Essay On Eyewitness

In the past decade, eyewitness testimonies have cast a shadow on what is wrong with the justice system in today’s society. Before we had the advanced technology, we have today, eyewitness testimonies were solid cold-hard facts when it came to proving the defendant was guilty. However, time has changed and eyewitness testimonies have proven to be the leading causes of wrongful convictions due to misidentification. The Thompson and Cotton case is a perfect example of how eyewitness testimonies can put an innocent man behind bars.

In Canada, the leading cause of wrongful conviction is due to the factor of eyewitness account. It has been proven that individual’s minds are not like tape recorders because everyone cannot precisely and accurately remember the description of what another person or object looks like. The courts looks at eyewitness accounts as a great factor to nab perpetrators because they believe that the witness should know what they are taking about and seen what occurred on the crime scene. On the other hand, eyewitness accounts lead to a 70 percent chance of wrongful conviction, where witnesses would substantially change their description of a perpetrator.

Eyewitness Identification may be more reliable than we believe, if they are handled and assessed correctly. Eyewitness testimonies are often used by law enforcement officers to identify suspects and play a huge role in getting convictions. If witnesses identify the wrong person, an innocent man could be punished for something they had no involvement in. There are many theories to explain why witnesses may identify the wrong person as the perpetrator of a crime. The different ways we retrieve memories affects what we remember. Other theories have to deal with how lineups or photo arrays are displayed to the witness and the effect they have on the result. All of the different theories of how our memories can be influenced, cause people to argue

A specific process of which we must doubt the reliability of is the role of memory in eyewitness testimony. Eyewitness testimony is used as vital evidence in the legal system in order to convict criminals, however, it does rely on the reliability of memory, which has been a highly contested topic. Previously, eyewitness testimony has been a highly reliable source in the conviction process. It was trusted by courts of law and law enforcement, however, various research studies have now created reasonable doubt behind the reliability of these testimonies due to the fact that it is now evident that memory can be distorted and reconstructed, an active process in which information

In the excerpt, Loftus describes experiments are focused on “lists of words or sentences” but do not encompass everyday memories. Unlike the information asked to recall in the current experiments of Loftus’s time, everyday memories are much more complex because of the speed at which they happen and their large visual content. And though rarely sought out, those memories are needed in certain serious situations, such as in court. According to Loftus, this is why the study of eyewitness is so important. The accounts will determine the fate of the accused and other parties. So then, due to its serious nature, eyewitness memory is a, “concern to the law,” when concerning its, “completeness, accuracy, and malleability.” In other words, the more

In the Washington Post article, Philip Hilts discussed the issue with hypnotized witnesses and how they tend to recall vague memories and uncertain falsehoods as facts. A study conducted by two Canadian researchers suggest that hypnosis conducted by various police departments becomes a very “risky business” (Hilts, 1983, para. 1, and 2).

An eyewitness memory is an individual's sporadic memory for a crime or other dramatic event that he or she has witnessed. The study of eyewitness memory is a study that reveals that the mind is swayed through propositions. That means that the memory being recalled could be unreliable due to misleading implications of a question. Loftus states, "Current theories regarding memory are derived largely from studies including lists regarding words or sentences, many memories in occurring everyday living involve complex, generally visual, and often action-packed events.” According to Loftus, is vital to study eyewitness memory because it enables us to ration and estimate the fact behind eyewitness testimonies.

The results of our experiment were similar with the original study conducted by Loftus and Palmer in the sense that the average speed estimates were higher in the "smash" condition. The smash condition had average estimated speed of, 79.6 km/h in the present experiment and 40.8km/h in the original study. Similarly, the contacted condition had an average estimated speed of 72.3km/h in the present experiment and 31.8km/h in the original study. Due to the results of Loftus and Palmer as well as our experiment, it is evident that Schemas do alter responses and behaviours regarding memory and eyewitness testimony. The participants were tested on their response to a leading question and behaved as expected. Through this, we can conclude that the

On the website, www.innocenceproject.org/causes/eyewitness-misidentification/ examines the accuracy of eyewitness identification. In today’s society, people say if you see something, say something. Now, more and more people are speaking up and giving needed eyewitness statements to the authorities. The Innocence Project points out areas where eyewitness identification can render inaccurate results. For instance, the police may give non-verbal hints that causes the witness to doubts the details of the incident resulting in a wrongful conviction. To prevent misidentification, the Innocence Project is partnering with law enforcement to come up with list of policies to follow.

It also aimed to see if it was true that people were open to hints, as people are extremely bad at estimating the speed of moving cars. 45 students were shown 7films of different traffic accidents. After each film, participants were given a questionnaire asking them to describe the accident and then answer a

Eyewitness accounts are continuously put into question in the court room. By studying how memory works and what factors influence what we remember, we can try to determine how credible eyewitness accounts are and if they are an accurate source of evidence in crimes.

In the initial study, 150 subjects were shown a video of a five-car chain reaction accident that occurred when a car (Car A) drove through a stop sign into oncoming traffic. When the film finished the individuals filled out ten questions. One half of the group’s first question was “How fast was Car A going when it ran the stop sign?” The remaining individuals’ first question was “How fast was Car A going when it turned right?” Questions

According to statistics approximately 71% of convictions in the U.S that were overturned were due to eyewitness misidentification according to The Innocence Project, a non-profit group that aims to exonerate those effected by miscarriages of justice (4). This is due to a number of reasons such as false-confession due to pressure to identify a suspect and subjective instructions given to a witness in order to induce an answer that convicts a defendant (5). Despite that another large limitation to eyewitness identification is the limits of a person’s memory under stress and time making it possible for defense lawyers to defend their clients by arguing memory was not to be trusted (6). However, it is still often used as a form of testimony against a defendant because of its ability to vaguely characterize a suspect and rule out the false-positives. Thus similar to hair analysis, albeit unreliable it is useful for quickly ruling out suspects without destruction to evidence because microscopic analysis and witness testimonies are a non-destructive test; effectively reducing the amount of resources that have to be spent on processes such as DNA profiling that take up more time and resources

Eye witness testimony is an unreliable way of testifying because age differences can be easily influenced and gender roles has an impact in the accuracy for memory recalling. A study conducted of one hundred and ninety-six individuals living in Madrid at the time of the terrorist attack demonstrated that age differences affects the accuracy of eye witness testimonies (Vallet, Manzanero, Arótegui, Garcia, 2017). Adolescents and children are both influenced differently by emotions and the quality of their memory. With that being said, adults performed better on recalling much accurate details such as sound, odor, central information, visuals, and feelings (Vallet, et al., 2017).

Eye Witness Testimony The language used by the police when interviewing witnesses and barristers during a trial may influence answers given by witnesses, this language may affect initial perception and subsequent recall. Both of these effects are shown in the study by Loftus & Palmer {1974). My experiment into this field showed the leading question with the `verb` contained the information about what the answer should be, thus language can have a distorting effect on EWT, which can lead to inaccurate accounts of the witnessed account.