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
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 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.
Eyewitness testimonies are based on a person’s ability to recall what took place accurately. Memory research has proven that a person’s memory is not a recording but it is reconstructive. Loftus and Palmer’s study set out to prove that the memory could be reconstructed through the use of language.
The human mind is not like a tape recorder obviously, it does not record events exactly as seen in the moment of a crime, and neither can the events be recalled precisely like a tape that can rewind back in time. Therefore, making eyewitness identification inaccurate. For example, in the case of a
The human mind is not like a tape recorder obviously, it does not record events exactly as seen in the moment of a crime, and neither can the events be recalled precisely like a tape that can rewind back in time. Therefore, making eyewitness identification inaccurate. For example, in the case of a
Eyewitness misidentification can pose a serious threat in forensic evidence. Eye witness testimony can easily be tampered with due to words or phrases used. Bias is a major issue in identification especially if the police officer uses suggestive tones to portray whom they believe is the suspect. Some witnesses will change their opinion when they hear new information of the suspect. A study has shown that words can play a major impact in the witness' mind and cause them to recall false information. False information can also stem from human memory, age, distance, and how long it took before a witness could recall the information. It has been shown that due to the confidence that a witness may have, it could impact the court systems' reliability on the witness; however, there are several solutions that can be done to prevent misidentification in the court of law. Some examples that can be done are blind administration, lineup composition, instructions, confidence statements, and
There is many things that should be taken into account that requires certain questions to be asked. The first factor would be to what extent was the eyewitness paying attention to the crime taking place. It is important to that witness ability to recall what happened accurately (Schwartz, 2015, p. 13). The next factor would be duration, how long did that crime go on for? The duration comes into plays because the longer the event was going on the longer opportunity the witness has to encode that information for stronger recall (Schwartz, 2015, p. 14). Also, lighting and distance is important because it plays a direct effect on the quality of the memory and encoding. The better the view is for the witness, the better chance the witness has retracing
The concepts that are covered in the experiment: “Testing the Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony” are how the memory part of your brain works. Also, the colors that help memorization is also included in this experiment.Another thing that is covered in this experiment is whether or not someone is able to regurgitate information back after 20 minutes. Another thing that is covered in this experiment is the types of memory disorders. Tips on how to keep a healthy memory are also included. Also, the steps to creating a new piece of memory is also covered in this experiment. Another thing that is included in the experiment is the timeline as to how we know memory today got there.
As once said by Ben Whishaw, “the criminal justice system, like any system designed by human beings, clearly has its flaws.” This quote is incredibly true for the United States justice system. However, the Innocence Project is dedicated to reforming this clearly flawed system that has wrongfully convicted thousands of individuals. Furthermore, too much weight is placed on eyewitnesses, misidentification, false confessions, and informants. The most flawed evidence used in a trial to convict an individual is eyewitness testimony.
Professor Farris, eyewitness evidence is not perfect; however, law enforcement agencies still use lineups, show-ups, and photographic arrays today. The professionals have taken a closer look at eyewitness evidence, precisely at the effectiveness of identifying suspects from lineups and photographic arrays. Law enforcement officers in the United States investigate millions of crimes per year; considering, a percentage of law enforcement agencies investigate crimes that involve the use of police arranged identification procedures. "The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) has initiated a multisite field experiment of eyewitness evidence to examine the effectiveness and the accuracy of the crucial and influential component of the Nation's Criminal
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.
I am not sure what you are asking what pace? But I will try to answer this the best I can. I think that when there is an eyewitness I feel the defendant should also have a right to challenge the eyewitness since eyewitness testimony can be corrupted by societal influences, power of suggestion, and other variables (e.g. distance where crime was witnessed, lighting, or even who the eyewitness also spoke to prior to being interviewed by police). But, if there is even the slightest chance that DNA is present in a crime, it should be tested in a timely manner. This also includes investigating for fingerprints, security video footage, or trace evidence left behind that can specifically
In an eye witness testimony, your judgement and what you saw in a crime scene will effect the rest of the accused person’s life. This made me question if we can really trust our senses enough to define someone’s destiny, and if so to what extent is our sense perception a reliable way of knowing? That is why we can focus on the human sciences area of knowledge and use the reliability assessment criteria to judge the eye witness testimony. There are different ways of knowing and one way is through sense perception. Something that I asked myself was what shapes our perception? And there are many things that shape our perception such as our culture, our acquired knowledge and maturity, our personal knowledge, our emotions as well as physical flaws in how our physiological systems analyse information input. All these supposed factors influence the ways
Eyewitness testimony, which depends on the precision of human memory. Nothing conveys as much importance with a jury as the confirmation of a good eyewitness. Certain in the acknowledgment of this confirmation as strong proof is the supposition that the human personality is an exact recorder and stores these memories. Why is the eyewitness testimony so powerful and convincing? Because people in general believe that our memories stamp the facts of experiences on a permanent, non-erasable tape, like a computer disk or videotape that is write-protected. For the most part, of course, our memories serve us reasonably well. But how often is precise memory demanded of us? When a friend describes a vacation, we don't ask, "Are you sure your hotel room
I personally believe that eyewitnesses are not reliable since there are a lot of things to take into consideration: bias, memory, character, etc. There is no formula to know whether someone is telling the truth with accuracy about the story that they are telling. For me is all how believable or if they believe the story that they are telling. The bigger and elaborate the story is, the more proof and evidence I require from the person that is telling the story. The more simplistic the story is, more than likely I will believe their story and accepted as the truth; now, if for some reason, I find something off-putting or do not believe their source, then I will not believe or trust his story or give them any type of credit. I truly think that we are fortunate and bless to have multiple gospels’ accounts available to us, and not including the ones that are from the Bible. This is good news for us because this way we compare and contrast with peoples’ testimony that took place at the same place and time. That being said, there are discrepancies between gospels when it comes to their religion’s opinions and the accuracy of the events that took place in history. Now, we must take into consideration of whether the authors knew about one another or if they did not hear about Jesus into later in their lives; however, if both authors are followers of Jesus’s word and they are real disciples, then one should be skeptical about what they say about the gospel.