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Why Are Eyewitnesses Wrong

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In 1984 Kirk Bloodsworth was convicted of the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl and sentenced to the gas chamber an outcome that rested largely on the testimony of five eyewitnesses. One third of these overturned cases rested on the testimony of two or more mistaken eyewitnesses. How could so many eyewitnesses be wrong? Eyewitness identification typically involves selecting the alleged perpetrator from a police lineup, but it can also be based on police sketches and other methods. Soon after selecting a suspect, eyewitnesses are asked to make a formal statement confirming the ID and to try to recall any other details about events surrounding the crime. At the trial, which may be years later, eyewitnesses usually testify in court. Because …show more content…

In addition to educating jurors about the uncertainties surrounding eyewitness testimony, adhering to specific rules for the process of identifying suspects can make that testimony more accurate. The uncritical acceptance of eyewitness accounts may stem from a popular misconception of how memory works. Many people believe that human memory works like a video recorder: the mind records events and then, on cue, plays back an exact replica of them. On the contrary, psychologists have found that memories are reconstructed rather than played back each time we recall them. The act of remembering, says eminent memory researcher and psychologist Elizabeth F. Loftus of the University of California, Irvine, is “more akin to putting puzzle pieces together than retrieving a video recording.” Even questioning by a lawyer can alter the witness’s testimony because fragments of the memory may unknowingly be combined with information provided by the questioner, leading to inaccurate

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She was shown photographs which included Hay’s photograph (taken 18 months earlier) and she selected him as an 80% likeness. Three weeks later, she was shown a sequence of photographs which included one of Hay (taken hours after the murder) and she did not select any photograph. At a second identification process, Maillard didn’t select any photographs and, when shown the photograph of Hay she stated that he looked very different and that in his arrest photo, he did not have a gaunt face like that of the second gunman at the club. An article by Pezdek, Abed & Cormia (2021) explores the relationship between stress and eyewitness memory accuracy, as well as the relationship between stress and eyewitness confidence. They found that stress impairs the accuracy of eyewitness memory but not the confidence-accuracy relationship.

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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

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In season one episode six of the Serial podcast titled “The Case Against Adnan Syed”, there are many inconsistencies and false memories as the story is unfolding through the interviews made by the police and Koenig. During interviews, the majority of the answers received from witnesses did not add up or make sense. Also, individuals involved with the case claim they either did not recall what transpired or said something completely different from their previous statement. The above statement proves that the human memory is imperfect and cannot be reliable.

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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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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.

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It states “scientific research indicates that identification procedures such as line-ups and photo arrays produce more reliable evidence when the individual line-up members or photographs are shown to witnesses sequentially – one at a time – rather than simultaneously.” By giving the reader such a valuable piece of information from a credible source, it engages Loftus’ readers into going more in depth with the research into finding out more about the recommendations provided. This is an attempt by the author to encourage those who are familiar with the justice system particularly in Canada and the United States who both mainly use the adversarial court system to rise up and take part into bringing in a new method that will protect the defendant while in court from being falsely accused of a crime they did not

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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.

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The description of the Lockerbie bombing may provide image on how lengthy and complicated an investigation and a trial process could be. Eyewitness would have to go through repeated interviews. The purpose of this procedure is to assess the consistency and accuracy of the testimony. Unfortunately, it is often not realized that repeated interview may also have a negative effect on the quality of the testimony given. A study by Sharps, Herrera, Dunn, and Alcala investigated the effect of repeated questioning in the format based of police procedure (2012).

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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.

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Research has indicated that police investigators should pay attention to witness’s level of confidence when determining the accuracy of their offender identifications. Other studies show that a higher confidence level in the witness leads to a more accurate decision when identifying the culprit. Also, highly confident decisions, rapid decisions, and decisions accompanied by relevant recollection are more likely to be accurate than those made with low confidence. There are several things which can influence eyewitness certainty, including post identification feedback and poorly constructed lineups. Sometimes witnesses are confident that the perpetrator is not in the lineup and they are referred to as non-choosers.

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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

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Margaret Kovera, a leading authority in the research of lineup administrations, there are several verbal cues and non-verbal cues that can influence a witness’s decision making with regards to a suspect identification. As Dr. Margaret Kovera has a social psychology background, her research focuses more on the social interactions in lineups as opposed to the usual cognitive approach to studying eyewitness identification. In Dr. Kovera’s interview she discusses what is referred to as the experimenter expectancy effect whereby experimenters may behave in such a manner that influences the behaviours of the participants in a study to fit the hypothesis of the experimenter. This premise correlates with Dr. Garry Wells view of lineups being experiments and when conducting a lineup, we should aim to protect suspects against mistaken identifications by trying to minimize or eliminate the types of biases that we try to remove when we are conducting scientific experiments. As Dr. Margaret Kovera exemplifies in her interview, one of the biggest issues in lineup procedures that result in false identifications is the various sources of contamination introduced to the witness by the lineup administrator, which ultimately parallels with the experimenter expectancy effect.

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Wrongful Prosecutions Due to False Remembrance Several individuals have been wrongly prosecuted due to false eyewitness memories due to factors such as the how the human brain remembers things, emotions and the new scientific evidence on eyewitness memory. The new advances in science on how the human brain stores memories and retrieves memories change how eyewitness testimonies are handled. There are two types of trace memories. The first type is called a verbatim memory and that memory consists of exact memories or very close to the original memories.

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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).

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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

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