Rhetorical Analysis Of Why Eye Witnesses Get It Wrong By Dr. Scott Fraser

“Based on a book by journalist Michael Lewis chronicling the real life Oher’s experiences, “The Blind Side” manages to inspire despite its broad-strokes approach to characterization.”(VLM, 2010) The Blind Side is based on a true story, the story of Michael Oher, a homeless boy with a traumatic past until one women, Leigh Ann, took him in as her own son and changed his life for the better. Michael is now known as an American football player, that was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens. The film, “The Blind side”, produced by John Lee Hancock, demonstrates that a tragic childhood does not necessarily mean one is destined for defeat, as long as there are those who care enough about you. “The Blind Side” uses rhetorical appeals by illustrating ethos, logos, and pathos to teach the audience moral lessons on learning and coping with traumatic life experiences and defining oneself socially through personal actions.

Eyewitness testimony is a hot button issue in not only the criminal justice field but also the psychology field as well. It continues to be argued that this type of “evidence” is far too unreliable for the court room and can ultimately end up punishing the wrong person for a crime they did not commit. The influence of an eyewitness testimony cannot be denied as research has showed that, “adding a single prosecution eyewitness to a murder trial summary increased the percentage of mock jurors’ guilty verdicts from 18 to 72” (Leippe, Manion, & Romanczyk, p. 182, 1992). In the article discussed here, researchers will look into various age groups to see if age has an effect on the credibility of eyewitness testimonies while attempting to discern what certain cues build upon such credibility.

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.

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:

As technology becomes more readily available within the criminal justice fields, we are finding more options and ways to collect evidence. With these new techniques proving old truths wrong time and time again, it is hard to believe the more old-school ways of prosecuting and judging criminals and their crimes. Since biblical times, eyewitness testimonies have been a key provider of evidence in trials, but will more technically advanced ways of collecting hard evidence begin to overtake its place? Should eyewitness testimonies be used in trial in the first place? In order to truly evaluate this question, it is important to look at the statistics surrounding the negative impacts of possibly false eyewitness testimonies and understand which situations

The introduction segment of the article delivers substantial review of the literature that has driven the study. They note that over the last 25-30 years, cognitive and social psychologists have performed research questioning the accuracy of eyewitness identification evidence and are planning methods to advance eyewitness identification precision (Cutler & Penrod, 1995; Wells, 1993). Additionally they note that the U.S justice system has now started to incorporate better methods of eyewitness identification based on this psychological research (Wells et al., 2000).

Eyewitness evidence can be fundamental when it comes to solving crimes, however, with the increasing number of cases now being exonerated by DNA evidence, the questions lies, what degree of confidence should be placed on the evidence of the eyewitnesses alone? Countless factors are associated with the accuracy and consistency of eyewitness evidence, such as line up content, line up instructions, the questioning techniques of interviewers and notably the gender and/or age of the witness. Eyewitness testimony may not always be accurate, but despite its weaknesses, by using empirical studies to guide reforms, eyewitness testimony can be an extremely beneficial instrument in the criminal justice system. Inaccurate evidence is not necessarily

In older times eye witnessing was the only way to prove that a criminal was guilty and put to jail. Now a day catching criminals is more fast and reliable with the technology we have in our hands. Technology doesn’t only help us capturing or prove the right person at fault, it also helps us protect people. When it comes to eyewitnesses in court only reliable persons are brought on by the lawyers, same with victims.

The use of the eyewitness testimony has always been viewed as one of the most reliable forms of evidence when it comes to the court system. Recently many cases have been brought up where the use of the eyewitness testimony has failed and put an innocent citizen into jail leaving the criminal on the loose and a threat to the population. This has caused eyewitness testimony to go from a reliable source to a controversial subject for many. The eyewitness testimony should not be used because memory is corrupted after a certain length of time, interviews push eyewitnesses to identify a subject, and lineups further confuse the witness.

In their study, Mori and Mori (2008) investigated the social influences on the eyewitness testimony in the form of two experiments. Humans can make mistakes in terms of making judgements about certain situations. These types of judgements can be learned behavior. The purpose of this study is to identify how difference of opinions can be created about the same situation. The main hypothesis of this experiment is that, two witnesses observing the same crime will have different perspectives (Mori & Mori, 2008). Many similar experiments have been conducted by several researchers to investigate this factor. In a study conducted by Kanematsu et al. (1996/2003), thirty pairs of undergraduate students observed a scenario depicting a crime.

More people are found innocent of crimes they did not commit and are convicted of based on faulty eyewitness testimony. Several studies have shown that eyewitness testimony is the least liable thing for evidence yet, it is the most frequently used in convicting innocent people. A study was conducted in a park where somebody stole a purse and ran, several people in the park at the time of the study and when it was time to collect eyewitness statements no two statements were alike even though they all saw the same thing happen.

Although eyewitness testimony is not always accurate, the criminal justice system can evaluate the accuracy through some factors and make it a more useful tool. Three main factors will be discussed in this essay, which are confidence of eyewitness,

There has been great controversy about utilizing eyewitness identification in courts as a reliable method of conviction. However, police officers, investigators, prosecutors, and the courts often rely on eyewitness identification and testimonies to prosecute criminals. Records show that eyewitness identification is the greatest contributing factor to wrongful convictions of criminals. More than 73% of more than 200 wrongful convictions in the United States have been overturned, and one third of these cases rested on the testimony of two or more mistaken eyewitnesses. I believe that eyewitness identification is not a reliable way of conviction because of the many different problems with memory such as reconstructive

A juror watches a trial and determines which team to choose decided by witness honesty. The article, Juries and Witnesses, emphasizes the effect of witness testimony on jurors’: “jurors have been found to place more emphasis on eyewitness testimony than on any other kind of evidence (Laub),” because eyewitness testimony enables jurors to make quick decisions, and avoid uncertainty, as a viewer of a debate team dislikes the feeling of uncertainty and wants to come to conclusions quickly. After jurors make initial theories, they search for evidence to back it up (Finkelman). The eyewitness puts the jurors at ease, through helping the jurors reach certainty quickly. Jurors use a top-down approach when investigating a case, as it further helps

He persuades the rest of the jurors by using their own personal lives using the anecdotal methods and seeing how they relate to the case. For example, when it came to Juror 4 who wears glasses, Juror 8 asked if he wore them to bed. To watch he replied no, making the argument on how could the lady see the young man kill his father 60 feet away, while a rail car was passing in between the two buildings, if she was not even wearing her glasses that night. “Stories are influential on how we learn, how we teach, and they provide us the anecdotal pearls of evidence to support the care we provide everyday” (Donaldson). Connecting with him on a personal basis that he cannot see without his classes, so she simply saw a blur that night of the murder. Putting ones own life experiences gives