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Eyewitness testimony plays a big role in the advantages and disadvantages of the investigation and is a very important area in human memory and cognit...
The problem with eyewitness testimony
The credibility of eyewitness testimonies
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Murder on a Sunday Morning Jamila Popal John Jay College of Criminal Justice Psy/Law 370-02 Introduction “Murder on a Sunday morning” is a documentary based on the African American teenager named Brenton Butler, who was convicted of shooting an elderly white woman. As the police found Brenton 90 minutes later, he was brought straight to the victim’s husband who was the only witness during the shooting, and said yes that him, leading to the wrongful conviction of Brenton Butler. There are many factors that led to the wrongful conviction of Brenton Butler, faulty eyewitness identification, weapon focus, and own-bias during the police procedure. Research also has …show more content…
indicated that eyewitness error is the leading cause of wrongful convictions. For example, according to Wells, Memon, and Penrod (2006), in the first 180 DNA exoneration cases in the United States, eyewitness error occurred in 75% or more of the cases. In the article, Recognizing Faces of other Ethnic Groups”, an integration of theories analyzes the evidence for cross-race recognition deficit and the possibility of a response bias. “They all look alike to me” this is what white Americans or white Europeans say when confronted with faces of Asians, African Americans, or black Americans (Malpass,1981). (Smith et al. 2011) have indicated that, African American men account for 70% of exonerates, a relationship between race and exoneration. Another reason for wrongful conviction is own-race or cross-race bias. Own race bias takes place because an individual is better at identifying members their own race than others. Third factor that leads to wrongful conviction is due to weapon focus this is when a victim is confronted with a weapon during violent crime, their focus may be so aimed at the weapon that later they are unable to provide accurate details describing the perpetrator (Gould et al. (2010). There is a study conducted by Loftus (1987) on the validity of weapon focus, participants viewed a series of slides of a customer in a restaurant. In one version the customer was holding a gun, in the other the same customer held a checkbook. Participants who saw the gun version tended to focus on the gun. As a result, they were less likely to identify the customer in an identity parade those who had seen the checkbook version. Eyewitness identification The prominent reason for wrongful convictions is due to faulty eyewitness testimonies. It is said 77,000 trials held in the America each year is due to evidence against the defendant is eyewitness testimonies. (Ciccihini,2010) also states that eyewitness identification evidence is unreliable and leading cause of wrongful convictions. DNA testing has given us proof of the wrongful convictions. In addiction to this, in a similar case that occurred in 1971, Five Black Men, also known as the “Quincy Five’, who was also wrongfully convicted for the Murder of Khomas Revels during a robbery in Tallahassee, Florida.
There was no Evidence linking anything to the men, but five white witnesses confidently identified them as the perpetrators. the only evidence against the Quincy Five was in the form of cross-racial identifications, Haythorn and Brigham set out to locate empirical evidence on the often purported claim that "they [other-race persons] all look alike." In this study the goal was to determine the reliability of (ORB) own race bias. Method was first independent variable was race of participants and second design using photographs of faces. The study was conducted in a lab setting in the University of Cape Town. Every Participant were s their own computer. 111 students from the University, all had to be South African, black or white. They were shown 60 photographs, 30 old faces , and 30 new faces , It was presented one at a time, under the photo asked the participant if they’ve seen he face before or not. They had to press 1 for yes (recognition) , and 0 for no (non-recogntion). After they were asked to rate from 1 to 9 on how confident they were in their …show more content…
response. Results The results show that on all levels of d’ (d’ for Black, Coloured and White faces) the three groups of participants differed significantly.
