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The credibility of eyewitness testimonies
Eyewitness testimony psychology
The imporatnce of eye witness 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. One cannot always accurately reproduce information due to the stages of memory processing that occur after witnessing an event. With each stage, the accuracy of the memory decreases. According to Aronson, Wilson, and Akert (2013), the first stage is acquisition. Acquisition is the process by which people notice only certain information in a particular setting because they cannot perceive everything around them. Also, witnessing a crime often occurs quickly, unexpectedly, under poor viewing conditions, or while focus is on another object, such as a gun. These circumstances significantly decrease the amount of accurate information that the observer will acquire, and the likelihood for accurate reproduction of the event in testimony is lessened (Aronson et al., 2013). According to Fradella (2006), acquisition is dependent upon the same individualized factors that are present in perception and expectations. Expectations impact what information an observer seeks out or avoids, ultimately impacting their overall memory (Fradella, 2006). The second stage of memory processing is storage. Aronson et al. (2013) defines storage as the process by which people store the information they just acquired. Unfortunately, memories are affected by incoming information through alteration or reconstruction. This phenomenon is referred to as recon... ... middle of paper ... ...onson, E., Wilson, T.D., & Akert, R.M. (2013). Social Psychology (8th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc. Byrd, S. (2005). On getting the reasonable person out of the courtroom. Journal of Criminal Law. 571-571. Retrieved from http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/osjcl2&div=41&id=&page= 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 Reasonable person. (2008). In West’s Encyclopedia of American Law (2nd ed.). Retrieved from http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Reasonable+person+standard State v. Hendersen. 27 A.3d 872. (2011). Retrieved from http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=10528420571023352860&q=faulty+eyewitness+testimony&hl=en&as_sdt=806&as_ylo=2010
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.
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...
Crisp, R, J. Turner, R, N. (2007). Essential Social Psychology. Sage Publications Limited. London. (UK). First Edition.
Is eyewitness testimony a reliable source of evidence? Eyewitness testimony was once the best form of evidence available. With the emergence of DNA and other
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
In this paper, I will look at what can go wrong in eyewitness identification. We will discuss if eyewitness identification can be considered valid evidence for convicting individuals of a crime. And what precautions can be put into place to protect individuals from wrongful conviction and help make the process more trustworthy.
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 reliability of eyewitness testimony has become a popular research topic in applied and social psychology since Loftus and Palmer’s study in 1974 (see Steblay, 1997; Wright & Loftus, 1998; Deffenbacher, Bornstein, Penrod, & McGorty, for reviews). Participants viewed videos or slides of traffic accidents (Loftus & Palmer, 1974) or a criminal act (Roediger, Jacoby, McDermott, 1996; Cutler, Penrod, & Martens, 1987) and afterwards were asked several questions about what they had just seen. The manipulation in studies was that the researchers did not ask the same question to all participant, but instead changed the wording of one critical detail in the question. In Loftus and Palmer’s study, some of the subjects were asked “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”, while other subjects were asked the same question with the verbs smashed, collided, bumped and contacted instead of the verb hit. Loftus and Palmer (1974) showed that changing a single verb induced the different participant groups to give different estimations of the car’s speed, and additionally to produce more false claims of having seen broken glass during later interrogation.
Eyewitness testimony plays an important role in any crime nowadays. It is also one of the most important types of evidence in court cases. However, many researchers have suggested that judges and investigators should know more about how reliable is eyewitness testimony. According to Read (2002) “It is important that we recognize the possibility of several stages or types of processing of event information because the greater the number of stages and cognitive activates involved, the greater the opportunities for error or low reliability”
Eyewitness testimony has long been prized as the highest form of evidence in a courtroom, placing enormous value on the memory of a witness. After all, if someone has observed a crime, the details must be engrained in their memory, right? Well, not exactly. Unlike a fixed and pristine record of time, memory is a complex cognitive process which is not only determined by variables surrounding the actual event, but is also heavily influenced by the perceptions, interpretations, and emotions of the individual (Zaragoza & Mitchell, 1996). In fact, evidence suggests that the simple act of retelling a story alters the original memory, and that the power of suggestion can lead people to not only change the details of an incident, but in many cases,
Memory is the tool we use to learn and think. We all use memory in our everyday lives. Memory is the mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experiences. We all reassure ourselves that our memories are accurate and precise. Many people believe that they would be able to remember anything from the event and the different features of the situation. Yet, people don’t realize the fact that the more you think about a situation the more likely the story will change. Our memories are not a camcorder or a camera. Our memory tends to be very selective and reconstructive.
Valentine, T., Maras, K. (2011) “The effect of cross-examination on the accuracy of adult eyewitness testimony” Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25 (4), 554-661.
An eyewitness testimony is when an individual witnessed an evert firsthand and recalls the details. This can be as simple as recalling a time with friends and family at Christmas, or something as serious as a crime that has occurred. Eyewitness testimony has been controversial in court cases for a while. The reason for controversy is because eye witness testimony can be inaccurate or influenced. The judge and jury do not want to make a wrong decision by trusting the eye witness because the eyewitness might not be recalling the event, actions, or descriptions properly, even though the witness does not realize he is doing so. There are numerous ways in which eyewitness accounts can be inaccurate or influenced to make them
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
Goodwin, Kukucka, and Hawks (2013) investigated the relationship between confidence and memory in eyewitness testimony in their study. The goal of an eyewitness is to provide the information to an investigator as accurately as possible. However, eyewitnesses can be pressured into providing information that conforms to someone else’s views and provide wrong answers to fit into the society. Often, researchers discovered that, participants answered more correctly when they were alone versus when they were in a group (Goodwin, Kukucka, & Hawks, 2013). Moreover, confidence is an important part of a witness’s personality. Seventy nine percent of the participants were confident about their statement when they heard similar statements from other witnesses. The purpose of this study is to explain how witnesses’ confidence level rely on other people’s