Eyewitness Identification And Eyewitness Fingerprints

Information is the lifeblood of a criminal investigation. The ability of investigators to obtain useful and accurate information from eyewitnesses of crimes is crucial to effective law enforcement, yet full and accurate recall is difficult to achieve (Stewart, 1985). Such elicitation of complete and accurate recall from people is important in many aspects of life; specifically, eyewitness recall may determine whether a case is solved. Principle advocates of the cognitive interview (Fisher, Geiselman, Holland & MacKinnon,

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.

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 misidentification can pose a serious threat in forensic evidence. Eye witness testimony can easily be tampered with due to words or phrases used. Bias is a major issue in identification especially if the police officer uses suggestive tones to portray whom they believe is the suspect. Some witnesses will change their opinion when they hear new information of the suspect. A study has shown that words can play a major impact in the witness' mind and cause them to recall false information. False information can also stem from human memory, age, distance, and how long it took before a witness could recall the information. It has been shown that due to the confidence that a witness may have, it could impact the court systems' reliability on the witness; however, there are several solutions that can be done to prevent misidentification in the court of law. Some examples that can be done are blind administration, lineup composition, instructions, confidence statements, and

Eyewitnesses are critical to the criminal justice system, but there have been issues involving eyewitness testimonies, which occasionally cause them to be seen as unreliable. According to innocenceproject.org, 72% of DNA exoneration cases in the United States have resulted from eyewitness misidentification. This is concerning because in a study by Benton, Ross, Bradshaw, Thomas, and Bradshaw (2005), they examined jurors, judges and law enforcement’s knowledge about eyewitness issues. They found that those involved in the legal system are still very unaware of eyewitness memory research, and the reasons behind why eyewitnesses may or may not be considered reliable. There needs to be a way to increase reliability so that eyewitnesses are able to accurately recognize perpetrators and other important information to put the guilty people away, and to keep the innocent people free.

Eyewitness identifications is a noteworthy topic. Victims see their attackers from time to time, but

Identification responses, such as correct identifications and false or incorrect identifications, vary depending on whether the line-up is sequential or simultaneous (Flowe, 2011). Simultaneous line-ups are widely used and considered the norm. However, there has been an increased use of sequential line-ups (Wright, 2007). In sequential line-ups, eyewitnesses view the line-up one at a time; the procedure ends once the eyewitness has identified someone (Wright, 2007). According to Flowe, people spend longer analysing faces in a sequential line-up than in a simultaneous one, suggesting that participants are more thorough. Furthermore, Lindsay and Wells (1985) suggest that the sequential presentation of a line-up would encourage the use of absolute judgements. Absolute judgements refer to when witness make positive identifications by contrasting the present line-up to their memory. In contrast, in a simultaneous line-up, people tend to use relative judgements (Wells, 1984). The eyewitness views, and is asked to identify, the suspect amongst non-suspects simultaneously. In this line-up procedure, participants tend to compare the people present in the line-up against each other to determine which resembles the suspect the most in relation to other members of the line-up; which is making a relative judgement (Wells, 1984). According to Wells et al. (1998) certain line-up procedures

According to the New York Times (2011), the police line-ups have changed due to so many wrongful convictions based on this identification process for suspects. Some studies as far back as 2006 show that the sequential line-up process is more efficient by presenting one photo at a time to the witness. Even more studies support the double-blind line-up process because it reduced mistaken identifications in the field.

The present study examined optimising criminal line-up presentation methods using absolute judgement without a criterion shift. It was expected that in the sequential line-up there would be fewer hits and false alarms than in the simultaneous line-up, and it was predicted that by presenting faces sequentially but with only one response would reduce false alarms but not the hit rate. Contrary to previous research, neither hypothesis was supported.

Law enforcement agencies have changed in practice on how lineups, show-ups, and photographic arrays are conducted; considering, it may lead to defense attorneys arguing to juries that non-sequential lineup IDs are less reliable than sequential lineups. (Wasberg, 2009) While working criminal courts, in Shelby County, TN, I have witness preliminary hearings whereas a defendant changed their appearances just before coming to 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.

The witness is not visible to those in the lineup. The witness is asked to identify which, if any, of the individuals committed the crime. A lineup places greater demands on the memory of the witness than does a viewing of a single suspect, and is believed to reduce the chances of a false identification. For example, assume a witness saw a man with a beard and a cap run across an alley near a crime scene. If the police show this witness one man who has a beard and a cap, the witness might make a positive identification. If they instead show the witness several men with a beard and a cap, the witness must make a more detailed identification and may not identify the same man. Identification procedure have challenges on four primary grounds ,

They found that in sequential line-ups, witnesses are more conservative and less biased when making decisions. However, they suggest that this advantage does not always produce higher accuracy rates. Similarly, Meissner, Tredoux, Parker, and Maclin (2005) argued that sequential line-ups do not enhance accuracy; rather, witnesses are more conservative in their decision-making. This could explain why sequential line-ups have lower rates of correct identifications in target-present line-ups and false identifications in target-absent

Two hypotheses were presented in this article. Both of them focus on how unfair lineups are more likely to cause witnesses to make false accusations about who actually committed the crime. Does the lineup cause subjects to