Expert Witness

If I were called as an expert witness, by the defense, I would start by explaining that the basics of memory and how despite what individuals believe, studies have shown - over and over - that with the majority of people, our memory fails us. I would explain that memories go through three stages - sensory, short term and finally long term memory, and explain that some of the details of the event are lost along each stage for varying reasons. I would further detail that as a result of this detail loss, when we recall our memories we are actually reconstructing them using cues and information available to us at that time. We do not simply reproduce our memories as we would like downloading a page of text from the internet. Next I would explain how even vivid memories, so called 'flashbulb' memories, which are tied to specific events such as the 911 Terrorist attacks, wherein people believe they can remember every detail of where they were and what they were doing at the time of the attack and the entire

Also I would introduce the importance of paying attention to specific details during events in order to properly encode the memory so that it can be stored in the long term memory and later be retrieved. Then I move into the more specific area of eyewitness testimony and it's lack of reliability especially under stressful situations and tie in the attention condition. I would provide some of the statistics regarding the amount of cases overturned, years later, by DNA evidence. Specifically how 75% of those convictions, overturned, were obtained as a result of eyewitness testimony and further that for 33% of those cases there were two or more eyewitnesses who identified the perpetrator resulting in a