False Convictions And Eyewitness Identification

e Report, for Resource Utilisation, Witness Accuracy and Psychological Methods for Detection and Successful Prosecution.

The human mind is not like a tape recorder obviously, it does not record events exactly as seen in the moment of a crime, and neither can the events be recalled precisely like a tape that can rewind back in time. Therefore, making eyewitness identification inaccurate. For example, in the case of a

On the other hand, there are many situations where criminals go free because eyewitnesses were unable to identify them. With Dr. Brewer he had a different idea knowing that strong memory traces are easier to access than weak and mistaken ones, which is why he only gives his witnesses two seconds to make up their minds. Once they make up their mind he also asks them to estimate how confident they are about the suspects they identified, rather than insisting on a simple yes or no answer. With this version of the lineup he had a large boost in accuracy and the eyewitness performance ranged from 21%-66%. Dr. brewer learned that when it comes to the human mind that more discussion is often dangerous. Instead of simply evaluating our familiarity with a suspect’s face, we begin searching for clues and guidance. Sometimes this involves picking the person who looks the most suspicious, even if we’ve never seen him before, or being persuaded by the indirect hints of police officers and lawyers. As a result, we talk ourselves into having a memory that doesn’t actually exist. (Jonah Lehrer

The cognitive interview increases the credibility of eyewitness testimony by decreasing memory error and confabulations.

Psychological research shows that eyewitness testimony is not always accurate; therefore it should not be used in the criminal justice system. Discuss.

The human mind is not like a tape recorder obviously, it does not record events exactly as seen in the moment of a crime, and neither can the events be recalled precisely like a tape that can rewind back in time. Therefore, making eyewitness identification inaccurate. For example, in the case of a

Police interrogate suspects on a daily basis, but how can they tell if the confession is real? We have all heard, at one time or another of someone confessing to a crime they didn’t commit. Then your next thought is “I would never confess to something I didn’t do”. The only way you can be a 100% sure of that is if you have been through an interrogation before. This paper is going to define “confession” and tell how an innocent person will confesses to a crime they didn’t commit. This paper will also show the history of interrogations.

Before the experiment was conducted previous research was studied to ensure consecutive results throughout their own trials. This research revealed that most of the sociological world has ignored the issue of exoneration and when the criminology section was reviewed, little interest was shown on the topic. The few studies found in the criminology section shared some of the same findings as later expressed in the article. Mainly that wrongful convictions are due mostly to faulty eyewitness’s testimony, perjury and if the person was convicted of a prior crime. However, no literature that focused on sociological variables including race,

However eyewitness misidentification leads to more wrongful convictions than any other evidence being that it plays a role in 70 percent of cases overturned through DNA testing (Grimsley, 2013). There are multiple factors as to why eyewitness identification is often inaccurate, one reason being that it relies heavily on memory which involves three processes: encoding, storage and retrieval, all of which are susceptible to errors (Costanzo and Krauss, 2014). There are other factors that can affect one's memory such as unconscious transference (e.g. when you unintentionally replace someone's face with what one you may have seen on television, etc.), suggestive or leading comments (i.e. administrators providing cues to eyewitness about which person to pick at a lineup), cross-race effect (cross-race bias) (i.e. we often misidentify others of a different race than our own race), and so forth (Costanzo and Krauss, 2014). Despite that eyewitness identification is often inaccurate, it is still commonly used within the criminal justice system. This has affected mostly Africans-Americans negatively being that they most often fall victim to eyewitness misidentification. This is shown in a study done by Scheck, Neufeld, and Dwyer (2000) where they studied eyewitness

In recent years, there have been multiple high-profile cases of people being exonerated, often by DNA testing, after giving a false confession to a crime they did not commit. People who often fall into this trap are juveniles or those with a diminished mental capacity (Redlich, 2009). DNA testing has helped many innocent people that gave false confessions be free again. This trend brings up the question of how were they able to give a false confession.

Your discussion was a great read! I agree with the points that you included in your discussion referencing the Ronald Cotton case and that misidentifications are unfair to the innocent. The decisions made in a court room can truly impact an innocent individual's life. Harsh penalties and sentences can truly affect the individual that was imprisoned for being chosen by the victim. Victim's generally have a high level of confidence when they are attempting to recall what they have experienced; however taking into consideration that our memory is not a video tape recorder and that it can fill in any gaps in memory with evidence or construct it to what "seems" logical. Our memory still holds valuable information that can play a

The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony Part 1 - How reliable is Eyewitness testimony? The Reconstructive nature of memory - Schemas and Stereotypes The reconstructive nature of memory is related to the schema theory. A schema is a package of memory that is organized and developed throughout our lives.

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.

Word count: 807 Eyewitness testimony is an account given by a person who was present at an event for example a robbery and they give a recollection of the event in front of the court of law. The testimony can include a description of the perpetrators, details of the crime scene and other factors which could help determine the defendant’s guilt or innocence. An eyewitness testimony is relevant in the criminal justice system because it’s one of the main forms of evidence used in court. Eyewitness testimony can be unreliable; an example of this could be discussion by witnesses which will be discussed later on the essay. There are measures that the Criminal Justice system (CJS) can put in place to increase the reliability of the testimony in turn

A false memory is simply a memory that did not occur. An actual experience can become distorted as best illustrated by the Cog Lab experiment on false memories accessed through Argosy University. The experiment is outlined as follows: a participant is given a list of words that are highly relative in nature at a rate of about one word every 2 seconds. At the finish of the given list, the participant is then shown a list of words in which he or she is to recall the words from the original list. A special distractor is inserted to the list, and this word, although highly relative in nature, was not in the original list. For example, the