To What Extent is an Eyewitness Testimony Credible and Therefore be Used in Court?

1728 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Accuracy of an eyewitness testimony

Introduction

Scholars and practitioners alike share a widespread belief that the single greatest cause of wrongful conviction is because of an eyewitness testimony. April 23, 2007, marked the 200th criminal conviction exonerated by DNA evidence in the United States of America. According to www.innocenceproject.org, over 75% of the 200 criminal cases revealed to be wrongful convictions involved a faulty eyewitness testimony. Collectively, these 200 people spent a total of 2,475 years in prison. With factors such as witness memory, dependability, deception, and the outside influences one may encounter, psychologists and practitioners have begun to dispute whether or not an eyewitness is credible and therefore should be used in a legal court of law. In January of 2012 the Supreme Court reconsidered the use of eyewitness identification in court and in an 8 to 1 vote, court justices decided to change nothing. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote “There is no reason for the court to change its view that judges on their own cannot throw out eyewitness testimony unless police have manipulated circumstances to produce a desired outcome.” (Barnes 2012) Which begs the question that if the Supreme Court accepts eyewitness identification routinely, then is it credible? In this paper we’re going to explore eyewitness testimonies and their fallibilities, which lead to the conclusion that they should not be used in court.

Memory

We first start off by determining how we know that a testimony is credible. With many factors involved, such as a person’s disability, knowledge, and personal circumstances, eyewitnesses have a lot of easy influence over their testimony or identification, making it difficult to decide whether or not it is credible. Let’s...

... middle of paper ...

...Identification. North American Journal of Psychology, 10(2). Retrieved from http://www.questiaschool.com

Desmarais, S., & Yarmey, D. (2004). Judgments of Deception and Accuracy of Performance in Eyewitness Testimony. Canadian Journal of Police and Security Services, 2(1). Retrieved from http://www.questiaschool.com

Arkowitz, H., & Lilienfeld, S. (2009, January 8). Why Science Tells Us Not to Rely on Eyewitness Accounts. Scientific American Global RSS. Retrieved May 21, 2014, from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/

Blackmon, D. (2012, September 28). Louisiana death-row inmate Damon Thibodeaux exonerated with DNA evidence. Washington Post. Retrieved May 22, 2014, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/louisiana-death-row-inmate-damon-thibodeaux-is-exonerated-with-dna-evidence/2012/09/28/26e30012-0997-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_story.html

Show More
Related

  • The Pros And Cons Of Eyewitness Testimony

    550 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Picking Cotton

    667 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Eyewitness Identification: A Policy Review.” The Justice Project, Iowa State University. Web. 22 April 2014.

    Read More

  • Psychological research shows that eyewitness testimony is not always accurate, therefore it should not be used in the criminal justice system. Dis...

    1751 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • What Is Eyewitness Misidentification In Criminal Justice

    508 Words  | 2 Pages

    Eyewitness misidentification cost innocent people to end up in prison. Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions in the United States, having played a role in more than 70% of original convictions later overturned by new DNA evidence(Dunn). This explains eyewitness misidentification is not a reliable solution to prison the suspect and deal with other solution. The suspect is effected because the suspect goes through terrible life for crime they did not commit and false witness hunts

    Read More

  • The Unreliability of Eyewitness Testimony in Children

    2677 Words  | 6 Pages

    (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).

    Read More

  • Eyewitness Testimony Analysis

    1245 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Hugo Münsterberg's On the Witness Stand

    1681 Words  | 4 Pages

    For this book report, I decided to read Hugo Münsterberg's On the Witness Stand. This book contains essays on psychology and crime and eyewitness testimony. Today this book is used as a reference for many issues in forensic psychology. For this report, I focused on two chapters of the book: Illusions and the Memory of the Witness. I am going to first summarize the two chapters I read then talk about what was going on at the time this book was written. I will then report some of the research in the book, and finish with my opinion on how this book has contributed to the literature and how it relates to the current knowledge of forensic psychology.

    Read More

  • The Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony in the Criminal Justice System

    1837 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Eyewitness Error Essay

    1206 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony

    952 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Looking at Eyewitness TEstimony

    433 Words  | 1 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Essay On Eyewitness Testimony

    1191 Words  | 3 Pages

    The reliability of eyewitness testimony has become a popular research topic in applied and social psychology since Loftus and Palmer’s study in 1974 (see Steblay, 1997; Wright & Loftus, 1998; Deffenbacher, Bornstein, Penrod, & McGorty, for reviews). Participants viewed videos or slides of traffic accidents (Loftus & Palmer, 1974) or a criminal act (Roediger, Jacoby, McDermott, 1996; Cutler, Penrod, & Martens, 1987) and afterwards were asked several questions about what they had just seen. The manipulation in studies was that the researchers did not ask the same question to all participant, but instead changed the wording of one critical detail in the question. In Loftus and Palmer’s study, some of the subjects were asked “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”, while other subjects were asked the same question with the verbs smashed, collided, bumped and contacted instead of the verb hit. Loftus and Palmer (1974) showed that changing a single verb induced the different participant groups to give different estimations of the car’s speed, and additionally to produce more false claims of having seen broken glass during later interrogation.

    Read More

  • Eyewitness Identification and Reliable Testimony

    2504 Words  | 6 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Conformity In 12 Angry Men

    1115 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Memory

    546 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about To What Extent is an Eyewitness Testimony Credible and Therefore be Used in Court?

Open Document