In Chapter thirteen, naming the law of governing identification evidence is introduced. It begins with the evidence needed for criminal convictions. It states that to convict a person of a crime, the government must be able to prove it. The government must prove that the crime the person is charged with did indeed happen. The government must also be able to prove that the defendant was committed or was a party to the crime charged. The evidence can either be direct or circumstantial. Direct evidence is evidence that stands on its own to prove an alleged fact, such as a testimony of a witness who specifically says he or she saw a defendant pointing a gun at a victim during a robbery. This means that the defendant must be identified in some sort …show more content…
When eyewitness identification evidence is presented, defense lawyers can cross examine the ID witnesses, and can argue in summation as to factors causing doubts in the precision of the identification. It is important that investigating officers have the witnesses give them a thorough detailed description of the offender as possible, as well as, having the description as soon as it is available after the crime is reported. In the cause, Neil v. Biggers case, the respondent was convicted of rape on evidence from the victim’s visual and voice identification of the respondent at a station house show up that occurred seven months after the rape. The victim, who has been in the presence of her assailant a considerable amount of time and had directly observed him indoors and under a full moon outdoors, testified that she had absolutely no doubt the respondent was her attacker. Before the show up where the victim identified her assailant, she had not made any identification of others present in previous show ups, lineups, or through pictures. The court held that the fact that the show up was considered suggestive and did not make the identification inadmissible under the due process clause. Therefore, her testimony was considered reliable. I personally agree with determining her testimony reliable but, I must also say this is based mostly on bias and not an evidential opinion. I believe that when a person …show more content…
Computers are electronic devices for storing and processing data and that is why they are a rich place for law enforcement to search for criminal activity. There is a common expectation of privacy when it comes to someone’s personal computer, which is why the fourth amendment applies to any search of a computer. When obtaining evidence from other personal electronic devices there must be a search warrant in place. Obtaining evidence from the Internet or cyber evidence includes crimes against children, abductions, threats, abductions, and pornography. Identity theft and computer hacking crimes also fall under this category. There are different types of search warrants; there is daytime, nighttime, no knock/unannounced, anticipatory, sneak and peek, etc. Wiretapping allows the practice of connecting a listening device to a telephone line to secretly monitor a conversation. Electronic surveillance is a way of monitoring a home, business, or individual using a variety of devices. Three techniques of electronic surveillance that are available to law enforcement agencies are pen registers, trap and trace devices, and interception of the content of the message. There are some situations where a court order was not required like overheard conversations, statements made to undercover officers, and tape recordings
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.
According to “The Science Behind Eyewitness Identification Reform” there are two main variables that affect eyewitness testimonies “Estimator variables: are those that cannot be controlled by the criminal justice system. They include simple factors like the lighting when the crime took place or the distance from which the witness saw the perpetrator, and the degree of stress or trauma a witness experienced while seeing the perpetrator” and “System variables: are those that the criminal justice system can and should control. They include all of the ways that law enforcement agencies retrieve and record witness memory, such as lineups, photo arrays, and other identification procedures”. Eyewitness misidentification has led to 75% of false convictions that were overruled by modern DNA testing according to “The Innocence
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
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
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.
When it comes to critiquing how the identification information was obtained, several things are considered unreliable. The first mistake of the use of eyewitness testimonies in the Thompson & Cotton case was Jennifer was in a state of shock when identifying her assailant. Jennifer was in a deep slumber as a stranger at knifepoint awakened her causing adrenaline rush and high stress as she was fearing for her life. “My body was terrified although my mind hadn’t caught up yet” (Cannino et al. 12). This type of state of mind causes the brain to cloud its judgment when high stress occurs during the process of identifying a criminal. Although, Jennifer was able to study her attacker to the best ability possible, stress can alter the memory process clouding exact description especially held at knifepoint.
The Salem witch trials took place in Salem, Massachusetts and began around spring of 1692 (History). They started when a group of young Puritan girls believed that they were possessed by the devil, and they accused many innocent people of witchcraft. This lead to trials being held, and almost always would the witch be deemed guilty. During this time period, they would use various forms of evidence to prove someone guilty that are not seen today, and a good example of this is in The Wonders of the Invisible World written by Cotton Mather. In their trials they would strange methods of evidence to prove a person guilty, and obviously there is no way that this is seen in our modern society today.
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
The pretrial identification is vital in gathering evidence from a witness. In any criminal case lineups, showups, and array photo are inadmissible when conducted without a counsel present, in which the suspect due process right are denied. Nevertheless, unnecessarily suggestive are present during identification procedure. In doing so, misidentification decision has occurred, then the court will conduct an investigation to examine the circumstance. For example, during lineups, an individual must be presented among another suspect without shedding light upon the defendant. The pretrial identification is too suggestive to guilt when the witness automatically acknowledges the defendant during lineups because of the attire that was worn that fix
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.
It is common to find the peripheral parts of the body, for example, hand and foot in mass disasters and fatal assault where the body is dismembered to hide the identity of the victim (Kanchan and Kumar, 2010).
With technology becoming such a big part in the world, terrible things can happen because of it. The law enforcement now has the power to legal documents, voice mails, telephone records, and emails because of the USA Patriot Act that was passed. Many americans believe that this act has violated their rights, but this is suppose to be used as the last resort in criminal cases. Sometimes if a person is a suspect their phone calls might listened to through phone tapping. This is very helpful and has caught many criminals. Another thing that the government watches are web searches. Certain searches send up a red flag and what is searched will be closely monitored to make sure a terrorist is not looking up how to make a bomb or other things that
Wiretapping is the practice of connecting a listening device to a telephone line to secretly monitor a conversation. It also refers to listening in on electronic communications on computers and other devices. Wiretapping is illegal in America. Although wiretaps are generally illegal in the United States, the federal government and the governments of thirty seven states have been authorized through federal and state legislation to intercept wire and electronic communications under certain stringent rules which include obtaining a court order. These rules have been designed to ensure the protection of individual privacy and Fourth Amendment rights, while permitting the use of wiretaps for investigations of serious criminal activity and for foreign intelligence. (Delaney, D.P., Denning D.E., Kaye J., McDonald A.R.1993. Murray Associates). The US government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including AT&T, has engaged in massive, illegal surveillance of the domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001 (Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved 2015, November 1). Many cell phone carriers provide authorities with a phone's location and may charge a fee for doing so.
Evidence is defined as any matter of fact, the effect, tendency, or design of which is to produce in the mind a persuasion, affirmative or disaffirmative, of the existence of some other matter of fact that a crime has been committed.(Paul B. Watson, 1986) In a legal sense, evidence is the information presented in court during a trial which enables the judge and jury to decide a particular case (Garland & Stuckey, 2000). There are two main types of evidence, which are testimony and physical items which can be presented to the judge and jury during a criminal trial. Physical evidence is any evidence found at the perpetrator’s
University systems include, but are not limited to: servers, desktops, laptops, workstations, PDAs, network servers/processors, or any other electronic data storage or transmission device.