Research provided by the Innocence Project shows that Hundreds of people are accused of crimes they have never committed just because of eyewitness testimony and factors which distorted memory. Can we even trust our memory after knowing so many innocent people have been convicted? Coming back to the question: How does crime affect memory? Looking at the studies of Ronald Cotton and Bennett Barbour, they tell us that crime distorts the memory of a victim. In both cases, the victim identified the wrong person as their assailant.
Case Overview The case of R. v Montana is a case that seeks to determine whether Hugo Montana is responsible for the death of Ms. Wise, Mr. Montana’s former girlfriend. The conviction of Mr. Montana hinges on the testimony of Mrs. Walters, a neighbour of the deceased who originally testified to last seeing Mr. Montana at Ms. Wise’s apartment on Thursday, January 8th, one day after the body of Ms. Wise was discovered. After undergoing an interview under hypnosis Ms. Wise changed her testimony now stating that she remembered seeing Mr. Montana at the deceased home on Wednesday, January 7th, the last day that Ms. Wise was alive. The issue present in this case is whether Mrs. Walter’s hypnotic interview influenced her testimony or if under the state of hypnosis Mrs. Walter managed to remember a vital
This week’s topic was very interesting to learn about how important eyewitnesses can be when a crime and accidents do occur. In the case that was presented in the 60-minute segment of Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson is exactly how legal system can fail us when it comes to the eyewitnesses’ identification testimony and how a person’s perception and memory can be altered. The aspect of psychology and law research from this week’s course material is most relevant to the topic of perception and memory. The memory has different stages the first is encoding the process of entering perception into memory.
Eyewitness testimony is sent to sensory memory whereby it involves retaining information and details. In order to recall specific features of a person, the victim must be very observant and concentrate during the event and after when trying to remember these details. This can be transferred to short-term memory, which has the capacity of remembering 7±2 memories, and if subjects rehearse what they have seen then the memory can be stored in long-term memory. Memories can then be retrieved when needed for testimony.
It is unlikely that social consequences of false memories can be avoided. Elizabeth Loftus was intrigued to study false memories, and is perhaps personally responsible for subsequent developments throughout the history of false memories. Some of this history addresses various theories aimed at isolating how or why false memories occur. These include Source Monitoring Framework, Activation Monitoring Theory, Fuzzy Trace Theory, and strategies for persuasion which can lead to the development of false memory. Such persuasion leads to the present discussion concerning how persuasion in the judicial system has created false confessions and wrongful eyewitness testimonies, due to the Misinformation Effect.
Followed by the lack of corroboration, which is an important aspect in courtrooms, “corroboration will add credibility to the memory and lack of it may raise doubts about the allegations.” Loftus considers that relying on memory is not a valid way of justice; the legal system needs to improve when eyewitness testimonials are used in the courts. Loftus confides as a psychologist that psychological science has taught them about human memory and that the research has revealed the limits of human memory. Adding on, these research findings need to be incorporated in procedures to improve the court system. She hopes readers will acknowledge the fact that the use of memories in a trial can be problematic since they are “dangerous” and can lead to false
I can relate to this as when I was 4 I busted my head open on an exercise machine while I was playing with my cousin. I remember the events that happened after the event but I remember almost none of the emotions or thoughts I had at that point. This too illustrates that childhood memories are
Part One is very informational and contains the bulk of the book’s research. The information was presented in a thesis format; Loftus stated a claim and then supported her ideas with research and quotations from experts in the field of law and memory. Part One is helpful for psychologists, attorneys, and interested law people. The major principles concerning the errors in eyewitness testimony are supported by research and are accepted by psychologists (Kassin, Ellsworth, & Smith, 1989). Part One will contribute to the future of psychology by showcasing how the memory works and the different ways it is manipulated and changed: this will allow jurors and lawyers to become more wary when dealing with a traumatized
Are You Sure? Why have more than two-thousand people exonerated for crimes they didn’t commit? Eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the U.S. Memory can be influenced by anxiety, stress, reconstructive memory and other factors possibly affecting the testimony of the eyewitness and in turn, misleading the jury. I think that when subjects witness a crime they will struggle to remember important details of the event, and their recollection could be easily altered. This is because the reconstructive memory can be influenced by factors such as stress, anxiety, and verbal cues.
People cannot correctly identify a penny after years of using them because it is such a small detail to know the four parts of the penny and where they are and what they say. However, repressed memories are typically important things that the mind subconsciously wants to forget for any reason. They can be accurate however because psychotherapists have even been shocked by the true detail of some of the stories they hear. Some are so gruesome and real that it would be hard to fabricate the whole story.
Finally, to significantly reduce eyewitness error, the criminal justice system must view eyewitness evidence as a type of trace evidence.45 Like other types of trace evidence, such as fingerprints, DNA, and firearm patterns, eyewitness evidence has a physiological basis (i.e., biochemical changes in the eyewitness’s brain).46 Consequently, the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, like other types of trace evidence, depends in large part on the use of proper scientific procedures in collecting and preserving it. In short, before admitting eyewitness evidence, a judge should always first determine if valid scientific procedures were followed in producing it. If they were not followed, this failure should generally weigh heavily against admitting
Like a jigsaw puzzle; such as an interviewer may ask a person in a crime scene to assemble pieces of memory of the traumatic event. Frederic Bartlett’s theory of reconstructive memory helps us understand the reliability of eyewitness testimony. Bartlett says that memory recall is focused to subjective interpretation reliant on our cultural norms, values and the awareness of the world we have. Memory is believed to work like a camera, we store information like the camera is recording and playing the clip back is like remembering what was recorded; in the same format it was set. Though it doesn’t work like a camera as people construct and store information in a manner that makes it understanding to them.
The Clothing Industry and the use of sweatshops is commonly associated with Institutional Evil. Institutional evil is an act taken by an organisation in which the people involved are separated into two groups. Those involved identify with their own group as ‘us’ and identify all others as ‘them’ (Peter Vardy, 2003). These acts are done with little sympathy and often show a lack of humanity towards ‘them’. Institutional Evil has occurred when an action taken in the interest of ‘us’ is accepted in society, no matter the impact it causes upon ‘them’ (Peter Vardy, 2003).
This clearly sows that the memory is an active process and is expected to alter an opinion based on understanding society (Simple Psychology, 2014) . Eyewitness testimony is unethical as the evidence that is supplied can be provided by someone with stress or anxiety issues this can assist by distraught the image of the suspect. Wrongfully sending an innocent individual to prison. Bloods worth’s case displays it is unethical as there was no psychical evidence nor appearance matched that supported Bloodsworth was responsible for the murder and rape of the victim. Three eyewitnesses were able to identify the perpetrator out of the five and this was based from evidence that he was spotted with the young girl hours earlier before the crime was
To start with the basis of understanding the memory, one must know that memories are stored in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. In a recent fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) study over the past decade, researchers found that the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex have decreased in activity. The memory is a constructive surface and not so much reproductive. It can be distorted by being influenced by bias, association, imagination and peer pressure. As one goes to recall an event, the brain will now associate that memory with what is happening around them at the time of the recall.
