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Recommended: Essays on false memories
Memory is a subject to be dealt with delicately, especially when dealing with children. They are fragile and can be manipulated very easily. In the case of Arnold and Jesse Friedman the fragility of children’s memories is the only thing to prove innocence or guilt.
Arnold Friedman was arrested for receiving child pornography. On a raid of his house, among the dozens of other magazines and pictures in his office, the police found a roster for the computer class Arnie and his son Jesse were teaching in their basement. The police questioned every child on that list to see if they had been touched by either of the two teachers. Neither the children nor the parents knew what they were talking about until the police talked to the children alone. They would tell them what happened and ask them things like, “Isn’t that right?” and “You can tell us. It’s okay. We know what happened to you.” If a child is asked a closed-ended question, they will likely give the answer the person asking them would like to hear. Children only want to please. Some children admitted later on to saying yes because they wanted the police to go away. Some children said it was real and they were really molested, but the memory was repressed and the only way it was found was through hypnosis.
Hypnosis is an extremely risky thing to do to a child to find a memory. It can result in false memory implantation and make the child believe anything, even if it did not happen. One child’s memory from being hypnotized led to 36 counts of sodomy. Arnold was accused of over 260 counts and took a plea from the prosecutors for his wife, who did not want him to go to trial.
After Arnold was sentenced, the People went after Jesse. Jesse’s lawyer, Peter Panero, said Jesse had confided in him that his father molested him. Jesse said he enjoyed the attention, he did not care what it was. Jesse later denied ever saying this and it was Peter’s idea for Jesse to say that on the stand and maybe get him released. Jesse also took a plea bargain because his mother pressured him to. Both of Jesse’s brothers did not understand why their father and brother took pleas if they were innocent. The mother was not well liked in that family.
The novel Witness for the Defense: The Accused, the Eyewitness, and the Expert Who Puts Memory on Trial goes into great detail about the encounters an expert witness, on memory especially, might come across by telling true stories from Dr. Elizabeth Loftus’s experiences with the help of Katherine Ketcham. It also provides information about Loftus’s work and research on memory and its limitations and malleability (Loftus & Ketcham, 1991). Applying research on memory to this novel allows one to better understand the implications of the prosecutor’s case more effectively.
In Laurence Armand French Ph.D. and Thomas J. Young Ph.D.’s article The False Memory Syndrome: Clinical/Legal Issues for the Prosecution talks about memory recall being an unreliable form of evidence in the Criminal Justice System. French and Young state that hypnosis and lie detector tests are a misconception because “the cognitive interpretations of the emotional/autonomic aspects of the central nervous (CNS) and peripheral nervous systems are not true indicators of reality,” (p. 38).
Although Science and Pseudoscience are evidently two completely different topics, what is considered to be classified as a Science or Pseudoscience is a controversy topic that’s still being debated today. While science builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world through the scientific method, pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as science, but lacks support of evidence and cannot be reliably tested. Hypnosis is one topic several psychologists and those in the field of science are seemingly still debating today, in result to its several different uses. Although hypnosis is shown to work when dealing with certain phenomena’s like stress, there are several uses it is considered to be very ineffective and simply not a science.
One being Johnny Everett Webb, a fellow inmate, with Cameron Willingham in Navarro County Jail. The second major factor was testimonies from investigators Vasquez and Frogg on what they believed happened that night. Prosecutors believe that Cameron willingly tried to murder his children by setting his home on fire. Cameron Willingham never changed his story and always seemed innocent. Willingham was found guilty on the grounds of the testimony that the forensic experts gave at court because of a former inmate who claimed that Willingham had admitted to being guilty for the death of his children....
Many people think that children do not lie. It is not that they lie, they just cannot remember what happened a year or two ago when they were much younger, perhaps only a year or two old. The truth is children do lie. “One study shows that twenty three percent of abuse allegations are false and there was insufficient information to determine the truth in another twenty four percent” (Slicker W.D., 1999, Child testimony ¶ 16). Fear is also a factor in children lying or not providing adequate information. Lepore (1991) says that studies show in most abuse cases the suspect will usually bribe the child or threaten them into secrecy. This causes the child to become afraid to tell the truth, and they will begin to deny what has happened or even worse not report the abuse at all. The way an interviewer phrases a question will influence a child.