There was a significant difference between the Black and White participants in the discrimination accuracy (d’) for Black faces. Black participants were significantly more accurate than White participants in recognizing Black faces. Black participants were found to be significantly better at recognizing Coloured faces than black faces and with coloured faces than white faces. Coloured participants were significantly better at recognizing Coloured faces than at recognizing Black faces. They were also significantly more accurate for White faces than they were for Black faces. White participants were worse at recognizing Black faces than at recognizing Coloured faces. They were also worse at recognizing Black faces than at recognizing White faces. Black participants were more confident with their responses for Black faces than they were for White faces , They were also more confident with their responses for Coloured faces than they were for White faces . White participants were more confident in their recognition responses for White faces as compared to Black faces. They were also more confident with their responses for White faces as compared to Coloured faces, these results show an own-race bias in confidence in the White participants
group. Evaluation One of the primary reasons that eyewitnesses to crimes have been shown to make mistakes in recalling of perpetrator identities, is during the police procedures used to collect eyewitness evidence. Different factors have been found to make police identification procedures more or less dependable as a test of eyewitness memory, and these procedural mechanisms have been termed "system variables" by social scientists researching this systemic problem. "System variables means, those that affect the accuracy of eyewitness identifications and over which the criminal justice system has control. Estimator variables such as cross-race identification bias, when witnesses have a deficiency in identifying other races, weapon focus as we mentioned earlier, the presence of a weapon distracts the witness from remembering details of the perpetrator. Stress can also have great impact on eyewitnesses, research shows when individual is experiencing high stress levels, more likely to falsely identify the perpetrator. Lastly, eyewitness memory, research also shows as individual ages their memory declines. instructions and eyewitness cross examinations have been recommended to counter jurors’ apparent inappropriate reliance on eyewitness evidence (Penrod&Cutler,1999). Reference Loftus, E.F., Loftus, G.R., & Messo, J. (1987). Some facts about weapon focus. Law and Human Behavior, 11, 55-62. Meissner, C. A., & Brigham, J. C. (2001). Thirty years of investigating the own-race bias in memory for faces: A meta-analytic review. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 7(1), 3-35. doi:10.1037//1076-8971.7.1.3 Wright, D., Boyd, C., & Tredoux, C. (2001). A field study of own-race bias in South Africa and England. Psychology, Public Policy, And Law, 7(1), 119-133.
The power of stereotypes stored in the brain was a daunting thought. This information enlightened me about the misconceptions we carry from our cultural experiences. Also, it startled me that according to (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013) “those who showed high levels of White Preference on the IAT test were also those who are most likely to show racially discriminatory behavior,” (pg. 47). I reflected on this information, and it concerned me that my judgments were simply based on past cultural experiences. This mindbug was impacting my perception of someone before I even had a chance to know him.
Facts: On October 3, 1974, Memphis Police Officers Hymon and Wright were dispatched to answer a “prowler inside call.” When the police arrived at the scene, a neighbor gestured to the house where she had heard glass breaking and that someone was breaking into the house. While one of the officer radioed that they were on the scene, the other officer went to the rear of the house hearing a door slam and saw someone run across the backyard. The suspect, Edward Garner stopped at a 6-feet-high fence at the edge of the yard and proceeded to climb the fence as the police officer called out “police, halt.” The police officer figured that if Garner made it over the fence he would get away and also “figured” that Garner was unarmed. Officer Hymon then shot him, hitting him in the back of the head. In using deadly force to prevent the escape of Garner, Hymon used the argument that actions were made under the authority of the Tennessee statute and pursuant to Police Department policy. Although the department’s policy was slightly more restrictive than the statute it still allowed the use of deadly force in cases of burglary. Garner’s fathers’ argument was made that his son was shot unconstitutionally because he was captured and shot possessing ten dollars that he had stolen and being unarmed showing no threat of danger to the officer. The incident was then reviewed by the Memphis Police Firearm’s Revie...
I recently read a book called Monster by Walter Dean Myers, in which a sixteen year-old boy named Steve Harmon was arrested for being accused of shooting a drugstore owner, and watched a documentary titled Murder on a Sunday Morning about a fifteen year-old Brenton Butler being charged with murdering a woman at a motel. I found that the book and the documentary had many similarities and differences. I thought this because both cases are about a young African-American boy who is in custody for something that they did not do. Both police investigations didn't go thoroughly and just rushed through to arrest the boys immediately and are centered around a white defense attorney who tries to convince the jury that the male teen did not committed the crime by giving out evidence.
In 1979 two black assailants forced a man and a women at gun point into the man’s car at a drive-in grocery store. As they were going down the highway the perpetrators robbed both victims, then forced the man out of the car. After a failed escape attempted by the woman, the two men drove her to a nearby
In one incident when a white teenager Deryl Dedman ran over his truck over Black guy James Craig Anderson by passing a racial slur, “ I ran that nigger over” (Rankine 94)(10). This shows the white’s extra ordinary powers to oppress the black community and the failure of legal system
On May 7th 2000, fifteen year old Brenton Butler was accused of the murder of Mary Ann Stephens, who had been fatally shot in the head while walking down a breezeway of a hotel with her husband. Two and a half hours later, Butler is seen walking a mile away from where the incident occurred, and is picked up by the police because he fit the description of the individual who shot Mary Ann Stephens. However, the only characteristic of the description that Butler featured was the color of his skin. Police then brought Butler to the scene of the crime in order for Mary Ann Stephens’s husband, James Stephens, to confirm whether or not Butler was the individual who had shot his wife. Almost immediately, Stephens identifies Butler as his wife’s killer.
