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unreliable eyewitness testimony
the problem with eyewitness testimony
effects on children and adults of eyewitness testimonies
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Eyewitness testimony and false imprisonment based on eyewitness
First off I would like to say eyewitness testimony is very questionable the human mind is very complexed and there are many issues with eyewitness testimony. One factor of eyewitness testimony was poor encoding in the brain or memory at the time of the event. Which means our mind did not process the memory correctly or has changed it in any way. When most people are endangering them only see the danger, not the person that is causing the danger or harm to them. The mind tries to focus on getting a solution to get out of the danger without death survival instinct kicks in fight or flight. The mind process and vision in many ways and fills in what it cannot see. In a bad situation
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Memory has several flaws which affect reliability a person only remembers what they wish to remember we have short term memory and long term most is only remembered for a roughly 15 to 20 seconds or brain store things differently in different places. Remembering a face that is not as clear as one actually viewed, the human mind has a tendency for memories to be constructed so that missing information is supplied from our past or outside sources TV is a big one that makes faulty memories of human beings. Newspaper something we read could be triggered at the time. Other witnesses the person may have heard talking or describing could alter the mind. The human mind uses other from memories to interpret information and can distort the memory of the situation in memory. Even colors are remembered as brighter than they truly are. Maybe eyewitness can get right do you think? How about the criminal procedures they cannot be wrong or could …show more content…
In photospreads, there are numerous ways that one picture can be subtly different: lighting, color tone, brightness, sharpness, viewing angle, background or location of face in the frame (Green, 2013)”. According to Green these few factors alone cause eyewitness testimony to be 90 percent incorrect. However, digging a little deeper into the eyewitness testimony and police proceeding coming to eye witnesses (Green,
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.
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
Eye witness testimony can be a very important piece of evidence surrounding criminal cases but not always the most reliable. As discussed in the textbook Criminal Evidence: Principles and Cases, jurors often rely very heavily on eyewitness interpretations of an incident to determine whether or not a defendant is guilty. Since an adult is presumed to be competent, a juror will often make the assumption that the testimony provided is an accurate account of the events that took place. Amongst other factors, the amount of stress the witness is under at the time of the crime, the presence of a weapon, lighting and the lack of any distinguishable characteristics can play a role in creating a false memory. Under that extreme pressure, a witness is more likely not to recall certain aspects of an incident. Their attention may have been drawn elsewhere and they never noticed the suspect’s beard, tattoos or facial features which can be crucial identifiers. The consequences of falsely identifying a suspect due to false memories can ruin an innocent person’s life, have them convicted and cause them to be punished for a crime that they did not commit.
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.
(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).
Eyewitness reports are not reliable in court. There are many reasons why eyewitness reports are unreliable. Some reasons are that people don't have a good memory and mistake the real criminal, another reason is that people don't have a perfect eyesight and even the mind plays tricks on you. on a report in 1984 there was a report that jennifer was raped. jennifer picked ronald cotton out of a photo and a physical lineup. she was sure that ronald was the rapist but a decade later dna proved that ronald wasn't the real rapist. elizabeth loftus said that “jennifer did not recognize the real rapist because she picked ronald first and in her mind she thought he was the real rapist” so her mind was set on ronald and no one else.
Contributing to most cases of wrongful convictions is Eyewitness misidentification. Eyewitness misidentification not only is the greatest cause of wrongful conviction but it also single handedly creates a huge 75% of convictions to be overturned due to DNA testing. When dealing with eyewitness testimony there is no guarantee that the criminal to which the victim is describing can be narrowed down to a single person. That is where facial and body features such as height, weight, and other personal reference can help victims remember a clearer image. Thus, when the suspects are in the police lineup the victim will either see the criminal, or not. Sadly, the false testimony, or “snitch” testimony come to play. Yes, victims could be telling the truth to whether the criminal is actually in...
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.
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.
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.
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.
I feel that trusting an eyewitness is too risky and will lead to false judgment of a suspect. A human’s memory is often not a reliable source to rely on when judging a person. As seen in the experiment of Bartlett’s “war of ghosts”, people will often alter elements of a story that is unfamiliar to them and replace it with details that are more consistent to their culture. Likewise, memory can include information that a person did not actually experience but because it is expected and consistent with the schema. (Goldstien,
In a TedTalk concerning the dubious reliability of an eyewitness at the scene of a crime, forensic psychologist Scott Fraser explores the conviction of Francisco Carrillo and the fallible nature of the brain in encoding, storing, and retrieving memories. With the use of critical thinking and research based knowledge, discussed are the speaker’s claims, reactions to the talk, and a personal evaluation of eyewitness memory.
Furthermore, additional research is focusing on the various identified components of eyewitness memory. Areas of such research include: forced fabrications, false memory development, encoding processes, states of arousal, binding actions in visual long-term memory episodic memory, and perceptual memory. Finally researchers are attempting to quantify methods of rating the reliability and confidence of eyewitness testimony to enhance police and court reliance on the witness reports.
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.