...Eyewitness testimony is a legal term. It is the detailed account given by a witness in a courtroom, describing what they perceived happened during the specific incident under investigation. This is used as evidence to show what happened from a witness’s point of view. Eyewitness testimony is a crucial area of research in cognitive psychology and human memory; studies into eyewitness testimony have found that it can be affected by many factors. Elizabeth Loftus, a leading researcher in eyewitness testimony, conducted studies to demonstrate that memory is not a factual recording of an event and that memories can become distorted by other information which occurs after the event. Loftus and Palmer (1974) study consisted of two laboratory experiments; both were examples of an independent measures design. The independent variable in both of the experiments is the verb used. The dependent variable in the first experiment is the participant’s speed estimate and the dependent variable in the second experiment is whether the participant believed they saw glass. In the first experiment 45 students from the University of Washington were shown video clips, short excerpts from safety films made for driver education, which were 5 to 30 seconds long. They were split into 5 groups, with 9 participants in each group. After each clip the students were asked to write a report of the accident they had just seen. They were also asked to answer some specific questions but the crucial question...
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...however, this type of evidence is not always readily available at a crime scene. It is often necessary to look to other sources, such as an eyewitness, to help settle a trial (Smarlarz & Wells, 2014). This can be problematic due to a number of reasons, the first being that eyewitness testimonies have been increasingly proven, such as through DNA evidence, that the defendant is often misidentified (Innocence Project, 2014). There has been abundant research conducted into false identifications and studies have found, due to numerous reasons including age, bias, gender, cognitive ability and current state, that error rates tend to be quite high...
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...The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony SCI 110 Introduction to Physical Science Professor Pages 6 Abstract: Eyewitness testimony and its credibility has always been a staple of controversy in court cases. Let's take a minute to think back the last time you were in a local retail store. Now ask yourself, are you able to describe the person who was ahead of you in the line? How many details can you really remember about that person? Now how accurate do you think that your description was? Today we are going to investigate just how accurate people's observations are in everyday life. Objective: The purpose of this project today is to determine whether eyewitness account credible and reliable enough to be used as evidence in criminal investigations. We are going to do this by determining witness recollection, gender of suspect, distance away from suspect and date and time affect the accuracy of witness accounts. . Introduction: Eyewitness accounts are always under scrutiny whether in the courtroom, by police and even scientists. In most eyewitness identification the processes typically involve selecting an alleged perpetrator from a police lineup or sketches. After selecting a suspect a formal statement is using made confirming the identification of the subject. Usually the times in which you are asked to give a statement range anywhere from a day to a few days later. Within this time frame ,ask yourself how accurately are you able to recollect...
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...itEyewitness Testimony - Evidence given by a witness to a significant event such as a crime or serious accident. - The evidence usually takes forms of personal identification or verbal account of what happened. - Problems can occur at any point in the memory process: 1) Acquisition: Information the person perceives Poor viewing conditions Focus on weapons 2) Storage: Information the person stores in memory Misleading information Source misattribution errors 3) Retrieval: Information the person retrieves at a later time Best guesses in line-up identification Leading questions - Inaccurate eyewitness testimony can have very serious consequences leading to wrongful convictions. - Why eyewitness testimony may be unreliable? * The role of anxiety: Baddeley 1997 reported that 74% of suspects convicted in 300 cases where eyewitness identification was the only evidence against them. Anxiety may lead to unreliable remembering depends on number of factors. * Research on ‘weapon focus’ Loftus 1979: P were exposed to one of the 2 situations; 1- They overheard a low-key discussion about an equipment failure. A person then emerged holding a pen with grease on his hands. 2- They overheard a heated and hostile exchange between people in the lab. After the sound of breaking glass and crashing chairs, a man emerged from the lab holding a paper knife covered in blood. P were then given 50 photos to try and identify the person. Findings: 1- Accurately identified...
