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.
He says that when a suspect is not in a line up, witnesses will tend to pick the most similar to the criminal. The two key properties of eyewitness testimony is that it is often unreliable and highly persuasive. Recognition memory is rapid so if someone takes longer than 10-15 secs then they are not using reliable recognition memory. Showing a photo one by one is more effective and accurate as it allows the victim to compare each photo to their memory rather than each other. A study person was undertaking whereby 300 participants viewed deliberately shaky footage of a man putting a bomb down an airshaft.
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.
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
Richard miles was wrongfully convicted of murder and attempted murder in 1995 based on eyewitness testimony, false or misleading forensic evidence and official misconduct. The evidence presented at his trial that is useful for this particular research paper is the eyewitness testimony. Thurman the witness in this case identified Miles as the gunman from a photospread that police had given him. Several other witnesses were shown the same photospread but could not identify Miles. Miles was charged with murder and attempted murder.
After investigators begun to suspect arson was in play, the testimonies turned into accusations and assumption of Willingham’s guilt. David Grann wrote, “Dozens of studies have shown that witnesses’ memories of events often change when they are supplied with new contextual information”, suggesting that after a certain period of time into an investigation, all testimonies should be taken with little confidence (Grann, “Trial by Fire”). If the witnesses and testimonies were taken from individuals who know nothing about the
Historically, eyewitness accounts of a crime were a vital piece of evidence used in the prosecution of criminal offenses. Lineups were a method used where typically a group of individuals not involved in the crime along with the suspect whom is believed to be directly related to the crime are grouped together for the witness to review in the hopes to identify the suspect. This is accomplished in two ways, the first is simultaneous where several photos are grouped together at the same time (typically six) for the witness to review. This specific procedure raises the issue of certainty from the witness.
As Loftus explains, we are so willing to accept unreliable eyewitness accounts because we do not understand how memory actually works. Most people believe the "video camera" scenario instead of the "evolutionary" scenario. Because of this misconception we are very strongly inclined to believe eyewitness accounts. “Why is eyewitness testimony so powerful and convincing? Because people in general and jurors in particular believe that our memories stamp the facts of our experiences on a permanent, non-erasable tape, like a computer disk or videotape that is write-protected,” (p. 21).
As a general rule this information is not one hundred percent reliable. Even though there is an eyewitness to a crime the information relayed may not always be accurate. Information given by civilian in regards to a crime is considered circumstantial because the person may not remember everything exactly how it happened. For example and I witness to a vehicle accident will experience many different things during the course of the accident.
Blurred Vision: The Fallibility of Eyewitness Testimony On an early, foggy morning in April 1981, a Dallas, Texas woman awoke to find a man with a knife on top of her in her bed. After trying to get the knife from her attacker, she was cut on her hand, neck, and back, and then raped before the attacker fled the scene. According to the Innocence Project, in the report “Reevaluating Lineups: Why Witnesses Make Mistakes and How to Reduce the Chance of a Misidentification,” the victim originally told the police she could not describe her assailant because at the time of the attack, 45 minutes before sunrise, the room was too dark (7).
Cognitive level of analysis studies cognition, cognition means that it is involved with thinking, knowing, remembering and communicating. This includes memory, which is an important cognitive process specially when looking into eyewitness testimony. Eyewitness testimony is a legal expression signified to an incident people have witnessed such as, it might be an accident on the road people have seen and need to give their account. Juries in a court case pay extremely close attention to the eyewitness testimony and typically find it a reliable source of information however; it can be affected by psychological influences like leading questions, schemas and reconstructive memory. Schema theory, which was introduced by Bartlett, is a cognitive
According to Hammersley and Read (1996) mention that earwitness testimony is partially correct. In earwitness testimony ; an individual encounters some problems to identify all the voices of strangers that he/she does not know especially who differ their voices from time to time (cited in Matlin, 2003). In other words, a subject is able to recognize the known people’s voice and ignore the unknown one. Moreover, many psychologists were very interested to search and write about the paradox of recovered memory and false memory. (E.g. Brown et al., 1998, cited in Matlin, 2003).
This essay draws conclusions as to which method the legal system should implement. The showup is a suggestive procedure. A show-up is an identification procedure in which, the police present a single suspect to an eyewitness, then ask the eyewitness whether the suspect is the perpetrator. The showup is suggestive because the witness views the suspect, whilst the suspect are in police custody.
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).
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
