DISCUSSION: ALL IN FAVOR, SAY “I” After much research, it appears that there are not many studies that prove that eyewitness testimony is reliable. However, an experiment performed by John Yuille and Judith Cutshall suggests that Loftus and Palmer et al. are incorrect, as well as Clifford and Scott et al. The Yuille and Cutshall (1986) experiment revealed that the witnesses were very accurate in their reports, neither leading questions nor weapon focus affected their memories, and the anxiety they experienced actually helped them remember the details even better.
Analysis of The Yuille and Cutshall Experiment In their experimental research, Yuille and Cutshall et al. conducted an experiment with twenty-one people who watched as a person was shot to death and another seriously injured. Afterwards, the police interviewed all twenty-one of the witnesses. Yuille and Cutshall et al. asked if they could interview them about four months later once again, and thirteen of the witnesses agreed. The results state that “the median accuracy of the classifiable new details was 81.07%, which compared favorably to the 84.14% accuracy of their police accounts” which proves the
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In each incident, some characteristics can be more obvious than others, the distance from the incident matters, and what our brain chooses to do with the information we process are all big factors that come into play when trying to answer this question. For some people, their accounts of what occurs in front of their eyes is extremely accurate, while for other people - it is not. What I do know is, eyewitness testimony is to be used as a guideline in courtrooms, and not as any kind of evidence/proof. Too many innocent people have been wrongfully convicted due to false identifications and too many studies have proven that it is not as reliable as we all