Operation Yewtree Case Study

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.

Young offenders are recognised under the law to have a different level of responsibility and vulnerability to adult offenders. This creates tension in the community, as when children are not protected in criminal procedures, their rights are not upheld. This is demonstrated in R V Phung and Huynh [2001] NSWSC 115, where the accused was detained without the contact of his guardian of choice for over several hours, was not consulted on whom he preferred as a support person and was not given a lawyer. This creates tension as the child did not receive the criteria assigned under the Young Offenders Act 1997 (NSW) and was without a legal representative, defying the fairness of his case. However, the judge deemed the evidence provided from interviews as inadmissible due to his rights being denied. The courts attempt to prevent the tension from the community by using the judge’s discretion in determining what evidence is

Throughout the ages, media and society have been concerned over children. Instead of youth as folk devils, children nowadays serve as the victims of folk devils (Critcher, 2002, p.532). With these trigger events popping up, stereotypes are gradually formed. In recent British history, Paedophile had become one of the most terrifying folk-devils (Jenkins, 1992, p.99). Paedophile behaviour is a moral panic one legal case and the panic is generally fuelled by the sensationalism of media in

The Fells Acres Case was set against the backdrop of many other child sex abuse scandals that had caused mass hysteria across the nation. As a result of what was considered to be a newly found epidemic (child sexual abuse), members of the court were influenced by convictions in other cases, leading to influence on the Fells Acres Case before it even went to trial. Emotional appeal heavily influenced the verdicts within the Fells Acres Case as a result of personal bias influenced from the media. The moral reactions of the prosecution and other members of the court resulted in the preconceived notion of the verdict before the trial began: that the Amiraults were guilty on all counts. Those of the prosecution approached the case with their own perspective; their opinion reflected their own practices and beliefs, thus causing the outcome to validate what they were originally looking for: a guilty verdict. The criticism Rabinowitz portrays explains how the mindset of the prosecutors disregards all of the facts leading to a just verdict and instead promotes finality. As a result, in the Fells Acres Case Justice Elizabeth Dolan allowed the testifying children to face away from the accused in hopes to create a less intimidating environment. As a product of Dolan’s emotional agenda, the justice had violated The Massachusetts Declaration of Rights that requires the accuser to face the accused. Furthermore, resulting from moral reactions, prosecutors and judges ignore the plasticity of children and their memories as well as the impact such plasticity’s have on the

During the 1980’s and to the mid 1990’s, the provision for looked after children underwent a massive overhaul. After the abuse and deaths of another three children in the early 80‘s, a number of parliamentary reports led to the development of The Children Act 1989. This act “marked a watershed in legislation on children” and “tried to balance two sets of contradictory pressures; greater child protection with greater parental rights” (Glennerster, 2007). Also, an alarming number of reports into institutional abuse of children in care in the1990‘s came to light, and following a frenzied media coverage, and yet another public outcry, the government commissioned Sir William Utting, Chief Inspector of the Social Services Inspectorate to

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.

The current legislation is the result of the children’s Act 1989, which is used to ensure that all people who work with children are working together and are clear about their responsibilities and know how to act if allegations of child abuse are made. The children’s act 2004 is a legal framework for “Every Child Matters” and is a direct result of the Laming Report following the death of the Victoria Climbie case in the year 2000. Hereafter an independent inquiry highlighted so many problems with how the reports of neglect and child abuse was dealt with and that vulnerable people in society were not being properly safeguarded. The main points of the 2004 Children’s Act were that every local authority has a director of children’s services who is ultimately responsible for ensuring that children are safeguarded.

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.

