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Research into the problems with eyewitness testimony
The problem with eyewitness testimony
The credibility of eyewitness testimonies
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Eye Witness Testimony An eyewitness testimony is when an individual witnessed an evert firsthand and recalls the details. This can be as simple as recalling a time with friends and family at Christmas, or something as serious as a crime that has occurred. Eyewitness testimony has been controversial in court cases for a while. The reason for controversy is because eye witness testimony can be inaccurate or influenced. The judge and jury do not want to make a wrong decision by trusting the eye witness because the eyewitness might not be recalling the event, actions, or descriptions properly, even though the witness does not realize he is doing so. There are numerous ways in which eyewitness accounts can be inaccurate or influenced to make them …show more content…
Eyewitness accounts are recalls of memory. When an individual does not get enough sleep, his mind is not as sharp as it is if it was fully rested. This can cause the individual’s memory to be hampered; this causes the individual to recall details incorrectly. Also, another interesting fact is that sleep can have a negative effect on memory. If a person sleeps right after witnessing something, he or she will tend to lose details. Thus, sleep as well as sleep deprivation causes an increased chance for a witness to recall false details (cite sleep). Some of the details and events that the individual is ‘remembering’ may not have even happened at all. If the witness was sleep deprived when he or she witnessed the crime, the mind may not have been sharp enough to remember all the slight differences and details that would affect the court case. Also, if the eyewitness was not well rested before the day or court, he will not be able to remember the details and will have a higher chance of recalling false or incorrect information. Because of the numerous differing effects of sleep on eyewitness accounts and memory, one must be cautious when listening to an eyewitness account. This is just one of the reasons how the eyewitness accounts can be incorrect or …show more content…
Environment has a huge impact on an eyewitness’s memory. If the crime happened at night in poor lighting, the witness may not have been able to clearly identify the suspect due to poor visibility. The judge and jury should be cautions when receiving an eyewitness account that has occurred in a poorly lit environment. Also, panic and chaos can have a tremendous affect on an eyewitness. In a scenario that is in panic or chaos, the mind transitions into survival mode; the brain directs the individual to fight for his or her life. When this occurs, the brain is not focused on the details as much as it is focused on fleeing from the threat. Not only does the environment have an impact on the eyewitness account, but personal beliefs also have effects (cite pdf). Racism towards individuals hinders the integrity of the eyewitness account, especially if the eyewitness could not see the criminal very well. The witness may assume the suspect’s race because of racism or stereotyping. This could be very problematic in court cases. For instance, there are two individuals who look very similar in appearance, but one has a tattoo and the other one does not. In this situation, the criminal is the individual without the tattoo committed the crime. The eyewitness may ‘remember’ that the individual who committed the crime has a tattoo, but the eyewitness has not remembered correctly
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.
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...
Eyewitness is most common issue in the United States. Eyewitness misidentification is a major issue in the United States' Justice System, but there is a logical solution to end this problem instantly.
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
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...
Inaccurate eyewitness identifications can confound investigations at the earliest stages. Critical time is lost while police are distracted from the real perpetrator, focusing instead on building the case against an innocent person” (Sheck, InnocenceProject.com). So the question arises “how reliable would you predict an eyewitness’s testimony of a crime to be”? Well, the eyewitness can have several factors that determine their decisions. These factors include misinformation, imagination, and things such as amnesia.
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.
Human memory is one of the most important for people to recall past events. Eyewitness is frequently the critical evidence for solving crimes, and also the important evidence for determining whom the perpetrator is. Thus, it’s essential to consider the reliability and accuracy of eyewitness memory for recall the details of past events for evaluating the crime. This article will against the argument of eyewitness memory reliability to recall past events. Unfortunately, human memory may not be that reliable that we think of as eyewitness memory might have some limitation and difficulties. The good witnesses are confident and remember details. This argument is support by researchers Odinot, Wolters, van Koppen (2009) and Morgan, Hazlett G, Baranoski, Doran, Southwich and Loftus (2007). In Odinot et al. (2009) article, they state that although the eyewitness memory accuracy is high, the confident is low. Odinot et al. (2009) suggested that jurors considered eyewitness confidence is one of the most important to indicate the accuracy of eyewitness memory. Furthermore, in Morgan et al. (2007) study has shown that there are potential factors such as personally relevant and stressful events that will affect eyewitness memories and bias. These two studies will strongly support this study; moreover, both studies are good source of evidences for people to consider the reliability of eyewitness memory for testimony. The unreliability of human eyewitness memory to recall past events under stress conditions and other factors will be discussed in this article. Among the variables that affect the accuracy of eyewitness identification will also be discussed in this article.
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
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.
We believe that the best method would be cognitive interviews. In many cases, eyewitness testimony is an important source of evidence which highlights the importance of obtaining an accurate and complete information from them in order to prevent wrongful conviction. Cognitive interviewing is a method where interviewers has a set of rules and guidelines for interviewing the eyewitness which is neither aggressive or accusatory. Where standard police interviewing is often full of interruptions and has an over-reliance on a predetermine list of questions, this method does not interrupt the witness and allow them to control the flow of information through enabling them to tell the events of the story. Our textbook explains that this interviewing process improves the number of correct information generated regarding the event in comparison to other techniques. It has also showed better memory retrieval and communication which in turn produce a larger, more accurate and detailed body of information that we can obtain from the eyewitness.
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.
The writers argue that the focus on identification itself, especially in court cases, does not factor in the influence that postidentification suggestions have on the testimony of the eyewitness that might later be given about the identification. They suggest that postidentification feedback from the lineup administrator has strong effects on how the eye witness remembers the original event and on how the eyewitness recalls the identification decision. They call this the Postidentification Feedback Effect. This Effect influences both the retrospective reports of confidence and the eyewitnesses’ retrospective reports of how good their view of the culprit was, how much attention they paid to the culprit, how long they took to identify the culprit and so on. According to the writers, any psychological interpretations of the postidentification feedback effect must take into account the broad range of effects on retrospective reports of the witnessing