Eyewitness Testimony In Court Cases

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.

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.

During an eyewitness Testimony, a person gives a statement on an event they have witnessed and have to identify the perpetrator or details from the crime scene. (McLeod, 2009) When a

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

Eyewitness testimony is one of the most powerful forms of evidence in a trial. It may be inaccurate comes about due to an eyewitness's memory being influenced by things that they might hear or see after the crime occurred, and the better way to show eyewitness lineups is someone who doesn’t know anything including the detectives, for example: a double-blind scientific experiment—neither the witness nor the presiding officer should know in advance whether the suspect is in the lineup. Double-blinding is central to the scientific method because it minimizes the risk that experimenters might inadvertently bias the outcome of their research, finding only what they expected to find. But it leaves the question of exactly how police departments should

In their study, Mori and Mori (2008) investigated the social influences on the eyewitness testimony in the form of two experiments. Humans can make mistakes in terms of making judgements about certain situations. These types of judgements can be learned behavior. The purpose of this study is to identify how difference of opinions can be created about the same situation. The main hypothesis of this experiment is that, two witnesses observing the same crime will have different perspectives (Mori & Mori, 2008). Many similar experiments have been conducted by several researchers to investigate this factor. In a study conducted by Kanematsu et al. (1996/2003), thirty pairs of undergraduate students observed a scenario depicting a crime.

Eyewitness testimony plays a huge role in the courtroom for juries. There are several factors that should be taken into account when evaluating the accuracy of testimony of eyewitnesses; if the witness was able to see the offender, the level of the witness’s attention, how accurately the witness described the offender, the witness’s confidence, and the amount of time between seeing the crime and testifying against the perpetrator (Costanzo & Krauss, 2015, p. 142). It’s important to consider if the witness was able to actually see the offender. The level of attention the witness had should also be considered. The witnesses’

Eyewitness testimony is not a reliable source of honest information for a number of serious yet often overlooked

Eyewitness testimony is the evidence given by someone who has actually seen something occur, and can sometimes be very fallible. People will provide an interviewer with information to fit their own story. A lot of the time constructive memory is what is given. Many people do not recall what exactly happened so they fill in the blanks of the story with what they think might have happened.Interview EvaluationIn the first experiment students were split up into five groups and were asked at what speed did the cars come in contact. The other ways the question was asked was how fast were the cars going when they bumped, hit, collided, and smashed (Loftus, 2007). In the end, the students who were asked the question at what speed were the vehicles going when they came in contact replied with a speed much lower than the students asked at what speed were they vehicles going with they smashed into each other.

During trials, there would be five types of evidence that was admitted. For instance, they would recite the Lord’s Prayer, and during this test, the girls were known to scream and roll on the floor creating a distraction and the accused would usually mess up the prayer. Physical evidence, like birthmarks, warts, moles, etc. were also used since they were seen as possible ways for Satan to enter the body. Witness testimony was also considered. If someone accused another person of the misfortune of witchcraft, the accused person might get a conviction.

Eyewitness testimony often serves as direct evidence and has strong influences on juries during trial. While these testimonies are invaluable there has been a lot DNA exoneration that shows the flaws in eyewitness identification, leading to false convictions. A pre-trial identification is important in establishing eyewitness testimony. There are multiple types of identification used to make a positive ID, though lineups and showing photos are used the most. Unfortunately, misidentifications will continue to happen and juries will continue to give them too much weight because of the general public’s belief in their accuracy.

The author of the article states that the lack of direct focus on reliability may be one factor contributing to the rise of expert evidence in areas; if concerns about the design of a line-up or flaws in an identification procedure or interrogation rarely lead to its outright exclusion, these same concerns provide part of the justification for permitting expert testimony. The author also states that we would like to make use of eyewitness identifications and confessions in court whenever they are likely to be adequately reliable. She goes on to give her thoughts about how we can better educate judges and juries on

Eyewitness testimonies and identifications are often considered controversial and unreliable sources of information due to the many misinformation effects that may pose a threat to the recall of a person’s original memory. The discrepancies between original memories and later recalled memories—sometimes referred to as errors of commission, may be the result of a variety of psychological phenomena. Past research points to the possibility that these discrepancies may be caused by cognitive errors known as memory impairment, misinformation acceptance, misinformation interference, or the idea that the original memory was never encoded, and thus cannot be recalled. Although there is no single explanation to prove why false memories are sometimes

Eyewitness memory has always been an essential aspect of any trial. The perpetrator’s fate relies on the ability of the witness to accurately identify the person who committed the crime, and the events that occurred. People like to think that their memory can serve like a video camera that will record the events. Then, when they need to recall it, they can simply play it back to remember each detail. However, psychologists have found that this is simply not true. Remembering is found to be an act of putting a puzzle together, rather than a video recording of the events. In remembering, people are reconstructing memories. When doing this, an investigator with leading questions can modify events because the memory fragments can be combined with

This lecture is about criminal trials and the memory of the eye witness in the court. Researchers have found that, memory of the eye witness may change, when they are subjected with new items at the time of trials. So, they have suggested that eye witness should not be taken as major evidence in the