Mistaken Eyewitness Testimony

In Canada, the leading cause of wrongful conviction is due to the factor of eyewitness account. It has been proven that individual’s minds are not like tape recorders because everyone cannot precisely and accurately remember the description of what another person or object looks like. The courts looks at eyewitness accounts as a great factor to nab perpetrators because they believe that the witness should know what they are taking about and seen what occurred on the crime scene. On the other hand, eyewitness accounts lead to a 70 percent chance of wrongful conviction, where witnesses would substantially change their description of a perpetrator.

Based on those experiments, Loftus affirms the inaccuracy of our memory, events may be reconstructed with new information added. Applying those results into criminal investigations based on eyewitness, Loftus pointed out that witness is questioned often more than once. Also, studies have demonstrated that line-up might be a inefficient way of point a suspect since many faces are introduced to the witness. In addition to eyewitness testimony, Loftus is leading also in repressed childhood memory. Most of her experiments demonstrated that repressed childhood memories do not exist. In fact, the most traumatic memories that we experience are the ones that we tend to not forget

The second study evaluated how the emotions of a witness can cause errors in the retelling of their story when there were no suggestions made. The participants in the study watched a violent video clip, then they were split into three groups. These groups consisted of an emotional aspect, factual and the controlled group. In the emotional group the individuals were instructed to talk about how the video made them feel when they were retelling the story. In the factual group they were told to just tell exactly what they remember what happened. The controlled group did an activity that was unrelated to the subject. All completed a free call and cue driven memory tests. The cue tests showed that it had little effort on the focus of telling the

The experiment conducted by Loftus, Miller and Burns investigated how information supplied after an incident can affect the memory of those who witnessed it. In the article the experimenters tested the hypothesis that information received by a witness after an event will affect their memory of said event, whether or not it was accurate. This is of particular interest because if the information can affect a person's memory, this could very well discredit eyewitness testimony in criminal and civil trials. A person’s ability to encode accurate, relevant information into their memory is pertinent when giving a witness testimony in front of a judge and jury.

It is a common misconception that the human memory is accurate and reliable (Poston, 2014). For example, the supposition that memory is mostly dependable forms a major part of the legal system. Judges, attorneys and juries are inclined to trust the testimony of a confident eyewitness (Van Wallendael et al., 2007) and confessions are considered among the most compelling forms of evidence (e.g., Cutler, 2012; Kassin, Bogart, & Kerner, 2012). However, 30 years of ground-breaking work by Elizabeth Loftus around the theory of false memory has cast doubt over the role memory should play in legal proceedings (Loftus, 2005). Loftus defines false memory as a phenomenon that occurs when a person believes they remember something that did not actually

The Retrieval-induced Forgetting in an Eyewitness Paradigm article is based on an experiment done to test retrieval- induced forgetting. Even though research was done on this topic before, the authors took it one step forward to either prove or deny the theory of retrieval-induced forgetting. They wanted to see if repeated questioning would impact a witnesses’ ability to recall certain events or even specific details. This was done by showing subjects different slides of the aftermath of theft. They were then asked to recall selected details of what they saw several different times. Previous experiments have proven that there are both positive and negative effects to addressing

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.

The sole purpose of this experiment was to test the accuracy of eyewitness accounts. It was hypothesized that more than 50% of the questions asked would be incorrect. The results fully support the hypothesis. Out of the five questions that were asked, only one was answered correctly by both participants. One of the major factors affecting the reliability of eyewitness testimony is reconstructive memory. Reconstructive memory refers to the idea that the retrieval of memories does not occur in the accurate form but rather as a recollection of memories involving a process of trying to reconstruct past events, This idea was first produced by Sir Fredrick Bartlett where he suggested that certain pieces of information is stored and when it time to recall it, the pieces are then reconstructed based on personal interpretation. (McLeod, 2009) It is also believed that if new information is introduced after the event but before the actual recalling of the event, then the newly introduced information would have tremendous influence on what the person actually recalls. Therefore, memory can be regarded as flexible in nature.

