Eyewitness Encounters Summary

Given these findings, it suggests that if an unfamiliar story can be re-told with significant changes by all those who participated in the study, a statement given by an eyewitness is subject to the same results (Leinfelt, 2004). Having considered Bartlett’s research in 1932, it is also reasonable to consider the criticism of Gauld and Stephenson (1967), as they discovered if the participants were told of the importance of accurate recall, the number of errors made in the re-telling was notably reduced. Arguably, real life cases and laboratory findings have shown that although eyewitnesses understand the importance of accuracy, recall is not without error (Tversky & Tuchin, 1989).

Eyewitness testimony is a hot button issue in not only the criminal justice field but also the psychology field as well. It continues to be argued that this type of “evidence” is far too unreliable for the court room and can ultimately end up punishing the wrong person for a crime they did not commit. The influence of an eyewitness testimony cannot be denied as research has showed that, “adding a single prosecution eyewitness to a murder trial summary increased the percentage of mock jurors’ guilty verdicts from 18 to 72” (Leippe, Manion, & Romanczyk, p. 182, 1992). In the article discussed here, researchers will look into various age groups to see if age has an effect on the credibility of eyewitness testimonies while attempting to discern what certain cues build upon such credibility.

Researcher Elizabeth Loftus, encapsulated the reliability of human memory and the notion about the inaccuracy of eyewitness accounts. She hypothesized that if eyewitnesses are asked questions with false presuppositions, the erroneous information will be incorporated into the witness’s memory and alter the memory of the witnessed event.

Factors such as misinformation and eyewitness talk can easily affect the memory of eyewitnesses and therefore affect their testimony_. Evidence which is usually provided during eyewitness memory reports helps to determine the guilt or innocence of a perpetrator in a criminal proceeding_. With the help of many basic psychological and neuroscience studies, it has been indicated that because memory is a reconstructive process it is likely to be influenced and vulnerable to change and misinformation_. Due to memory being vulnerable, any minor memory misrepresentation can have severe consequences when used in the courtroom_. Memory errors when regarding the identification of a perpetrator of a specific crime has been focused on during research

Previous research has provided evidence that there is a rather frequent occurrence of false identifications of innocent people in line-ups (Lindsay, Wells, Rumpel, & Campbell, 1981). Eyewitness memories are often distorted by inaccurate memories of how accurate their original identification was (Wells & Bradfield, 1998). Often the eyewitness will be unsure at the time of the line-up identification, but when recalling the identification process they often give a confident positive response (Wells & Bradfield, 1998). A confirming-feedback comment can have a pronounced effect on the reconstructing of the witnessing and identification process. The comment may not only inflate recollections but also have an impact on the eyewitness confidence (Wells

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

The “Eyewitness Testimony” by Elizabeth F. Loftus is a seminal article that tests the reliability of an eyewitness’s memory in a legal context. Loftus explores how different factors such as suggestion, misinformation, and memory distortion can affect the accuracy of an eyewitness’s testimony in court. By doing this test, you will see how accurate the statements are and how often they might lead to wrongful convictions. This article starts by bringing attention to the crucial role that eyewitness testimony plays in the criminal justice system. Juries often put a great amount of faith in eyewitnesses’ testimonies, believing that their statements are one of the most reliable sources of evidence in a trial.

A study done in 2005 showed that when 30 statements regarding eyewitness issues, jurors disagreed with memory experts in 87% of the issues, and judges disagreed with 60% of the issues (Benton et al. 117). Therefore, even though jurors and judges agreed with memory experts on more statements regarding “memory myths” than did jurors, their understanding of these memory myths still greatly deviated from memory experts; which shows the uninformative nature of juror and the

Although eyewitness testimony can be significant when displaying it to a judge or a jury, years of supportive social science research has sustained that eyewitness identification is often unreliable. As the Innocence Project website illustrates, studies show that the human mind is nowhere near like a ‘tape recorder’ and we as humans do not record events exactly as we see them. Instead, witness recollection is just like any other evidence at a crime scene and must be preserved carefully and sensibly retrieved or it can be considered as contaminated.

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.

The aim of Loftus and Palmer’s study was to investigate how language can be used to manipulate or distort one’s memory in an eyewitness testimony.

Despite thorough research supporting the dangers of eyewitness testimony, and the constant press by the American Psychological Association (APA) and different law, psychology, and forensics experts, there are no national guidelines conducting how law enforcement agencies gather eyewitness identifications. In an APA brief, suggested by researchers and the Innocence Project, sent to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, it discussed how juries often don’t understand the factors that can influence a witness’ ability to accurately identify a suspect. Such factors include how much stress a witness is under,

The article, When I Witnesses Talk, covers the issue of eyewitness testimonies and their reliability with memory conformity. Often when two people experience the same event they both have very different recollections of the occurrence. One event within the journal article incorporates the murder of Jill Dando, within this investigation there was a lineup where 16 witnesses were asked to identify the suspect, where only 1 of the 16 witnesses recognized him. The police conducted a second lineup where for example one witness stated that they were 95% sure that the suspect that they identified was at the scene of the crime, yet in the original lineup that person was unable to identify anyone from the lineup. One key piece of information was discovered,

In this paper I’m going to discuss the psychological issues that are used in prosecutors cases such as eyewitness identification, issues that have led to the wrongful convictions of defendants, and what is done to overturn these wrongful convictions. I will also start by defining eyewitness identification. Eyewitness identification is a person whose identification by sight of another person may be relevant in a criminal proceeding. (GS_15A-284.52.)

In 1907, Hugo Munsterberg published ‘On the Witness Stand’, in which he questioned the reliability of eyewitness identification. When Yale Law professor Edwin Borchard studied 65 wrongful convictions for his pioneering 1932 book, ‘Convicting the Innocent’, he found that eyewitness misidentification was the leading contributing factor of wrongful convictions. Research illustrates that the human mind is not like a tape recorder; we neither record events exactly as we see them, nor recall them like a tape that has been rewound. In eyewitness identifications, witness memory is impacted by a variety of factors that occur from the time of the crime onwards, and their memories can be easily contaminated. This is linked with the concept of ‘false memories’ they are events recalled by a witness that did not actually happen.