ipl-logo

Is Eyewitness Testimony Too Unreliable To Trust?

1519 Words7 Pages

Over time, the topic of whether eyewitness testimony should be used in the courtroom or not has been debated back and forth, with both sides making a valid argument. Over the years, thousands of people are accused of committing a crime that they were not involved in. As published by The Week, the article “Is Eyewitness Testimony too Unreliable to Trust?” states, “Every year, more than 75,000 eyewitnesses identify criminal suspects in the U.S., and studies suggest that as many as a third of them are wrong.” This is a very large number which brings attention to the consideration of limiting the process in which people people make accusations in the courtroom based on memory. These false accusations put innocent people in jail for years. Many people are unaware of how this can tragically affect a person’s life as well as their family’s. Eyewitness testimony is highly subjective and unreliable, it should be limited to significantly reduce flaws in the legal process. …show more content…

It refers to an account given by people of an event they have witnessed.” An eyewitness may state that they saw a man rob a bank, for example. Eyewitness testimony is one of the many subfields of psychology. Mcleod says, “In the field of psychology, eyewitness testimony deals with cognitive psychology and human memory.” Eyewitness testimony is affected by many psychological factors and a proper understanding of these factors is necessary in order to create solutions for the problems that can be controlled. Mcleod concludes, “Many psychological factors can influence this such as anxiety or stress, reconstructive memory, weapon focus, and leading questions.” These factors have been heavily researched by many

Show More
Related

Case Study Of John's Wrongful Conviction: Flawed Pathology Evidence

1139 Words | 5 Pages

Eyewitness accounts play a huge role in general in trials and verdicts, but may be unreliable many times, with certain views placed on evidence provided by children. Unreliability may arise from not being able to recount the identity of the accused, the actions and speech occurring during that time, the relationship of individuals towards the person in question, and many

Read More

Kirk Bloodsworth's Five Eyewitness Testimony

1024 Words | 5 Pages

In 2015, Smalarz found that a misidentification testimony by very confident eyewitnesses has happened in about seventy-two percent of cases where innocent people have been accused and were later found innocent by DNA testing. Someone can tell you a story with details, confidence, and passion yet it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is true. In correspondence with Smalarz, in 1977, Randall Adams was sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer in Dallas, Texas. An alleged eyewitness, who in fact was the actual killer, framed Mr. Adams; he received immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony. Mr. Adams was in fact not involved in the crime.

Read More

Eyewitnesses: 60-Minute Segment Of Ronald Cotton And Jennifer Thompson

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.

Read More

Ronald Cotton Eyewitness Testimony

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.

Read More

How Does Loftus Study False Memories

423 Words | 2 Pages

Her earliest studies of eyewitness testimony addressed several issues: when someone sees a crime or accident, how accurate is his or her memory? These studies led Loftus to ask what happens when witness are questioned by police officers, and what if those questions are suggestive (Loftus, 2003). For instance, when Loftus began showing people films of traffic accidents, she found that a question such as “How fast were the cars going when the smashed into each other?” led to higher estimates of speed than a more neutral question that used the verb “hit”. Moreover, the “smashed” question led more people to falsely remember seeing broken glass when there was none.

Read More

Summary Of Picking Cotton

1188 Words | 5 Pages

In the book “Picking Cotton”, the former Burlington Police Chief Mike Gauldin, who was the lead detective on Jennifer’s case, was certainly sure that Ronald Cotton was the guy he was looking for after Jennifer picked him twice (Jennifer, Ronald, Erin 80); also, on the McCallum’s case, the polices also chose to trust eyewitnesses when they did not have enough physical evidences. Furthermore, judges can be wrong sometime. Wise and Safer, who are authors of the report “ what US judges know and believe about eyewitness testimony”, surveyed 160 U.S. judges to determine how much they know about eyewitness testimony on a small test( Wise, Safer, 427-432). However, the survey responds the average judges in the U.S. only 55% correct within 14 questions (Wise, Safer, 431-432). Moreover, most of the judges who were surveyed did not know key facts about eyewitness testimony.