There has been substantial research done on areas of false memory and child suggestibility in eyewitness testimony. One relevant research is the study of “The origin of children’s implanted false memory” by Henry Otgaar, Bruno Verschuere, Ewout H. Meijer, and Kim van Oorsouw. In this article, Otgaar et al. (2012) conducted a study to determine whether implanted false memories in children represent actual memory traces or are they merely a result of compliance. Participants consisted of forty-five children, both males and females between the ages eight and ten, from elementary schools in the Netherlands. At the start of the experiment, the researchers interviewed each child individually about their memories from past events. During the interview, the children were presented with a true narrative about an experienced event (first day at school) first then followed by a false narrative about a fictitious event (hot air balloon

It is easy for people that have been presented with false information to report witnessing events that never happened. In the article “Can fabricated evidence induce false eyewitness testimony?” by Wade, Green, & Nash discusses the way in which fabricated evidence impact the accuracy of someone being able to accuse a person of a crime they did not commit.The participants included 60 university students, who were then divided into three groups of 20. Participants were told that researchers were going to study the way in which people behave when gambling real money versus virtual money and were told that the one with the most profit would get a cash price at the end. Participants were instructed that they would be taking a multiple choice quiz

This webpage presents false memory at a glance. The webpage covers topics relating specifically to false memory, such as the definitions, causes, impacts, and who is affected. The author distinguishes false memory from other forms of memory fallibility. Also, the author indicates the various factors that influence false memory like misinformation, misattribution, existing knowledge, and suggestions from therapists or investigators. Finally, the author concludes that false memory is problematic especially in criminal trials and eyewitness testimony, where false memories are one of the leading causes of false convictions due to false identification of a suspect, or false recollections during interrogations.

Craik and Tulving were one of the first reseachers to discover levels-of-processing (Craik &Tulving, 1975). Other researchers have expanded on Craik and Tulving research into other areas such as deep and shallow processing, recall and recognition, and production of false memory. Also, Craik and Tulving’s discovery of the levels-of-processing have been applied to the justice system as well, more specifically eyewitness testimony. For this article, research was conduct to explore the relationships between levels-of-processing, false memory, recognition, and how the research would related to eyewitness testimony based on gender.

‘The language used in eyewitness testimony can alter an individual’s memory’, the Loftus and Palmer study was carried out to test that hypothesis. Two experiments were carried out within the study. The study had a quasi-experimental design. Experiment one involved forty-five students participates, the participants were shown various films of automobile accidents, after the participants viewed the films they were questioned about what they have just seen. A number of questions specific to the automobile accident were presented in a questionnaire to the participants, however the question contained a paramount question of interest, this being

Memory used for testimony and convictions can be a very controversial way to incarcerate those who are being accused of a crime. For instance, some may believe that witness statements are reliable evidence able to prove someone’s innocence or guiltiness. Despite this, witness statements may contain lies or hidden, yet essential, parts of the truth that had been purposefully forgotten, which is also known as repression. In addition,witnesses or victims who have experienced trauma will most likely experience amnesia as a result of facing an appalling act. Memories of witnesses or victims should not be used to convict people who are allegedly charged with a crime.

Both of the eyewitnesses went through a different phase of cognition for example, Officer Teresa was going to through a process of interference because during the even the suspect (Harry) had a gun, so officer Teresa attention was drawn to the weapon that was used and away from the other details that were in the event this is another problem with encoding. Memory decay did influence the reliability of eyewitness news, some of the eyewitness memory did fade away when the police officer asked their question and taken for an interview, so the problem that occur what their retrieval which is when witness cannot remember information because they lack fail to use the light cues to retrieve what is stored in their memory and as well the memory strength wears away. Memory interference did occur; Matthew Randal was one of the eyewitness he testified that he had driven by the scene before the murder and he only saw Adam in the car this process of memory interference is called retroactive interference the reason why he went through that process is because he saw Adam in the car which was acquired information, but when he was taking for an interview it was hard for him to recall the previously information because of the reconstructive distortions which happen when a person recalls past experiences they can reconstruct them, filling in missing details with new information – causing them to misremember. Robert and Emily Miller, there were driving together in the same car, and they claimed that they saw only one person in the car which was Adam. There were taken for interviewing by the federal state of Texas, Emily was going through a process of repression, unconsciously preventing the memory of the event entering the conscious awareness because the event was too distressing and unpleasant to remember.