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...Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony Eyewitness testimonies have played a major role in many wrongful court convictions. There is a great difficulty faced by many eyewitnesses when identifying perpetrators of crimes. Additionally, existing procedural safeguards are insufficient to put off erroneous convictions caused by eyewitness errors. It is therefore important to have a scientific method that can enhance reliability on eyewitness testimony when making a judgement in a court of law. Based on thirty years of broad scientific study on eyewitness testimony, this article delineates a tripartite solution to eyewitness error. This is necessitated by the fact that criminal justice system mainly relies on eyewitness evidence to convict suspects. Often, eyewitness evidence happens to be the only evidence available and if appropriately handled it can be very reliable. The proposed solution maintains accessibility of eyewitness substantiation, while at the same time providing safeguards to uphold its accuracy and reliability. Court of laws and criminal justice system can rely on eyewitness Testimony. This is the hypothesis that will be tested through research on the internet, books and other relevant sources. The expected outcome of this research paper, it will be easy to tell whether or not jurors can rely on eyewitness testimony. In this tripartite solution, the first component is allowing experts testimonies when the sole or primary evidence against the...
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...Eyewitness testimony is a legal term, referring to a person’s interpretation of an event they have seen. Judges have a tendency to pay close attention to eyewitness testimony and find it a trustworthy source of information. Nevertheless, investigation into this area has found that eyewitness testimony can be affected by numerous psychological factor (Loftus, E. F., & Palmer, J. C., 1974). Eyewitness testimony is not as reliable as it may seem at the first glance. It is commonly known that a person would react differently in a stressful situation to how he would react normally. Witnessing a crime is always stressful. The more serious the crime is, the more anxiety a person will feel. However, feeling a little stressed helps improving performance...
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...Eyewitness testimony is largely affected by the way an interviewer asks questions. This type of evidence is often the most important and therefore, must be retrieved correctly. Courts are skeptical of evidence achieved entirely from eyewitness testimony which makes it extremely important to get truthful and corroborated evidence. It is very easy for an interviewer to put false information into the minds of the interviewees which could in fact incarcerate the wrong person. Receiving eyewitness testimony must be done in a proper way to ensure the information of a particular event is correct. Proper Questions Interviewers must ask questions in a proper manner to ensure there are no bias answers. If questions are asked incorrectly, a person may give perceive changed memories....
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...Short paper #4 1.) I believe there is only a certain degree of accuracy in eyewitness testimony. According to the Innocence project & eyewitness identification, the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide is eyewitness misidentification. There were over 70% of convictions overturned through DNA testing. There are so many ways to give unintentional suggestion to false identification, for example, verbal and non-verbal cues, relative judgments, feedback and lineup composition. According to research conducted by Wells, people who were given with positive feedback would have two times higher confidence to pick a suspect when none of the actual suspects were actually in the line-up photo (Wells 2006). 2.) Memory is constructive...
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...Eyewitness testimony, which relies on the accuracy of human memory, has an enormous impact on the outcome of a trail. For example, In 1984, American College Student Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who burst into her flat. During her ordeal Jennifer concentrated on every detail of her attacker so she could later accurately recall him. Later that day she worked with police officers to compose an accurate sketch of an assailant. A few days later she identified Ronald Cotton as the rapist and picked him out of Identity parade. On the basis of her eyewitness testimony was cotton was sent to prison. In 1995, after serving 11 years in Prison, DNA Evidence proved that Ronald cotton was Innocent. With Eyewitness testimony, events...
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...Introduction Eyewitness evidence can be highly persuasive to jurors. However, eyewitness testimony can be mistaken. Eyewitness’ memory of the event may change drastically between the time one first witness an event and the time one recount it to someone else (Loftus, 1975). At the time of exposure and shortly thereafter, observers have much more information than they can later report and that the availability of this information declines rapidly (Sperling, 1960). Furthermore, Clifford and Scott (1978) reported that the emotionality surrounding an incident can affect the testimony of both the victim and witnesses, and both accuracy and completeness. The goal of the present research is to examine the effect of eyewitness testimony on juries....
