor in determining true identification. The condition of the witness in the field study can never be the same as in the laboratory experiment. Wells et al. (2014) concluded that witnesses are less likely to make identification in the sequential lineup procedure and similarly there are less possibilities of misidentifying the known-innocent fillers (the persons other than the culprits). The simultaneous lineup must also be explored further as the factor of relevant judgment is of utmost
For example, the old man that lived beneath the boy and his father testified that he heard a fight between the boy and the father and heard the boy yell, “I’m gonna kill you,” along with a body hitting the ground, and then claims that he saw the boy running down the stairs. With this information, along with other powerful eyewitness testimonies, all but one of the jury members believed this boy was guilty. The power of eyewitness testimony is also shown in Loftus’s (1974) study. In this study, Loftus (1974) found that those who claimed to “see” something were usually believed even when their testimony is pointless. She discovered in her study that only 18 percent of people convicted if there was no eyewitness testimony, 72 percent of people convicted when someone declared, “That’s the one!”, and even when the witness only had 20/400 vision and was not wearing glasses and claimed “That’s the one!”, 68 percent of people still convicted the person. This proves that in 12 Angry Men and Loftus (1974) study, eyewitness testimony is very powerful and influential in one’s decision to convict a
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.
In this study, witnesses viewed a crime video and attempted to identify the culprit from a group line-up that did not actually have the culprit present. 253 mistaken-identification eyewitnesses were randomly given confirming, disconfirming, or no feedback regarding their description of the culprit or the culprit’s identification. The feedback process was either immediate or delayed for 48 hours, and measures were also immediate or delayed for 48 hours. It was shown that those who were given confirming feedback gave more distorted information. They had increased confidence in remembering what had happened, were able to make out facial details and their length of time to identify the culprit changed. There was also no difference in their statements when they were asked immediately or after 48 hours. Those who received disconfirming feedback were not so confident and took longer time to identify the culprit.