Difference Between Eyewitness Testimony

Eyewitness evidence has always been considering critical information when it comes to court trials and convictions. But how reliable are eyewitnesses? Scientific research has shown that eyewitness’s memories are often not accurate or reliable. Human memory is very malleable and is easily changed by suggestion. Relying on eyewitness evidence instead of scientific data often leads to wrongful convictions. Scientific evidence is much more reliable, and should be more important in court cases than eyewitness evidence.

Eyewitness testimony has long been viewed as important evidence in court cases. The general population believes eyewitness identification more than any other evidence, even if the witness account is conflicting with the other evidence presented. Studies show that eyewitness testimony is unreliable, and yet it is still considered the most important form of evidence. People think that if a person says they saw something then it must have happened. Currently there are no universal guidelines on how to obtain and present such evidence. The purpose of this paper is to explain why eyewitness testimony is unreliable, and discuss the proposed guidelines on how law enforcement agencies should gather identifications, as well how

Another issue was Loftus and Palmer didn’t have valid consent from their participants which is unethical but this type of deception is acceptable as no psychologically or physical harm came to the participants. There are social implications as many people have been convicted wrongfully as a result of eyewitness testimonies. This has led to people being sceptical about testimonies. Loftus and Palmer’s research means that less compensation is being paid out. The biggest social implication is that the real perpetrator is still free.

The reliability if an eyewitness testimony is questionable. The witness may be so certain that the person that thy are pointing out is one hundred per cent the suspect or they could be so certain when it comes to retelling the incident, although these people are so sure on what it is they are doing, their testimony cannot always accurate. Due to the lack of accuracy with eyewitness

An eyewitness testimony is unreliable because of many different things. Sometimes when witnesses see something they don’t see the whole crime, but only parts which could cause the wrong people to be in trouble. When it’s a serious crime the trial could take years and when asked to stand trial against the perpetrator the witness’s memory could not be fully correct anymore. You could forget important things or get mixed up with things you’ve seen somewhere else, like in a movie. Another reason they are unreliable is Because individuals with certain psychological disorders, like antisocial personality disorder and substance dependence, are at high risk for criminal involvement, they are also at high risk for false identifications by eyewitnesses.

There has been considerable interest and study in the accuracy or inaccuracy of the use of eyewitness testimonies in the current criminal justice system. Results collated by several studies add to the bulk of literature suggesting that the current usage of eyewitness testimony by the legal system is far from ideal. Currently, high emphasis is being placed on reviewing and reconsidering eyewitness accounts (Leinfelt, 2004). In particular, recent DNA exoneration cases have substantiated the warnings of eyewitness identification researchers by showing that mistaken eyewitness identification was the largest single factor contributing to the conviction of innocent people (Wells & Olson, 2003). In this essay, the use of eyewitness testimony in the criminal justice system will be explored, with a particular focus on the impreciseness of this practice.

Turning to the case of Guy Paul Morin, one will see that the witness account played a great deal in the conviction of Morin. Mr. X falsely testified against Morin because he did not like Morin. The crown also used evidence from undercover officers where statements of Morin were recorded on a 60 minute tape recorder, which the officers believed to be 90 minutes. This made the case interesting because the crown used this instance for saying that Morin confessed to the crime after 60 minutes. This showed false accusation that was made both by the police officers and crown attorneys.

It has been shown that eyewitness misidentification is one of the biggest factors in wrongful convictions, which has been overturned due to DNA (Innocence). Forensic evidence is one of the factors used to determine ones’ guilt or innocence in the court of law; however, some of the evidence used can pose a problem in court. Eye witness testimony has caused a lot of faults in court cases because it is portrayed as a strong factor of evidence. Eye witness testimony should not be used as primary evidence because of how unreliable, misidentified, and the impact it can have in the court of law. Eyewitness identification should have different alternatives in how it should be presented to the witness so that bias is not present.

An eye witness is a person who has personally seen something happen and so can give a first hand description of it. Every year, more than 75,000 eyewitnesses recognize criminal suspects in the U.S., and studies propose that as many as a third of them are wrong. Mistaken eyewitnesses helped convict three quarters of the people who have been freed from U.S. prisons base on DNA evidence presented by the Innocence Project. The Innocence Project is a nonprofit legal organization that challenges uncertain prosecutions. The California Innocence Project says that they are numerous reasons why eyewitness are mostly wrong. They are High Stress Environment and Trauma, Human Memory, and Suggestive Identification and etc. There are all these reasons that eyewitnesses have a high rate of error but, are still considered some of the most powerful evidence against a suspect. After a comprehensive two-year study of eyewitness testimonies, the New Jersey Supreme Court concluded that they often leads to fictional or false identifications. Thus, recently ordered that new rules on how such testimonies are treated in the courtroom. This is

The impact of eyewitness testimony upon the members of a jury has been the subject of various research projects and has guided the policies formed by the federal government regarding its competent use in criminal matters (Wells, Malpass, Lindsay, Fisher, Turtle, & Fulero, 2000). Therefore, eyewitness studies are important to understand how

There are many different factors that play a part in the increased chance of a witness correctly identifying a suspect. Such factors should be brought to the attention of the jury and the judge to help in properly assessing whether a witness is correctly identifying a suspect. A study by Magnussen, Melinder, Stridbeck, & Raja (2010) found that of the three different types of people: judge, jury, and general public, that for the most part all where fairly ill-informed on the reliability of eyewitness testimony with judges having the most. Judges only had about an 8% difference in knowledge when compared to jurors. With this information it is very clear that education on the reliability of eyewitness testimony needs to become more of a general knowledge information for the everyone, especially people who are involved in upholding the law. Another factor to look into when evaluating the accuracy eyewitness testimony is the role that memory plays. Memory is divided into three processes: perceiving, remembering, and recalling information (Simmonsen, 2013). There is plenty of room in all three of those stages to forget or falsely remember something. Some factors that play a part when a person perceives an event is the amount of time they are exposed to the event and the suspect. A study conducted by Horry, Halford, Brewer, Milne, & Bull. (2014) found that witnesses were increasingly more likely to correctly identify a suspect if they had been exposed to the suspect for sixty

There is a legal mist of uncertainty in acting upon this type of evidence, and by that alone. At best it could be tertiary supporting evidence provided other evidence either direct or secondary point to the events as stated by these types of witness. Such witnesses who have imagined the event, or confessed to things they never did, have actually hampered the proper administration of justice and have either caused harm to themselves and to other innocent persons. It is pertinent to submit here that most of

4. If the witness’s factual recollection of events differs in any important respect from the medical records, or from the version of facts set out in the Defendant, the statement should acknowledge this and comment upon these differences.

I would want to know which part of the statement they had focused on, because the difference in opinion from witness statements would probably originate from different focuses on the same issue. After understanding their position, I would then reevaluate my own opinion to see if my opinion is truly based on the facts of the case or not. If it was not then I would have to change my position, but if I do not find an issue with my position on the issue, then I would continue to attempt to get my point across to the rest of the members of

Eyewitness identification and testimony play a huge role in the criminal justice system today, but skepticism of eyewitnesses has been growing. Forensic evidence has been used to undermine the reliability of eyewitness testimony, and the leading cause of false convictions in the United States is due to misidentifications by eyewitnesses. The role of eyewitness testimony in producing false confessions and the factors that contribute to the unreliability of these eyewitness testimonies are sending innocent people to prison, and changes are being made in order to reform these faulty identification procedures.