Psychological Issues Used in Prosecutors Cases

In the past decade, eyewitness testimonies have cast a shadow on what is wrong with the justice system in today’s society. Before we had the advanced technology, we have today, eyewitness testimonies were solid cold-hard facts when it came to proving the defendant was guilty. However, time has changed and eyewitness testimonies have proven to be the leading causes of wrongful convictions due to misidentification. The Thompson and Cotton case is a perfect example of how eyewitness testimonies can put an innocent man behind bars.

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.

Eyewitness identifications is a noteworthy topic. Victims see their attackers from time to time, but

Eyewitness testimonies provide crucial evidence in pinpointing the identity of the perpetrator in order to solve a crime, thus the criminal justice system depends upon the accuracy of eyewitness identification to investigate and prosecute criminals. However, eyewitness identification is imperfect and the leading cause of wrongful convictions (Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1996; Scheck, Neufeld, & Dwyer, 2000). One prominent method of eyewitness identification is a line-up procedure during which “A line-up is a procedure in which a criminal suspect (or a picture of the suspect) is placed among other people (or pictures of other people) and shown to an eyewitness to see if the witness will identify the suspect as the culprit in question” (Wells

In sum, we can conclude that eyewitness memory still hold important place in investigation and prosecution process yet it is flawed. Based on research that I reviewed in this paper, there are several aspects that important to enhance eyewitness memory such as the repetition and precision-accuracy trade off. In contrast there are some factors that can threatens quality of memory such as such as avoiding co-witness situation, less focus on the confidence level to measure accuracy and delayed effect. These factors need to be prioritize to create a better environment to recall accurate information.

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.

Eyewitness identifications are among the most persuasive, and sometimes only, juncture in the apprehension of criminals. This typically involves a simultaneous line-up(SIM) where the suspect(target) is placed among known innocents(foils) who resemble the witness’s description of the perpetrator (Wells & Olson, 2003). The selection or lack of selection from the witness is given significant legal weighting. However, 75% of convictions involved exculpation through DNA testing where eyewitness misidentification was at fault. Furthermore, in 38% of these cases, multiple witnesses have misidentified the same innocent person(Project, 2009), which brings to question the accuracy of the procedure.

Verbal overshadowing has been coined as the undependable eyewitness testimonials of explicit memories resultant of the cognitive barriers to a person’s inability to accurately verbalize or depict the events that have transpired. To illustrate the inaccuracies caused by verbal overshadowing, if it even exists, we conducted a study to demonstrate the differences in a person’s cognitive ability to accurately identify a perpetrator that has committed a crime in a police lineup (Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990). Participants were provided a brief video clip of a perpetrator committing a crime, and data retrieval were manipulated between two conditions: a one-week delay in description retrieval, and half hour delay in description retrieval of the perpetrator’s identity. Although immediate retrieval is coined as the best technique to providing an accurate description, many argue the immediate retrieval may contribute to the effects of verbal overshadowing. In essence, all eyewitness remembrance is predominately terrible, no matter the individual providing the description (also see, Brown C., Lloyd-Jones, T. J., & Robinson, M.,

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.

to interview the witnesses for several days or even weeks after the incident (particularly if

Nevertheless, one may object that the records of identification decisions are unlikely to be incorrect or that witnesses usually sign their names next to the photo of the identified suspect. Considering how often professionals make procedural errors (e.g., erroneous matches of bullets, foot- and fingerprints; Saks & Koehler, 2005) and the impact of biases due to contextual influences in the forensic science (Kassin, Dror, & Kukucka, 2013), we posit that such a scenario is not all that unrealistic. In exacerbation to this issue, the report on prosecutorial misconduct cases compiled by the Northern California Innocence Project sides with the idea of altered identification decisions and tempered with testimony in real investigations (NCIP; Ridolfi & Possley, 2010). The report reveals 4,000 cases of alleged misconduct, in 707 of which the courts explicitly established that the prosecutors deliberately mishandled, mistreated or destroyed evidence. Thus, errors in the recording of

Eyewitness misidentification are the leading errors to a wrongful conviction. Although there is such a high risk for errors, it is still the most powerful testimony or piece of evidence during a trial. With the value an eyewitness is given, there are many risks a prosecutor takes when using them as their most important piece of evidence. Throughout the process, starting from the crime and going until the conviction, eyewitnesses are placed under stress and anxiety. There is also the flaw that the human brain tends to overlook specific details. According to the California Innocence Project, “details like a stranger’s height, weight, age, and hair are often overlooked”. (“Eyewitness Identification Problems and Procedures. . .”). And therefore leads to witnesses filling in the missing pieces based off of their inference and what they feel like the suspect is supposed to look like. Through this process the brain is trying to come up with a clear picture of the event, and does so by imaging details. Even if a witness does observe either the weapon or the offender with detail, the other is often overlooked and leads to little information about the event as a

For this research paper, I am mostly writing on mistaken eyewitness identification in a false witness testimony. My audience for this particular topic will of course be my peers. The importance of this topic is to understand why eyewitness identify the wrong people and how to prevent wrongful convictions.

Whenever a crime takes place, eyewitnesses who are present on the scene can help the police or authorities when the crime is being investigated. However, eyewitness memory can be affected by a series of factors.

The accuracy of eyewitness report relies on the quality of three different perceptual processes: encoding (processing information), storage (retaining information for short-term use of long-term recall), and retrieval (locating the stored information). The quality of each of these processes depends on how many interfering factors are present.