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 …show more content…
First, this ideology that hypnosis leads participants to have heightened confidence levels in their memory recall can result in a testimony that can sway a jury and possibly lead to the false incarceration of an innocent person. Second, the research that was conducted also concludes that hypnosis does not improve memory; people in a hypnotic state are as likely to incorporate irrelevant information into their testimonies as regular people are. This makes the recall elicited under hypnosis as reliable as the memory produced regularly. Accuracy levels among the memories recalled in the studies signify that memories recalled under hypnosis are no more accurate than the memories of a regular eye-witness. With regards to the case, the testimony provided by Mrs. Walter should be deemed inadmissible because any information provided to the court through the use of hypnosis should be disregarded, as it does not add any value to the memory Mrs. Walter is trying to