The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony
With regard to the extent of psychological research which supports the
view concerning the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, a number of
judgements can be made.
Firstly, one can refer to a study carried out by Loftus and Palmer in
1974, where one hundred and fifty participants were asked to watch a
video of cars colliding, and then fill in a questionnaire about what
they saw. The important question involved the speed of the cars at the
point of impact. However, the question was phrased differently for
different groups of participants. Some were asked “How fast were the
two cars going when they hit each other”; others were asked the same
question but with the word “smashed”, “collided”, “bumped” or
“contacted” replacing the word “hit”. It was found that the speed at
which the participants thought the cars were going was affected by the
verb used in the question. Overall, we can sum up that recall can be
distorted by the wording of the question. The study proves that
eyewitness testimony can often be inaccurate, and brings in the idea
of false memory syndrome. This is the act of being unsure of details,
which leads us to estimate values, often incorrectly. Some words I
feel imply speed more than others, and act as leading questions. For
example, the questions influenced the answers given by participants,
demonstrating how recall can be biased by language or schema. The
study also reveals how police questioning can really have a dramatic
effect on how a witness remembers an event.
A second study which challenges the reliability of eyewitness
testimony is the Loftus et al. study which was carried out in 1987.
Participants were shown one of two versions of a restaurant scene on
video. In one version, a man pointed a gun at the cashier and she gave
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.
small convince store on the road, in which the owners would not let him in until
The first eyewitness, Kevan Baker had stopped for gas he saw an unknown man in a flannel shirt inside the gas station approaching Mrs. Lopez and trying to strangle her by the hair and taking her to the back room of the station. The man suddenly saw Baker witnessing and released Wanda’s hair and went up to Baker warning him “ I got a gun. Get back, Don’t mess with me.” After that the man ran away and Baker reported that the man ran in an east direction from the store. Before Lopez was on the ground she yelled “help me, help me” and Baker attempted to help and ran in the back of store to get paper towel to stop the bleeding, until the police and paramedics arrived. The second eye witness was George Aguirre. Aguirre had stopped as well for gas exactly at 8 pm. As he was filling up his van with gas, he saw a man standing outside of the gas station store, wearing dar...
Psychological research shows that eyewitness testimony is not always accurate, therefore it should not be used in the criminal justice system. Discuss.
Memory is not reliable; memory can be altered and adjusted. Memory is stored in the brain just like files stored in a cabinet, you store it, save it and then later on retrieve and sometimes even alter and return it. In doing so that changes the original data that was first stored. Over time memory fades and becomes distorted, trauma and other events in life can cause the way we store memory to become faulty. So when focusing on eyewitnesses, sometimes our memory will not relay correct information due to different cues, questioning, and trauma and so forth, which makes eyewitness even harder to rely on. Yet it is still applied in the criminal justice system.
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
The situation that I have thought of is, when I was on the jury for juveniles who committed first offenses. While I was listening to the lawyers depend these kids, I looked on the list and saw a familiar name. The name was a person I went to kindergarten with. She was being convicted of shoplifting. I could not believe it. All the thoughts of that soft, kind-hearted person went out the window. My behaviors were changed by the environmental influences. My thoughts were overcome with coldness. I felt that she choose her situation. Somewhere along she became part of the wrong crowd and never changed her situation. I also think that the situation changed what I thought of her.
Immediately the customer came to a stop and turned around. There, waiting, the cashier stood and asked
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.
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 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.
Eyewitness testimony is defined as, “an area of research that investigates the accuracy of memory following an accident, crime, or other significant event, and the types of errors that are commonly made in such situations.” Much emphasis is placed on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony as often-inaccurate eyewitness testimony can have serious consequences leading to wrong convictions. Eyewitness testimony is a powerful tool within any field, particularly that of justice, as it is a readily accepted form of evidence that allows for convictions. However, Tests conducted by Loftus have shown an enormous swing from a non-guilty verdict, to guilty within the same case, simply through the introduction of an eyewitness. This alone displays the importance of eyewitness testimony, and accentuates the theory that jurors tend to over believe, or at least rely heavily on such accounts.
One of the worst events in World History, the Holocaust, was led by Adolf Hitler. The goal of Hitler and Nazi Germany was to exterminate the Jews and other people that they considered to be inferior. It is estimated that over twelve million people, more than half of them Jews were murdered by the Nazis. Years since the terrible event, several books and movies have been written regarding the horrible conditions in which millions of innocent people perished.