Arguments Against Eyewitness Testimony

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Why Eyewitness Testimony is Garbage Eye witness testimony has been used in United States courts since their inception, but it is a lot less credible than most people think. The idea of someone's memories and testimony being credible enough to lead to someone's incarceration has been debated for years. There are more instances where eyewitness testimony is more detrimental to a trial then it is helpful. Eye witness testimony is not credible and should not be able to lead to someone's incarceration. 73 % of eye witness incarcerations were overturned with DNA evidence. The cross race effect is difficulty or inability to identify differences between members of a different race than yourself. This is why jokes like some members of a race look
One such study, conducted in 1908, by psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson produced the Yerkes-Dodson law, which shows the relationship between stress and the level of cognitive function and mental arousal of the stress receiver. Contradicting the previous belief that stress would increase mental arousal in a linear style, the study proved that the effect of stress on mental arousal was a curve or parabola shape with a peak in the amount of stress a person can endure without it harming memory. Crimes are stressful and are on the end range of the Yerkes-Dodson curve, where mental arousal is extremely low and cognitive function is at the bare
The human mind is extremely pliable and able to be molded to resemble what society believes to be true. Elizabeth’s first experiment involved a video of a car crash followed by a series of questions. Half of the subjects were asked how fast the car was going when it smashed into the other car, the other half were asked how fast it was going when it bumped into the other car. The subject average speed when asked smashed was 40 mph while bumped was 30 mph. This shows how powerful words are when it comes to recalling a memory and how they can be changed by using one different

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    I personally feel that this is a much more reliable and accurate than relying on the testimony of witnesses. I believe through the use of science we as a society can now make sure that the guilty are caught and punished while the innocent are protected from wrongful prosecution. However the eyewitness should not be completely left out of the case against the possible offender. After it is determined through scientific evidence, in this case DNA, that the physically involved in the crime then witnesses can be brought in to give testimony that the offender was present at the crime scene or the victim can be sure that the accused was truly the one involved in the actual crime.

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

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

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    In summation, is can be identified in this paper that eye witnesses do not play a constructive role within the criminal justice system. This can be seen through a thorough discussion of the many issues portrayed through this paper. To conclude Schmechel et al. (2006) reiterates that statements this paper has presented and discussed;

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  • Prejudice In My Cousin Vinny

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    Eyewitness testimony is when people who were either involved in the “accident/ situation” give their side of the story, and give a testimony on what supposedly happened all through their eyes (Branscombe & Baron, 2017). In the movie eyewitness testimony was key to convict the “killers” of the store clerk murder, and one example was when each person described the car all from different points of view and distances. I felt like the eyewitnesses just used each other to reference the same car, they all didn’t have an accurate description of the car but when with it based on what the lawyer was say and hinting at. Another way these eyewitness testimonies seemed to be completely wrong and even harmful to the investigation was because everyone said that they saw Billy and his friend running away and speeding off when they could not really describe those two young mans descriptions with great detail. Which this was another form of eyewitness testimonies are really unreliable and shouldn’t really be used in a court of

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  • What Is Eyewitness Misidentification In Criminal Justice

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    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.

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  • The Unreliability of Eyewitness Testimony in Children

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    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.

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  • Eyewitness Identification and Reliable Testimony

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    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.

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  • Eyewitness Error Essay

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    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

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  • The Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony in the Criminal Justice System

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    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...

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  • The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony

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    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.

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  • True Or False Memories Research Paper

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    ...pporting details. At the conclusion of the article, the authors share their thoughts on how it might be virtually impossible to determine when a memory is true or false. I also like their willingness to continue the investigations despite how difficult it might be to obtain concrete answers.

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  • The Inaccuracy of Eyewitness Testimony According to Research

    434 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Inaccuracy of Eyewitness Testimony According to Research Eyewitness testimony is the evidence provided in court by a person who witnessed a crime, with a view to identifying the perpetrator. The accuracy of eyewitness recall may be affected during initial encoding, subsequent storage and eventual retrieval. There are three stages of ‘eyewitness memory’; encoding, retention and retrieval. Throughout these stages the memory is distorted, lost, modified, interfered with and reconstructed.

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  • Formation Of False Memories

    482 Words  | 1 Pages

    Have you ever been an eyewitness at the scene of a crime? If you were, do you think that you would be able to accurately describe, in precise detail, everything that happened and remember distinct features of the suspect? Many people believe that yes they would be able to remember anything from the events that would happen and the different features of the suspect. Some people, in fact, are so sure of themselves after witnessing an event such as this that they are able to testify that what they think they saw was indeed what they saw. 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.

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  • The Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony

    1985 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

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  • The Reliability of Memory

    1483 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to Sternberg (1999), memory is the extraction of past experiences for information to be used in the present. The retrieval of memory is essential in every aspect of daily life, whether it is for academics, work or social purposes. However, many often take memory for granted and assume that it can be relied on because of how realistic it appears in the mind. This form of memory is also known as flashbulb memory. (Brown and Kulik, 1977). The question of whether our memory is reliably accurate has been shown to have implications in providing precise details of past events. (The British Psychological Association, 2011). In this essay, I would put forth arguments that human memory, in fact, is not completely reliable in providing accurate depictions of our past experiences. Evidence can be seen in the following two studies that support these arguments by examining episodic memory in humans. The first study is by Loftus and Pickrell (1995) who found that memory can be modified by suggestions. The second study is by Naveh-Benjamin and Craik (1995) who found that there is a predisposition for memory to decline with increasing age.

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