There was a man named Takehiko found murdered in a grove, and 7 witnesses give their side of the story. Tajomaru is the main suspect for the murder of Takehiko. Tajomaru hadn't planned to kill Takehiko until Masago, Takehiko's wife, wanted one of the men to die. He admitted to killing Takehiko so he could keep his wife for himself. He claims that both men dueled, but according to Tajomaru, Masago ran away while they were dueling. As explained in the blog, "Rashomon- Subjectivity and Class," posted by Abhineet Kumar on March 11, 2014, "The bandit, Tajomaru, on the other hand is not tied to social constraints, but rather the notorious image of himself he has created over the years." Tajomaru was a robber because he was not being restrained by social norms. Nothing was expected of him, so he did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. …show more content…
For example, in the woodcutter's testimony, he says," And . . . well, in addition to a rope, I found a comb." This proves that many testimonies were different because no one else had mentioned a comb. There are a couple of reasons for the cause of the different testimonies. The first one being, that unlike Tajomaru, they do not want the maximum penalty if they were punished at all. All the witnesses also wanted to feel stronger, and more self-confident, even if it had to be through lying. They wanted to feel like heroes, for thinking that what they did was the right thing to do. For example, in the wife's testimony, she states, "Since his mouth was stuffed with leaves... his voice could not be heard at all. But at a glance, I understood his words. Despising me, his look said only, “Kill me.”... I stabbed the small sword...into his breast." This quote from the wife clearly shows that she thought she was doing the right thing, but in reality, she was not. According to her, she had just murdered her husband for a total
In the magic of the mind author Dr. Elizabeth loftus explains how a witness’s perception of an accident or crime is not always correct because people's memories are often imperfect. “Are we aware of our minds distortions of our past experiences? In most cases, the answer is no.” our minds can change the way we remember what we have seen or heard without realizing it uncertain witnesses “often identify the person who best matches recollection
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.
Kassin, Saul, and Lawrence Wrightsman (Eds.). The Psychology of Evidence and Trial Procedure. Chapter 3. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1985. Print.
First, inconsistent witness testimonies raise a lot of questions. Multiple witnesses have each seen something different.
With all these possible flaws in the testimony of witnesses and victims why do they continue to use them as primary evidence in criminal cases? The answer is simple; until recently there was no other way to prove whether or not a person was actually at the scene of a crime unless someone saw them or they left some finger prints behind that the police were able to link back to someone, which may have not been left on the victim but in the general vicinity. Until recently, with the recent breakthrough in DNA testing which allows police and investigators to gain an exact match as to who committed the crime.
In the opening statements both side of the case make opening statements to lay the foundation of their cases. Opening statements are not allowed to be argumentative and cannot be considered evidence by the jury; they are the road maps laying out where each side intends to take its case. First the prosecution presented its case. They alleged Peterson killed his wife in their Modesto home because he was having an affair, then drove her body nearly 100 miles to San Francisco Bay and heaved it overboard from his small boat. Prosecution offered a steady drum beat of small bits of circumstantial evidence. From the Russian poetry Peterson read his mistress to the fishing gear in his alibi to the dessert featured on a particular episode of Martha Stewart Living, it added up to Peterson's guilt, they suggested. The defense countered that Modesto authorities unfairly targeted Peterson, ignoring important leads that didn't fit their theory. Defense said that, while prosecutors had only assembled a circumstantial case, they had five witnesses that were direct evidence of Peterson's innocence.
“they all had the same face. All of them!.... They all gave orders, they all shot! All of them!”(Fink, page 1265) Nearing the end of her testimony, it can be gathered that the first woman is falling apart. Her sentences become shorter, more direct, and she loses focus on the specific details asked by the prosecutor in favor of focusing on her self determined fact that all of them had shot during the liquidation. “I was afraid…. terribly afraid”(page 1264), the same fear that coursed through her that day was showing its face once again, causing this crack in her testimony. Typically if one’s manner of speaking falls apart like so then their body movements also become more rigid as their voice becomes both louder and shattered. Though Fink did not paint the picture of the scene to us directly, she has done so through the characters speech, and from this picture a young woman is seen. A young woman who, though at first had maintained a semblance of composure, had fallen apart into a fit of panic. Another character who shows us a break in composure is the second man. “tried to
The major theme of Andre Dubus’ Killing,s is how far someone would go for the person they love. It is important to note the title of the story is killings and not killers, for the reasoning that the story does not just focus on two deaths or two murderers but rather the death of marriage, friendship, youth, and overall, trust.
Eyewitness testimony is when people who were either involved in the “accident/ situation” give their side of the story, and give a testimony on what supposedly happened all through their eyes (Branscombe & Baron, 2017). In the movie eyewitness testimony was key to convict the “killers” of the store clerk murder, and one example was when each person described the car all from different points of view and distances. I felt like the eyewitnesses just used each other to reference the same car, they all didn’t have an accurate description of the car but when with it based on what the lawyer was say and hinting at. Another way these eyewitness testimonies seemed to be completely wrong and even harmful to the investigation was because everyone said that they saw Billy and his friend running away and speeding off when they could not really describe those two young mans descriptions with great detail. Which this was another form of eyewitness testimonies are really unreliable and shouldn’t really be used in a court of
Ninjas have been known for centuries for their abilities, training, and stealth. Over the ages, these amazing soldiers have become the make of legend.
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
Goodwin, Kukucka, and Hawks (2013) investigated the relationship between confidence and memory in eyewitness testimony in their study. The goal of an eyewitness is to provide the information to an investigator as accurately as possible. However, eyewitnesses can be pressured into providing information that conforms to someone else’s views and provide wrong answers to fit into the society. Often, researchers discovered that, participants answered more correctly when they were alone versus when they were in a group (Goodwin, Kukucka, & Hawks, 2013). Moreover, confidence is an important part of a witness’s personality. Seventy nine percent of the participants were confident about their statement when they heard similar statements from other witnesses. The purpose of this study is to explain how witnesses’ confidence level rely on other people’s
Eyewitness account testimony remains an important part of the justice system. Individuals who are victims of crime or witness a crime are asked what they say and who was the perpetrator of a crime. However, eyewitness testimony has been shown to be false in many cases. In the case shown, a man was falsely imprisoned for two rapes. His one victim memorized the perpetrator during the rape. She stated that she made a conscious effort to remember anything possible about the man who raped her. She wanted to help the police in catching the man. However, the wrong man was put in jail. The man repeatedly denied his guilt. After the OJ Simpson trial, the convicted person asked for a DNA test. The DNA test exonerated him. He was released from prison after eleven years.
It is a story that provides the ultimate explanation of how two different people who are witnesses to a crime give completely different psychological recollections of the same event. The author reminds us that truth depends on the telling. Someone must step forward and tell that truth.
Witness testimony is important to be accurate for judges, prosecutors and indirectly for all of us. The errors and distortions in testimony happen not necessarily on purpose. The witness is a participant in the proceedings, which provides a means of assumption evidence in the form of testimony. Witness testimony is one of the evidence on this subject in general the same evaluation rules as other evidence.