Eyewitness Testimony: Guilty Or Innocent

The human mind can be a very important tool, but it can also be highly flawed. The mind can remember an extensive amount of information. However, it can make people think things happened that never truly happened. Eyewitness testimony has always played an important role as evidence in the courts system. Juries on a trial tend to believe eyewitness testimony over any other evidence, even if other evidence differs from the eyewitness testimony. When little other evidence is presented, eyewitness testimony tends to be the primary focus. Many wrongful convictions have occurred due to these false eyewitness statements. According to George Vallas, in “A survey of Federal and State Standards for the Admission of Expert Testimony on the

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.

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.

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.

In eyewitness identification, in criminal law, evidence is received from a witness "who has actually seen an event and can so testify in court.” (Law.com Legal Online Dictionary) While this could be an important piece of the investigation, it can never take the place of DNA, or forensic evidence. Unfortunately, that happens all too much, with our overburdened legal and criminal justice systems. “Eyewitness misidentification is widely recognized as the leading cause of wrongful conviction in the U.S., accounting for more wrongful convictions than all other cause combined.” (Boston College Journal of Law and Social Justice, Volume 35:1, p.2) While we have been aware of this problem for many years, innocent people are still being convicted daily. Too many people

Reveal Topic: Eyewitness identification Credibility: According to californiainnocenceproject.org one huge factor in wrongful convictions is

One third of these overturned cases rested on the testimony of two or more mistaken eyewitnesses” (SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN). While some prosecutors and judges are beginning to rely less heavily on eyewitness testimonies, still every year, more than 75,000 eyewitnesses identify criminal suspects in the U.S., and studies suggest that as many as a third of them are wrong ( THE

Quick! Look over there something suspicious is happening! Just a little later, you’re being called into court to testify on the event. But, what can you remember and what is your mind playing tricks? Based on the facts below, one can come to the conclusion that, eyewitnesses should not be allowed to testify in court because witness often can’t correctly remember the event and, there is no way to test the validity of statements. This can throw off the whole trial. One can come to this conclusion because; witnesses can’t remember, there is no way to test validity, the human brain shifts things around, witnesses often put personal input, witnesses statements have a lot of weight, outside influences affect testimonies, and innocent people are often

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.

More people are found innocent of crimes they did not commit and are convicted of based on faulty eyewitness testimony. Several studies have shown that eyewitness testimony is the least liable thing for evidence yet, it is the most frequently used in convicting innocent people. A study was conducted in a park where somebody stole a purse and ran, several people in the park at the time of the study and when it was time to collect eyewitness statements no two statements were alike even though they all saw the same thing happen.

This paper examines six research articles that include research conducted on both eyewitness testimony and plea bargaining, while also reviewing a dataset from a study conducted on both issues. The main questions addressed here are whether or not eyewitness testimony affects court proceedings as a whole and how eyewitness testimony affects the outcome of the plea bargaining process. Each article covered presents different opinions and ideas on this topic, offering a non-biased overview on the matter at hand. While these articles may present different ideas the general definitions as to what eyewitness testimony consists of, along with what a plea bargain is remains consistent. The dataset that is reviewed was pulled from Pezdek’s study, “Influence

Like many who are facing criminal charges in Wisconsin, an eyewitness statement may have led to your arrest. This type of testimony has long been considered one of the most reliable sources of evidence, however, research has shown that this is not necessarily true. In fact, misidentifications by eyewitnesses contributed to more than 70 percent of the wrongful convictions that were later overturned through eyewitness testimony, according to the Innocence Project. At the Rose & Rose law firm, people often ask us about the impact of eyewitness testimony on criminal trials. In this post, we will discuss the factors that may affect the accuracy of eyewitness identifications.

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

Cases across America have been solved using the art of Eyewitness and a simple line up of potential suspects. When human beings rely on memory to solve cases, often times the people on the other side end up being wrongly convicted. In the video, we take