Eyewitness Flaws

Despite the efforts of the courts and law enforcement agencies to improve the handling of eyewitness testimony, misidentifications continue to be a major contributing factor to false convictions. The Innocence Project is a national litigation and public policy organization that has been dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing. Since their inception in 1992, they have helped overturn 311 wrongful convictions in the United States, as of the date of this paper. Of those 311 cases, they have determined that misidentification has contributed to approximately 73% of those wrongful convictions ("The Innocence Project"). That is an extremely high percentage, and something needs to be done about this.

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

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.

An eyewitness testimony is a proceeding whereby the witness of a crime will stand in court and recall the events which they perceived and is involved in the identification of the perpetrator (Laney & Loftus, n.d.). Eyewitnesses testimonies have become a staple for many legal proceedings and is often taken as hard evidence for a crime which someone has committed. However, there has been a staggering number of innocent people who have been convicted of a crime based on eyewitness testimonies. This is what led to the creation of the Innocence Project whose mission is to use DNA evidence to free wrongly convicted individuals ("About - Innocence Project," n.d.). This essay will explore some of the reasons behind mistaken eyewitness testimonies,

Research studies in relation to eyewitness testimony have been going on for hundreds of years. A study done in 1999 by Marcus D. Durham and Francis C. Dane at Mercer University, looked at ways to assess prospective jurors’ knowledge of the factors that may influence eyewitness behavior. Those factors include topics such as race, memory processes, age, and stress. In addition, the researchers “compared students’

Over the past few years, a group of people have been exonerated through DNA testing and most of them have been wrongfully convicted partially due to eyewitness misidentification. The role that mistaken eyewitness identifications have played in such convictions has led to huge efforts to seek ways in reducing these errors (Wells, Steblay & Dysart, 2001).

As once said by Ben Whishaw, “the criminal justice system, like any system designed by human beings, clearly has its flaws.” This quote is incredibly true for the United States justice system. However, the Innocence Project is dedicated to reforming this clearly flawed system that has wrongfully convicted thousands of individuals. Furthermore, too much weight is placed on eyewitnesses, misidentification, false confessions, and informants. The most flawed evidence used in a trial to convict an individual is eyewitness testimony.

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

Revealing the truth of the wicked eye, the certainty behind eye witness identification will not always remain hidden. Many innocent individuals have been wrongfully convicted on account of illegitimate witness statements and suspect identification. Faulty eye witnesses have been deemed the leading cause of wrongful convictions. Of the first 250 DNA exonerations in the United States, 190 of them appear to have involved mistaken identity (Benforado, 2015, p. 112). To resolve the problem of wrongful imprisonment due to false witness statements, the governors of each state should ensure that law enforcement enforce recording of witness testimonies in its entirety to verify factuality. In addition, the jurors should be informed on erroneous witness

A defendant’s guilt is often determined in a single moment of fleeting emotion. A pointed finger, accompanied by the solidifying eyewitness statement “He’s the one!” is enough for a jury to make its final decision in a court case. Although it is understandable, when faced opposite of the individual creating the accusation, to place one’s belief in the accusation made, the credibility of the eyewitness’s account of events are rarely taken into consideration. Psychologists have taken part in research that recognizes the unreliable nature of eyewitness statements used to determine guilt because of the instability of long term memory acquisition and because of this, eyewitness accounts of situations should not be used before a jury in court.

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.

For centuries, even before the rise of modern law and judicial practices, eyewitness testimony has been a crucial part in reaching verdicts in court. The opinions and observations of bystanders or active participants in a crime scene are often considered to be very valuable in determining the guilt or innocence of accused individuals. However, there has been a large amount of scrutiny in the law world concerning both misappropriated and untrue testimonies administered in courts of law. Although the testimony of individuals can simply be misinterpreted or forgotten due to a variety of reasons, eyewitnesses also provide information that can purposefully incriminate or exonerate a defendant. Ultimately, despite its benefit in putting deserving persons behind bars, the use of eyewitness testimony can absolutely be a dangerous monster for the innocently accused in different scenarios.

It has been proven too unreliable and therefore should not hold the fate of a potentially innocent person's life.The first reason is that eyewitness testimony has sent over three hundred innocent people to jail over the last three decades. One such case involved an innocent man man Titus who was wrongly charged and sentenced to jail for an account of rape that he had not committed. The victim wrongly declared him guilty due to false memories, as later detective work set him free. Court's view testimony as solid evidence because of a lack of understanding best described by Elizabeth Loftus as believing memory works like a video recorder. In reality memory works like a fallible wikipedia page. Our minds are subject to post event information changing what we think we can remember. This problem is being amplified by malpractice of psychotherapy, that has people believing sometimes ridiculous stories to be repressed memories. Even if you limit your personal consumption of multiple types of media, you are still subject to experiencing false memories. The total composite of all of these factors show that eyewitness should not be taken at face value in a court of law in the United States. It is harmfull to use outdated means of convicting defendants. We are living in the age of advanced forensic evidence, widespread security camera coverage and easy accessibility to personal video and audio devices. It

I would start off by saying you're relying on the accuracy of the human mind. At this point, you are making a big mistake because the eyewitness may not remember or recall everything they see. In fact, you cannot always rely on eyewitness testimony because a witness mind can go through misattribution, which causes the eyewitness to confuse the source of information. They might also go through suggestibility, which typically happens through police interviewing eyewitness causing them to create false memories with the help of the police officer. They could even have a bias toward my defendant causing them to come up with fake memories based on feelings and views they have. Also, an eyewitness may be stress, frustrated, and nervous which could