Psychological research shows, a witness's memory of details during the commission of a crime, has a high probability of containing significant errors. In response to these findings, the question is should witness testimony still be permissible in a court of law? Obviously, the answer to this question is an important one and is debatable. Consequently, what we know is many innocent people go to jail due to eyewitness misidentification. Therefore, it is imperative that all defense attorneys thoroughly evaluate the validity of eyewitness recollection events. Any defense attorney who does anything less is ignoring the findings of the psychological community and its’ study of how the brain functions. As a result, an intense analysis of an
The term that best explains the barriers to eyewitness memory is widely regarded as verbal overshadowing. The notion of verbal overshadowing has been coined as the inability to provide explicit memories due to the cognitive barriers people possess to depict accurately the events that have transpired. On a daily basis, individuals across the United States are sentenced to lengthy prison sentences resultant of wrongful convictions (Innocence Project, 2016). To illustrate the ambivalences caused by verbal overshadowing, if it even exists, behavioral scientists conducted a study to demonstrate the disparities. Many researchers have designed an experiment to measure a person’s cognitive ability to remember accurately a perpetrator that has committed a crime in a police lineup (Schooler & Engstler-Schooler,
People shied away from him, as people often do when confronted with a powerful stench. Jesse could not help it, hygiene was not so high on his list of priorities, finding food and shelter were a bit more important. He could not find employment even though he was hardworking and educated. Jesse wanted to work, and as a college graduate, he should have ample opportunity to do so. However, Jesse's life had taken a severe downturn. Shortly after graduation, he met a girl at a bar who was willing to 'celebrate' with him. One thing led to another as things are frequently prone to do and Jesse indulged himself. Unfortunately, the girl was only sixteen (a very mature sixteen), her father learned of Jesse's actions and had the boy arrested. He was convicted of statutory rape and received a slap on the wrist - so to speak. You see, Jesse was now a sex offender and had to register with the state police; his name, address, telephone number, and picture were published and put on the Internet. Almost immediately, he began receiving threatening phone calls and all job prospects dried up. His life was over.
Further biological research on the effect of psychological trauma on the neurochemistry of memory may help clinicians distinguish between true repressed memories and false memories in clients who report abuse. However, to date there is no method to determine the accuracy of these memories. Therefore clinicians and the courts must rely on corroborative evidence, and behavioral and physiologic clues to distinguish veracity.
Ever since DNA has been used in court cases, hundreds of people have been released from prison because DNA exonerated them from the eyewitness testimony that was given at trial that locked them up in the first place. Once news about this started getting out, how human memory was not as perfect as previously thought, many different studies have shown how easy it is to manipulate memory and create false memories to almost everyone. So when I received this assignment and had to research a topic involving false memories and present it, I chose an issue that I am very connected with, individuals with intellectual disabilities [ID]. Growing up I was a member of Friendship Circle it is a nonprofit organization that caters to children, teens, and young adults who have autism or are ‘special needs’ and immerse them in a range of Jewish and other social experiences. Being a volunteer and being exposed to children and young adults with ID and autism spectrum disorder I noticed some of the kids would get bruises in odd places and act funny some weeks. Bringing this to the attention to one of the leaders in charge I would later find out that someone was abusing that child. According to Baladerian (1991), 39-83% of girls and 16-32% of boys with an ID are sexually abused before they are 18. In another more recent article from the UK said “definite abuse was found [in people with learning disabilities] in 4-5% of individuals, but consultants felt many others had hidden signs of abuse” it also went on to state that there are about 940 new cases of abuse with the victim having an intellectual disability (Cooke and Sinason, 1998). Another study I looked at said that there is a one in fifty [1:50] chance that if someone is a victim on a crime ...
Evidence provided in many courtroom cases can range from DNA samples, eyewitness testimony and video-recordings, to name a few. What happens when one of the main sources of information in a case comes from a child? Even worse, what if the child is the victim in the case? The topic of children participating and providing testimony in courtroom settings is an image that, presumably, most would not associate as a “usual” place for children. Yet in cases such as sexual abuse or violence towards a child or within the child’s family, it is not impossible to have cases where children are the predominant source of information provided for judges and jurors. Ref It is then important to consider the reliability of children’s testimonial accounts much like how adult testimonies are examined. The question of focus is then, to what extent can we rely on child eyewitnesses? Specifically, what factors influence the veracity of their testimonies?
A false memory is a type of memory that someone may remember but it did not happen. There has been evidence to show that under certain circumstances, younger children are not as susceptible to false memories as other children or adults; this concept is known as developmental reversals (McGuire, 2015). In this paper I plan to discuss what false memories are, how they may occur, and also I will discuss two studies surrounding false memories. I hope to educate the reader in learning more about false memories, a study that they have used, and how this can help further research in the future.
The human mind is such a complex entity in which it can change one’s concept of extreme situational memories as well as even simple memories. I feel that this has a huge impact upon the judicial system and the type of testimonies that are relied upon for court trials. So many lives are impacted over the result of memory errors that there ought to be more research studies devoted specifically to this topic which deals with false eyewitness testimonies concerning memory errors, and court cases.
The next thing you know, you wake up from a deep sleep, and all of a sudden all your urges to smoke another cigarette vanish; your addiction is broken. Sounds ridiculous right? Maybe to some, but others completely believe this would be totally plausible. In fact, hypnosis is a very controversial subject in the field of psychology. The practice of hypnosis is actually about as old as the United States of America, as the earliest it is thought to have been used was around the time of the American Revolution (Rosen 2). However, many psychologists still argue about whether or not it is a true, practical process, and what it actually means to be hypnotized. Is it the bringing out of a hidden unconscious level of awareness, honing in all attention on a single stimulus, or simply a patient psychologically playing the role of an obedient hypnotized subject (“Exploring the mysteries of hypnosis”)? I believe that hypnosis really works, and is a viable technique that when used correctly, can be implemented to help people not j...
Loftus has focused the bulk of her career on both the psychological and legal aspects of distorted or false memories, and her work demonstrates the facility with which memories and beliefs can be molded. Her findings regarding the strength of eyewitness testimony and repressed traumatic memories have helped change the notion that such testimony is absolutely reliable (Zagorski, N., 2005).”