Eyewitness testimonies do not yield an exceptionally high validity, however they are a fairly effective way of gathering information. The Criminal justice system should take notice of the fact that they can be misconstrued since memories are fallible and can be easily influenced.
Eyewitness testimonies can be affected by many psychological factors, these include anxiety/stress, reconstructive memory, weapon focus and leading questions. Anxiety or stress is almost always associated with real life crimes. Deffenbacher (1983) reviewed 21 studies and found that the stress-performance relationship followed an inverted-U function proposed by the Yerkes Dodson Curve (1908). This means that for tasks of moderate complexity, such as EWT, performance increases with stress up to an optimal point where it then starts to decline. Nonetheless, Yuille and Cutshall (1986) illustrates that there are cases of real-life recall where memory of an anxious / stressful event is accurate. This means that the CJS should try to gather EWT as soon as possible after the event happening.
Bartlett's theory of reconstructive memory is crucial to an understanding of the reliability of EWT, he suggested that recall is subject to personal interpretation dependent on our learnt and cultural norms. We tend to see, interpret and recall what we see according to what we expect and assume is 'normal' in a given situation. Bartlett referred to these complete mental pictures of how things are expected to be as ‘schemas’. These schemas may be determined by social values and therefore prejudice. Schemas are capable of distorting unfamiliar or unconsciously 'unacceptable' information in order to fit in with our existing knowledge or schemas. This can as a result in unreli...
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...bility too highly, this may because we have too much faith in our own memory so we think it is reliable.
In conclusion, the CJS should take more notice of the problems that have been identified within eyewitness testimonies, however it would be difficult to implement another method of gathering information from the scene of a crime that would not yield similar problems. EWT can be contaminated, lost, destroyed or otherwise influenced to produce incorrect results, the best way to improve how the Criminal Justice System deals with eyewitness testimonies would be to ensure that they don’t use leading questions when interviewing or questioning witnesses, don’t solely rely on vulnerable peoples testimonies as these are not as reliable and just be aware of the general issues surrounding EWT and take this into consideration when using eyewitness testimonies as evidence .
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...
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.
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.
You can't trust eyewitness reports because the human mind can't remember some things. “Every year more than 75,000 eyewitnesses identify criminal suspects in the us and studies suggest that as many as a third of them are wrong.” Thats 25,000 eyewitness reports wrong. All those mistakes caused the victims their lives. in the article by the week staff it says that the...
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
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.
Further biological research on the effect of psychological trauma on the neurochemistry of memory may help clinicians distinguish between true repressed memories and false memories in clients who report abuse. However, to date there is no method to determine the accuracy of these memories. Therefore clinicians and the courts must rely on corroborative evidence, and behavioral and physiologic clues to distinguish veracity.
Eyewitness testimony is especially vulnerable to error when the question is misleading or when there’s a difference in ethnicity. 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. For instance, a group of students saw the face of a young man with straight hair, then heard a description of the face supposedly written by another witness, one that wrongly mentioned light, curly hair. When they reconstructed the face using a kit of facial features, a third of their reconstructions contained the misleading detail, whereas only 5 percent contained it when curly hair was not mentioned (Page 359). This situation shows how misleading information from other sources can be profoundly altered.
The British Psychological Society. (2011). Memory is not as reliable as we think. Retrieved from http:// http://www.bps.org.uk/news/memory-not-reliable-we-think
From a legal standpoint, eyewitness memories are not accurate. Though they all illustrate the same concept, each paper described different ways eyewitness memories were altered. One’s memory can be misleading by their own attributions towards the situation, what they choose to see and not see, and if the individual has been through a single event or repetitive stressful events. As human beings, our memories on all matters are not concrete. When retelling stories, we tend to modify the situation and tailor certain events, making the information provided unreliable. An eyewitness testimony changes the track of a trial and information that is given to the court can be ambiguous and can cause bias towards the circumstances. Eyewitnesses can even be confident in their retelling of a situation and explain a complete event, when in fact, that particular event never