What Is The Importance Of Eyewitness Testimony

1764 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Improving the accuracy of eyewitness testimony

Eyewitness testimony plays a very large role in the American court system. It has been proven that a courts decision regarding the guilt of an accused person often depends on an eyewitness’ testimony and identification (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2010). To a jury eyewitness testimony is one of the most convincing forms of evidence is (Goldstein, 2008). When an eyewitness testifies and identifies a person as the criminal, his testification is given a lot of weight, and it is likely that the person identified will be convicted. This is true even when there is other evidence indicating that the accused is not guilty (Aronson et al, 2010). Furthermore, the more confident an eyewitness appears when testifying and identifying a criminal, the greater the likelihood of the jurors believing him (Aronson et al, 2010; Goldstein, 2008).
Unfortunately, despite the fact that eyewitness testimony is given much importance and plays such a large role, eyewitness identification is often inaccurate. Many innocent people have been convicted and imprisoned because of inaccurate eyewitness testimony (Aronson et al, 2010; Goldstein, 2008). Of all the cases in which a convict was later exonerated due to DNA evidence, around …show more content…

D. & Akert, R. M. (2010). Social Psychology, 7th Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: PearsonEducation Inc
Goldstein, E. B. (2008). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research. and Everyday Experience.
Loftus, E.F. & Zanni, G. Bull. Psychon. Soc. (1975) 5: 86. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03336715
Lorenza, S. M. (2003):. "Factors Affecting the Accuracy of Eyewitness Identification." The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research 6 45-50. Web. December 2017. (-- removed HTML --) .
Smalarz, L., and Wells, G. L., (2012). "Eyewitness-Identification Evidence: Scientific Advances and the New Burden on Trial Judges" Court Review: The Journal of the American Judges Association. 385.

Show More
Related

  • “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space” by Brent Staples

    1433 Words  | 3 Pages

    Myers, David G. “Chapter 14: Social Psychology.” Psychology. 10th ed. New York, NY US: Worth

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Picking Cotton

    667 Words  | 2 Pages

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

    Read More

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

    1751 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Picking Cotton Case Study

    517 Words  | 2 Pages

    Studies have shown that “eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide [contributing] […] [to] more than 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing” (American Civil Liberties Union). The first situation resulting in the misidentification, was made when the police rounded up six men according to the ...

    Read More

  • What Is Eyewitness Misidentification In Criminal Justice

    508 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Eyewitness Testimony Analysis

    1245 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Eyewitness Identification and Reliable Testimony

    2504 Words  | 6 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Eyewitness Error Essay

    1206 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Solomon Asch Conformity Experiments (1951)

    1532 Words  | 4 Pages

    Crisp, R, J. Turner, R, N. (2007). Essential Social Psychology. Sage Publications Limited. London. (UK). First Edition.

    Read More

  • The Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony in the Criminal Justice System

    1837 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony

    952 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...onson, E., Wilson, T.D., & Akert, R.M. (2013). Social Psychology (8th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Conformity In 12 Angry Men

    1115 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Memory

    546 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • A Distortion of Reality

    1111 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Motivation in The Workplace

    1780 Words  | 4 Pages

    ... middle of paper ... ... Journal of Applied Psychology 92 (2007): 1332–356. Print. The.

    Read More

More about What Is The Importance Of Eyewitness Testimony

Open Document