Eyewitness Testimony Sociology

Eyewitness testimony has been used for many centuries and continues to be a part of our criminal justice system. Although, there has been many controversy debates on whether to allow the continuation of these testimonies in court, and allow it to be used as evidence. Eyewitness testimony can either be harmful or useful for an individual. We must fully analysis and see what certain factors (psychological, and age wise) come into the equation before coming up with final conclusions.

Eyewitness testimony has long been viewed as important evidence in court cases. The general population believes eyewitness identification more than any other evidence, even if the witness account is conflicting with the other evidence presented. Studies show that eyewitness testimony is unreliable, and yet it is still considered the most important form of evidence. People think that if a person says they saw something then it must have happened. Currently there are no universal guidelines on how to obtain and present such evidence. The purpose of this paper is to explain why eyewitness testimony is unreliable, and discuss the proposed guidelines on how law enforcement agencies should gather identifications, as well how

Eyewitness evidence has always been considering critical information when it comes to court trials and convictions. But how reliable are eyewitnesses? Scientific research has shown that eyewitness’s memories are often not accurate or reliable. Human memory is very malleable and is easily changed by suggestion. Relying on eyewitness evidence instead of scientific data often leads to wrongful convictions. Scientific evidence is much more reliable, and should be more important in court cases than eyewitness evidence.

The concepts that are covered in the experiment: “Testing the Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony” are how the memory part of your brain works. Also, the colors that help memorization is also included in this experiment.Another thing that is covered in this experiment is whether or not someone is able to regurgitate information back after 20 minutes. Another thing that is covered in this experiment is the types of memory disorders. Tips on how to keep a healthy memory are also included. Also, the steps to creating a new piece of memory is also covered in this experiment. Another thing that is included in the experiment is the timeline as to how we know memory today got there.

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.

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

The Eyewitness testimony has been used for a long time as evidence in a crime scene. Many psychologists tried to answer the question if the eyewitness testimony is correct and true all the time or not. This research study done by STARR (2012) addresses that eyewitness memory can be changed depends on the satiation and what kind of question that we ask the eyewitness during the police investigations or in the court room. While STARR’s article raises timely and important issue, he included a good scientific research explaining how false eyewitness could be.

There are many different factors that play a part in the increased chance of a witness correctly identifying a suspect. Such factors should be brought to the attention of the jury and the judge to help in properly assessing whether a witness is correctly identifying a suspect. A study by Magnussen, Melinder, Stridbeck, & Raja (2010) found that of the three different types of people: judge, jury, and general public, that for the most part all where fairly ill-informed on the reliability of eyewitness testimony with judges having the most. Judges only had about an 8% difference in knowledge when compared to jurors. With this information it is very clear that education on the reliability of eyewitness testimony needs to become more of a general knowledge information for the everyone, especially people who are involved in upholding the law. Another factor to look into when evaluating the accuracy eyewitness testimony is the role that memory plays. Memory is divided into three processes: perceiving, remembering, and recalling information (Simmonsen, 2013). There is plenty of room in all three of those stages to forget or falsely remember something. Some factors that play a part when a person perceives an event is the amount of time they are exposed to the event and the suspect. A study conducted by Horry, Halford, Brewer, Milne, & Bull. (2014) found that witnesses were increasingly more likely to correctly identify a suspect if they had been exposed to the suspect for sixty

Research shows that jurors place more value on eyewitness testimony than any other important form of evidence, including DNA. (Anderson, T. M.,2015). More often than we might think, the eyewitness testimony is false, ultimately leading to false convictions, and possibly the death of an innocent person. According to the Innocence Project (2014), inaccurate eyewitness testimonies and identifications make up about 72% of the current 329 wrongful convictions that have been later overturned with DNA evidence. Thankfully, as technology advances, this issue has been put in the limelight with a large number of eyewitness conviction cases being exonerated by DNA evidence. The Innocence Project in New York City advocates DNA testing to exonerate wrongfully convicted people. Of a list of 310 exonerated individuals (as of July 8th, 2013), they were typically convicted on the basis of eyewitness testimony and spent an average of 13.6 years in confinement before being released. This number is only a small portion of the large number of wrongful convictions that occur because DNA evidence is not available in all cases. (Lacy, J. W., & Stark, C. E. 2013). Science has come such a long way with allowing us to get the truth through DNA and because it shows certainty, it should be all that is considered when presenting a case to jurors and finalizing a verdict.

Given the nickname “Ford Heights Four” the wrongful conviction of Kenneth Adams, along with Verneal Jimmerson, Dennis Wiliams, and Willie Rainge, was for the shooting of a recently engaged couple and gang-raping the female. In 1978, the couple had been abducted from a gas station close to where the man worked. They were found later in Ford Heights, Chicago, Pinning these four men with accusations of committing a crime. The four men then became suspects for the crime due to a false tip the police had received. Later the four men were brought into be questioned, along with Adam’s girlfriend, Paula Gray. At the time of the crime she could not read or write.

As research shows, eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in 72% of convictions overturned through DNA testing. In this paper, I am going to revisit two cases that were affected by this striking procedure of eyewitness misidentification, efforts currently being made to address this problem, and my personal recommendations to minimize cases surrounding the topic illustrated in this paper.

There have been many innocent people wrongfully convicted due to eyewitness confessions in court. Eyewitness memory is one of the oldest forms of evidence used and has been a powerful evidence for judges. Although judges see this information credible, studies have shown that eyewitness memory is not reliable in courts and is the leading cause of wrongful convictions.

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.

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).

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