"#thedress", also known as "Dressgate" is an internet phenomenon. This recent phenomenon started when a simple photograph of a dress ignited an argument about the color of a dress. While some people claimed they saw the dress as blue and black, others claimed it to be white and gold. Although, both groups of people were correct from their point of view, it was established very soon that the actual colors of the dress were blue and black. The low quality picture of the dress created an optical illusion tricking people to see different colors for the same dress. Even with the best effort to be truthful and honest, people were wrong about the dress. Similarly, an eyewitness can recall things differently from the original incident they observed …show more content…
Criminal cases relies considerably more on eyewitness testimony than any other cases. Although, the evidence eyewitnesses provide can be tremendously helpful identifying criminals, and vindicating the innocent, this evidence is not flawless. Knowingly or unknowingly witnesses can make errors, such as identifying the wrong person or failing to identify the perpetrator of a crime. To minimize this effect most of the US state and local law enforcement agencies have established their own policies, practices and protocols with regard to the collection and handling of eyewitness evidence (Eyewitness Evidence 1). As a result, the legal standards of eyewitness testimony as evidence in criminal trials show a discrepancy far and wide across the US on admissibility as …show more content…
Also, losing only a few hours of sleep can create the same kind of difficulties for human brain to process new information. A recent study found that, those who got five or fewer hours of sleep for just one night were significantly more prone to say they had seen a news video when they actually had not. The study also discovered that subjects were more vulnerable to researchers ' false suggestions when they had not slept more than five hours. Out of the 193 subjects those who had less than five hours of sleep wove those suggestions into their responses 38% of the time (Frenda, Steven J, et al.). As a result, losing just a few hours could be enough to lead people to make up
“Eyewitness Identification: A Policy Review.” The Justice Project, Iowa State University. Web. 22 April 2014.
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...
Pezdek, K. (2012, March). A Preliminary Study of How Plea Bargaining Decisions by Prosecution and Defense Attorneys Are Affected by Eyewitness Factors. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/238136.pdf
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.
In the last forty years, there has been a shift in courtroom proceedings. Lawyers are not only focusing their evidence on the scientific aspects of an event, but also on those who may have witnessed the actual event as well. Recently, the number of eyewitness appearances in the courtroom has increased, making statements about either a crime or an event that occurred in their presence. But how does the courtroom decide who is a legitimate witness to an event? Too often, age, race, education, and socio-economics play a major role in this decision. Here, we will discuss the age aspect of this problem in terms of child eyewitness testimony and it's implications in the courtroom.
(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).
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...
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
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.
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.
McNamara, J. M. (2009). Sketchy Eyewitness-Identification Procedures:A Proposal to Draw up Legal Guidelines For The Use of Facial Composites in Criminal Investigations. Univesity of Wisconsin Law School, 764-799.
It’s very important that people know how much sleep they need. Sleeping improves people’s health while lack of sleep causes detriment
From a legal standpoint, eyewitness memories are not accurate. Though they all illustrate the same concept, each paper described different ways eyewitness memories were altered. One’s memory can be misleading by their own attributions towards the situation, what they choose to see and not see, and if the individual has been through a single event or repetitive stressful events. As human beings, our memories on all matters are not concrete. When retelling stories, we tend to modify the situation and tailor certain events, making the information provided unreliable. An eyewitness testimony changes the track of a trial and information that is given to the court can be ambiguous and can cause bias towards the circumstances. Eyewitnesses can even be confident in their retelling of a situation and explain a complete event, when in fact, that particular event never