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Eyewitness Testimonies

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Eyewitness testimonies has contributed tremendously towards law enforcement and crime, helping to place the accused behind bars for the crimes they have committed. Although it has helped to place a huge number of these accused behind bars, eyewitness testimony has been proven to be rather inaccurate and unreliable (Brigham, Maass, Snyder, & Spaulding, 1982). Through the advancement of technology, DNA evidence has proven that some of these individuals have been wrongfully incarcerated. DNA evidence may be an effective measure, but it would only help to solve a minimal number of cases when DNA samples present. At times, DNA evidence might only help to prove that the individual is present at the crime scene. With that being said, eyewitness testimony …show more content…

In Godden and Baddeley’s experiment (1975), the encoding specificity hypothesis was being tested by using deep sea divers. Participants were being split into two groups where they were made to memorise spoken words in two different environments, on land and under water. Half of the participants from each group later switched locations for retrieval. Results from the experiments have shown that the participants that encoded and retrieved information of the spoken words in the same environmental context performed better as compared to the other participants which did otherwise – encoding and retrieving information in different environmental context. There was also no significant difference between Dry-Dry and Wet-Wet, nor between Dry-Wet and Wet-Dry conditions. From this experiment it seems that environmental cues are crucial in aiding the improvement of the accuracy and reliability of eyewitness testimony. The table and graph below illustrates the results reflecting Godden and Baddeley (1975) experiment on encoding specificity and the effect of environmental context on

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702 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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878 Words | 4 Pages

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.

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777 Words | 4 Pages

Jami Bull Mr. Mollenger Forensics Science 23 February 2018 Power of Proof The Innocence Project is a non-profit legal organization that helps people prove their innocence when wrongfully convicted through new DNA testing. 70% of eyewitnesses misidentified and 45% involved misapplication of forensic science. (“DNA Exonerations in the United States.”)

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1460 Words | 6 Pages

It can refute a claim of self-defense and put a weapon in the suspect's hand. It can change a story from an alibi to one of consent. The more officers know how to use DNA, the more powerful a tool it becomes.” This proves that DNA evidence is very reliable and is hard evidence that cannot be argued upon. DNA is either found at the scene of the crime or isn’t.

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306 Words | 2 Pages

Ever since Sherlock Holmes, police and prosecutors have solved cases by confessions or eyewitness accounts, but recently they started solving cases from the forensic evidence found. In the passage, “Forensic Science: Evidence, Clues, and Investigation” by Andrea Campbell, forensic evidence is explained to be the most important evidence to present at trial. Forensic evidence are things like “fingerprints, body fluids, and bullets” (paragraph one). Forensic evidence is the evidence that’s found at the scene of a crime. In paragraph two, it says, “after police have secured the site, criminal investigators collect physical evidence.

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1990 Words | 8 Pages

We know that DNA testing is giving hope to the hopeless in prison. Margret Berger (2006) comments, “Even though the number of inmates released as a consequence of DNA testing is minuscule in contrast to the two million persons incarcerated in the United States, the DNA exonerations have had an enormous impact on the fundamental assumptions about the American criminal justice system and how it operates.” Changes like the desirability of the death penalty, the growing concerns on how forensic laboratories operate alongside the increasing interest in forensic science overall. For instance, as the number of exonerations continues to rise, the number of people being placed on death row is decreasing thanks to Supreme Court rulings that juveniles under the age of 18 and the mentally ill cannot be sentenced to death. The death penalty is overall losing its appeal to society, not just because of the DNA testing, but people become aware of the wrongful convictions of other crimes as well.

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1542 Words | 7 Pages

However, we as a country have made incredible failures of eyewitness testimonies, including misidentification, that led to innocent people having to live out their lives in solitude behind bars. Recently though, with the rise of science and technology, eyewitness testimonies have become less and less reliable. As of now, almost 350 people, have been released because their DNA was discovered to be incompatible with the evidence collected from the crime scene

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952 Words | 4 Pages

A case where eyewitnesses was very important and helped the criminal prosecution was the trial against Charles Manson. To make the story short, Charles Manson was a man who got other people to murder for him. Charles Manson was a leader of a group called the Manson family, and the group contained young men and women who where lost in life and looked up to Mr. Manson as their leader and like a God. Charles Manson had pointed out several members of his family to brutally murder Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, Jason Sebring, Leno LaBianca and Rosemary LaBianca. The police officers working the Charles Manson case had evidence such as fingerprints and similar on the family members of the Manson family, but not much evidence proving

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2432 Words | 10 Pages

The question under investigation in the essay is: how is eyewitness memory affected by external and internal factors, and schemas? This question is very important in everyday situations where there is a case of a crime, an accident or murders and there needs to be questions answered. In most of the cases, there probably have been people around when all these crimes occurred who could serve as eyewitnesses in court hearings or police reports. Investigators call these people to help them clear the events that unfolded during the crime, whether it was a burglary or other type of incident. Most of the eyewitness called to give their side of the story most likely have problems remembering what occurred during the day of the crime.

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1475 Words | 6 Pages

When one is victim of or witness to a crime, it is expected that said person is brought into the police department to be questioned by the police. During this line of questioning it is possible that the victim or witness take part in suspect identification procedures. Such procedures include the use of lineups, showups, photo arrays and others. These procedures are referred to as system variables. These system variables are factors under the control of the investigators that have a demonstrated effect on the accuracy and reliability of eyewitness testimony.

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578 Words | 3 Pages

Bauckham argues the importance and credibility of the eyewitnesses within the gospel. The eyewitnesses “set the oral traditions” as well as “ remained important figures (19).” The author then amends his original argument to include the reasoning behind only certain eyewitnesses being named. He states, “the gospels are much closer to the way the eyewitnesses told, “ than researchers and historians originally believed. These named individual, or major characters, became members of the early Christian church (20).

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1555 Words | 7 Pages

There are many dangers to misidentification and many causes for misidentification occurring. It is evident that eyewitness identification cannot always be trusted. Under times of distress, you may not have a clear observation of the suspect. DNA evidence has now been another factor in finding evidence in

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959 Words | 4 Pages

The difference between peripheral and central memory shows us why sometimes eyewitness have memory of details and sometimes they do not. Research and Meta analyses show that stress has more of a negative impact than a positive impact on eyewitness testimony, as they face difficulty in identifying a perpetrator from a lineup and recall certain details of the crime. In these studies, witnesses are typically asked to report information in two ways; interrogative and narrative. In narrative, witnesses are asked to say what they recall and have the ability to chose what information they want to report. The interrogative type of recall is when the police ask specific questions that the witness needs to respond to.

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960 Words | 4 Pages

More than 75% of cases that have used DNA to exonerate have involved misidentification by the eyewitnesses (“Credible Eyewitnesses”). This proves that eyewitnesses are not reliable sources in a trial. According to the article “Credible Eyewitnesses”,

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477 Words | 2 Pages

There are many types of trails that are presented in court during this era that usually consist of at least two eyewitnesses. However, it is very unreasonable to have eyewitnesses during a very serious trial concerning a life or death outcome. Owing to the fact that whatever the individual saw could in fact be modified to fit a certain individual's liking so that he/she could perhaps win the case. Let’s not forget that humans are not perfect and are very different individuals, what one may have witness could possibly not happened exactly as they thought, dependent on the angle they saw the event. Another important factor of viewing an event unfolding, is that whatever is happening could maybe traumatized that individual which also can alter the way he/she saw the event and what really happened.

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