http://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1140&context=scholar
This Article thoroughly investigates in great detail many methods that prosecutors should use in order to accurately analyze eyewitness testimonies. These methods will significantly enhance the ability of the criminal justice system and those within it to assess eyewitness accounts and the accuracy of the accounts that are given. These methods will help to reduce and hopefully eventually eliminate wrongful convictions throughout not only the US but throughout all of the world. One of these many methods goes as follows: First, you must come to a personal understanding about whether the law enforcement officers or officials at the scene conducted the eyewitness interviews
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The Article also thoroughly discusses the scientific steps taken for assessing the eyewitness interviews and identification procedures. Also it includes a list of factors during the crime that may have changed the eyewitness accuracy in criminal trials. By using this accurate and thorough method, the criminal justice system will hopefully reduce the amount of wrongful convictions from eyewitness error. The prevalence of eyewitness errors poses a major dilemma for the criminal justice system. Because in cases it's usually the only primary source of evidence that is available. We know of this because a study in 1987 there were 77,000 criminal cases that were based off of eyewitness testimonies each year in the united states. This was the primary sole evidence in almost all of them. Now know that many of these cases have been ruled faulty is making many people question how many people are innocently put into jail each year under false eyewitness statements. Now the criminal justice suit has been trying to find ways of making sure that people are not wrongfully convicted. They are starting with improving judges and improving attorneys. Ability to assess the accuracy of
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: A Policy Review.” The Justice Project, Iowa State University. Web. 22 April 2014.
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...
The findings of Steblay et al. (2011) were based on the lab reports of other eyewitness researchers, while the focus of Wells et al. (2014) was field study. It must be kept in mind that the environment of both of the studies could be a crucial factor in determining true identification. The condition of the witness in the field study can never be the same as in the laboratory experiment. Wells et al. (2014) concluded that witnesses are less likely to make identification in the sequential lineup procedure and similarly there are less possibilities of misidentifying the known-innocent fillers (the persons other than the culprits). The simultaneous lineup must also be explored further as the factor of relevant judgment is of utmost
Pezdek, K. (2012, March). A Preliminary Study of How Plea Bargaining Decisions by Prosecution and Defense Attorneys Are Affected by Eyewitness Factors. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/238136.pdf
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.
(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).
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
Eyewitness reports are not reliable in court. There are many reasons why eyewitness reports are unreliable. Some reasons are that people don't have a good memory and mistake the real criminal, another reason is that people don't have a perfect eyesight and even the mind plays tricks on you. on a report in 1984 there was a report that jennifer was raped. jennifer picked ronald cotton out of a photo and a physical lineup. she was sure that ronald was the rapist but a decade later dna proved that ronald wasn't the real rapist. elizabeth loftus said that “jennifer did not recognize the real rapist because she picked ronald first and in her mind she thought he was the real rapist” so her mind was set on ronald and no one else.
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.
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
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...
Fradella, H.F. (2006) Why judges should admit expert testimony on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. Federal Courts Law Review. Retrieved from http://www.fclr.org/fclr/articles/html/2006/fedctslrev3.pdf
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
This essay is going to look at eye witness testimony. It will discuss whether or not it is reliable and studies will be looked at and evaluated to either back up or refute eyewitness reliability.