Read More

Rhetorical Analysis Of Scott Fraser

1835 Words | 8 Pages

This creates a major issue within a judicial system. It takes a few eye witness testimonies towards the prosecuted individual to incarcerate them, even if they did not commit the crime. It is because of this reason that Scott Fraser chooses to speak out against eye witness testimonies. In his speech, he argues that memory is fallible and should not be as heavily relied upon within the judicial system.

Read More

False Eye Witness Testimonies In Marvin's Long Term Memory

808 Words | 4 Pages

It is hard to believe that over seventy percent of convictions overturned through DNA testing were based on false eye witness testimonies. Due to conflict and hesitation in eye witness’s long term memory, testimonies from them are frequently inaccurate and give distorted information on the crime. The demanding process of encoding, storing, and later retrieving memory all takes place during a rather rapid and stressful period of events, making the procedure all the more tedious for the witness. For this reason, eye witness testimonies are now seen as unreliable for giving flawed results and have been slowly replaced with more modern means of finding evidence such as DNA testing.

Read More

Is Adnan Syed A Murderer?

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

Read More

Witness For The Defense Elizabeth Loftus

1447 Words | 6 Pages

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

Read More

Eyewitness Misidentification

1297 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More

Examples Of Wrongful Convictions

1093 Words | 5 Pages

According to the article, these eyewitnesses called Compliance and Eyewitness Testimony: Do Eyewitnesses? The test subjects had complied with misleading 'expert pressure' during investigative Interviewing (Roper, Rachel, and David Shewan, 2002). "The study is viewed as an exploratory one but the authors suspected that participants labeled as ‘poor' eyewitnesses will deliberately alter their answers” (Roper, Rachel, and David Shewan, 2002). This experiment could prove that with the suggestion that an individual is a poor eyewitness, could change the outcome of a case. According to the "Judge rejects bid from Angola Three's Albert Woodfox after 40 years in solitary," Albert Woodfox was rejected defense efforts (Judge Rejects Bid...).

Read More

Eyewitness Identification Essay

1228 Words | 5 Pages

Eyewitness identification is ineffective and unjust. Studies have shown that 40% of eyewitness identifications are wrong (Vrij, 1998). Eyewitness identification has great importance in the legal system. This requires the best eyewitness testimony procedure. This essay examines the three main types of eyewitness line-ups; the showup, the sequential and the simultaneous line-up.

Read More

Essay On Wrongful Convictions

1225 Words | 5 Pages

Furthermore, there can be several factors at play when a wrongful conviction occurs and each case is unique. Three of the more common and detrimental factors that will be explored in this essay are eyewitness error, the use of jailhouse informants and professional and institutional misconduct. Firstly, eyewitness testimony can be a major contributor to a conviction and is an important factor in wrongful conviction (Campbell & Denov, 2016, p. 227). Witness recall and, frankly, the human emory are not as reliable as previously thought. In fact there has been much research showing the problems with eyewitness testimony such as suggestive police interviewing, unconscious transference, and malleability of confidence (Campbell & Denov, 2016, p.227).

Read More

The Credibility Of Eyewitnesses In Criminal Investigations

441 Words | 2 Pages

Eye witness identification involves selecting an accused perpetrator from a police line up, sketch or being at the crime scene during the murder time. After selecting a suspect, witnesses are asked to make a formal statement confirming the ID of the suspect (s) or other surrounding details which the eyewitness can testify in court. Eyewitnesses are always required to testify in court but eyewitnesses with psychological disorders, substance dependancy are at a higher chance of identifying the wrong suspect therefore wrongfully assisting convict the perpetrator in the wrong  (Hal Arkowitz,  Scott O. Lilienfeld,  January 1, 2010). 
Anxiety or stress is always associated with crimes involving traumatic events that have previously taken place.

Read More

More about Is Eyewitness Testimony Too Unreliable To Trust?

Related Topics

Open Document