In his article, “The Nightmare of the West Memphis Three”, Rich explores how the people of Memphis drew horrific conclusions about people based on the lifestyle they chose to practice. The article highlights the trials and tribulations faced by the accused three young teenagers. Rich does this by citing the popular documentary series “Paradise Lost” which is an in depth analysis into the lives of the accused, the victims’ families and members of the community. This paper outlines how the belief system of that time superseded the inconclusive evidence, which ultimately led to an unfair trial. By “othering” and “marginalizing” those three teens, the society and police created a scenario that aligned with their belief system at the time. Lastly, this paper highlights the influence of the media and celebrity in changing the course for these boys.
Throughout history there has been considerable tension between race and crimes committed. The court trial of Bernhard Goetz initiated debate on race and crime in the major cities, and the limitations of self-defense. Bernhard Goetz in 1984 shot five bullets in a New York City subway, seriously wounding four young black men. After turning himself into the police nine days later, the public now knew who was the shooter. Bernhard Goetz was entitled the “Subway Vigilante”. The subway shooting incident ideally exemplified the exasperation with the high crime rates of the 1980s. Due to the time period that this incident occurred, Bernhard Goetz was commended and reviled in the media surrounding the case, and the public’s standpoint. The subway shooting, and the court trial following the shooting, lead to the uprise of the fight against crime in major cities. Justice is difficult to define, and in controversial acquittal of Bernhard Goetz, justice in this sense, was not served.
Murder on a Sunday morning is a documentary of an unfortunate mishap with the legal justice system that happens one of many times. In Jacksonville, Florida the year of 2001, May 8th there was a horrific scenery at Ramada hotel. A women named Mary Ann Stevens and her husband were tourists, while leaving their room early Sunday morning around 9AM a gunshot fatally killed Mary Ann and ended the couple’s vacation. When cops arrived at the scene and investigated they took notes on what the suspect looked like from the husband, “ The suspect is skinny black male dark shorts unknown shirt on foot running south bound…. Fishlike hat on.”- cop at the scene. When the cops were driving around they’ve spotted an African American
“Accuracy-confidence correlation: an eye witnesses’ stated confidence is not a good predictor of identification accuracy; Stress effects: highly stressful situations may make an experience seem especially vivid, but such stressors can reduce the ability to recall details about a person’s face…Cross-race bias: eye witnesses are more accurate at identifying members of their own race than members of other races.”
In this documentary, we never go into the minds of any of the people, but only get to interpret what we see and hear. This documentary was filmed in Jacksonville, Florida where Brenton Butler, a 15 year old African American boy was accused of the murder of Mary Ann Stephens. The main people in this documentary are Ann Fennell, Patrick McGuiness, Brenton Butler, and detectives Williams, Glover, and Darnell. Ann Fennell and Patrick McGuisness are the two defense attorney’s on Brenton’s behalf. Brenton Butler is the boy being accused of murder. Detectives Williams, Glover, and Darnell are the detectives in department 3 the violated many laws and policies while holing Brenton in
"The West Memphis Three Trial: Who was the real killer or killers?." The West Memphis Three
The meaning, significance, and definition of race have been debated for centuries. Historical race concepts have varied across time and cultures, creating scientific, social, and political controversy. Of course, today’s definition varies from the scientific racism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that justified slavery and later, Jim Crow laws in the early twentieth. It is also different from the genetic inferiority argument that was present at the wake of the civil rights movement. However, despite the constantly shifting concepts, there seems to be one constant that has provided a foundation for ideas towards race: race is a matter of visually observable attributes such as skin color, facial features, and other self-evident visual cues.
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
All over the world, race is used by others to assign meaning to the way you look; people will use physical characteristics like: nose shape, eye shape, hair texture and most infamously, skin color to categorize race. Race isn’t a tangible concept, Social Construction Theory determines it’s more of a social idea created by institutions in society, meaning that it is created by society and is constantly changed. The notion of race is perpetuated and conserved, and therefore, must be changed by adjusting society’s preconceptions about race, institution’s structure and laws that are negatively based on race, and how education and awareness about race can create positive change.