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...Nothing could be more disturbing to oneself than having someone tell you that your memory was wrong. A memory could be of a good time or it can be one of a horrible experience in which you witnessed a stranger killing someone. That horrible memory of seeing the killer allows you to identify them later for police. As the years go by you learn that DNA testing has exonerated the person you identified as the killer. How could that be possible? In her article The End of Eyewitness Testimonies, author Erika Hayasaki describes many such criminal cases in which eye witness testimony was used to convict people who were later cleared by other evidence. Memory, as experts have been trying to teach judges and jurors, does not function like an iPhone camera...
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...There has been a lot of research into what effects eyewitness testimony (EWT), one of these being age. In 2001, Poole and Lindsay conducted an experiment to find out whether children could source monitor. They got children (aged 3-8) to watch a science demonstration and then listen to a story afterwards. When questioned later on, they found that the younger children got the information sources mixed up and so they wouldn’t make effective eyewitnesses. However, the younger children would lack schemas and the vocabulary needed to describe the science experiment. This means that they wouldn’t have been able to describe the experiment when asked to recall it, and therefore would make this experiment less valid. Anastasi and Rhodes performed an experiment in 2006 to see if recall is better when identifying people from the same age range (own age bias). They showed 24 photos to 3 age groups and then later they were shown 48 photos and had to identify the original 24. They found that generally the younger age groups were better at recall, but all age groups were better at recognising their own age group. They concluded that it’s easier to recall people in your own age range. This experiment was conducted in a lab, so lacks mundane realism and so would have affected the results. Also, individual differences would have affected the results because some of the photos may look like people you know, so recall would be better. Yarmey conducted an experiment to see if age affects recall...
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...an eyewitness testimony. Twenty-two students watched a video of a crime individually or in pairs. The paired witnesses discussed the video with their co-witnesses. Yet, they had not known they had seen slightly different versions. Participants in that had pairs recalled less accurately than individual witnesses. In a cross-examination, there was no difference in accuracy between the two experimental groups. Thus, this experiment showed that the results demonstrated negative effects of cross-examination on the accuracy of adult eyewitness testimony. Likewise, as the third reason, some eyewitness testimonies lie to their advantage. For instance, Henry Drake was sentenced to death in 1977 for the murder of a 74-year old barber during a robbery in Georgia. Whether Drake was found guilty or innocent depended on an eyewitness testimony. The...
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...In 1984, Kirk Bloodsworth was convicted of the rape and murder of a nine year old girl by a jury of his peers, an outcome which relied heavily on accounts given by five eyewitnesses (Bloodsworth v. State, 1986). At first, Bloodsworth was sentenced to execution via gas chamber but DNA evidence proved him to be innocent. As a result, many countries and states within the United States are attempting to make changes in how eyewitness testimony is evaluated in court (Connors, 1996). Eyewitness testimony is an account of what that person allegedly observed during an incident under investigation to a jury and this account is used as evidence to show what happened from a witness' perspective. Preferably, this recollection of events should be detailed...
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... In the past 20 years the number of psychological studies on child witnesses and the competency of them being interviewed as well as the evidence being given by them has grown from very few quality studies to several thousand. Issues such as suggestibility, the effects of individual differences and the effects of long delays on their recall have been brought up and discussed in these studies. (Memon, Vrij & Bull, 2006) Traditionally, most Criminal Justice Systems have been reluctant to accept the testimony of young children, believing that they make less reliable witnesses than adults do. Although in recent years the balance has shifted and the evidence of children is now much more likely to be accepted. (Ainsworth, 1998) All witnesses defined as a child at the date of the trial, and irrespective of the nature of the offence, are automatically classified as vulnerable and this eligible for a range of protective special measures to enable them to give a testimony in court. There special measures include in-court screens, live TV link, removal of wigs and gowns and provision of any necessary aids to communication. (Raitt, 2007) The issue of children’s competency to testify in court has changed from the presumption that no minor is competent to the belief that all children are competent, which also means that a child can be compelled to testify whether voluntarily or not. Donaldson et al (1983, cited in Spencer & Flin, 1993) believed that much of the research...
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