Eyewitnesses are critical to the criminal justice system, but there have been issues involving eyewitness testimonies, which occasionally cause them to be seen as unreliable. According to innocenceproject.org, 72% of DNA exoneration cases in the United States have resulted from eyewitness misidentification. This is concerning because in a study by Benton, Ross, Bradshaw, Thomas, and Bradshaw (2005), they examined jurors, judges and law enforcement’s knowledge about eyewitness issues. They found that those involved in the legal system are still very unaware of eyewitness memory research, and the reasons behind why eyewitnesses may or may not be considered reliable. There needs to be a way to increase reliability so that eyewitnesses are able to accurately recognize perpetrators and other important information to put the guilty people away, and to keep the innocent people free.

After a very quick Google of eye witness testimonies, I instantly came across something that intrigued me. The tittle was eye witness misidentification. It was an article about an African American who was wrongfully convicted by an eye witness. The story originated on July 18 1982, when a man named Marvin Anderson was brought into his supervisor’s office to be asked a few questions. The questions were on a rape case that just occurred and they wanted to know if he had heard anything about the topic. What Marvin didn’t know, was that the only evidence that the police had was that the perpetrator was a black man with a white girl friend and they were there to also get a picture of him. Only conflict here was that Marvin was the only color photo

The impact of eyewitness testimony upon the members of a jury has been the subject of various research projects and has guided the policies formed by the federal government regarding its competent use in criminal matters (Wells, Malpass, Lindsay, Fisher, Turtle, & Fulero, 2000). Therefore, eyewitness studies are important to understand how

Have you ever been a witness to a crime? Would you feel comfortable if prosecutors relied on your eye witness testimony alone for a conviction? According to “The Magic of the Mind”, eyewitness testimony which relies on the accuracy of human memory, has an enormous impact on the outcome of a trial. Eyewitness testimony is a legal term. During an eyewitness testimony, the witness usually goes into an account of the crime he or she has witnessed. This can include details of the crime or identification of perpetrators. Eyewitness testimony is an important area of research in cognitive psychology and human memory (simplypsychology.com). Eyewitness testimony can be affected by many psychological factors such as:

By recreating some of Australia’s most famous criminal cases, the director masterfully highlights that truth and lie are often determined by how evidence is constructed through the “mouths and minds of counsel”. Perhaps most crucially, The Diaries reveals how skilled litigators can exploit the credibility gap between “proven liars” and “credible witnesses” when constructing evidence. Yet the director acknowledges that the law recognises this potential for abuse, and mitigates it by confining the rules of evidence through the uniform Evidence Act (‘UEA’). Ultimately, The Diaries proves that the UEA alleviates Sheller JA’s concerns by limiting the ability of legal representatives to unfairly exploit the credibility of witnesses, and thus allows evidence to be assessed on its merits in pursuit of the

“Wrongfully convicted at age 25, Calvin Johnson received a life sentence for the rape of a Georgia woman after four different women identified him. Exonerated in 1999, he walked out of prison a 41-year old man. The true rapist has never been found, (The Justice Project).” Eyewitness testimony is highly relied on by judges, but it can not always be trusted. Approximately 48% of wrong convictions are because of mistaken identity by eyewitnesses (The Psychology of Eyewitness Testimony). After we discovered this information, we became curious as to whether in a testimony, the eyewitness’ memory is more reliable after a short period of time or after a longer period of time? According to previous experiments, eyewitness testimony is unreliable. Likely, we want to know if a testimony that is given two to three hours after a crime has taken place is more reliable than a testimony given after a longer period of time.

According to Robert Holmes (2006), the ‘power dynamics between adults and children’ present an important obstacle to the collection of high quality evidence from children. Of course, engagement with children and young people is not always at an individual level. There are a variety of issues to think about when engaging with young children. Children and young people may be shy around unfamiliar adults, even at times even afraid, so it is important to find ways of making them feel safe and secure. Explanations for adults having power over children and young people are willingly established in materialistic and paternalistic declarations of looking out for the young children’s best interests, which is to protect them from harm. Most people including young children are in agreement with the involvement of adults is necessary there are however some critics who question this. Roberts, H. (2008) points out that power dynamics in children’s participation are much messier than is often explicated, and that power isn’t something that children