Eyewitness Essay

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

False Memory and Eyewitness Testimony PSY363 False Memory and Eyewitness Testimony A false memory is simply a memory that did not occur. An actual experience can become distorted as best illustrated by the Cog Lab experiment on false memories accessed through Argosy University. The experiment is outlined as follows: a participant is given a list of words that are highly relative in nature at a rate of about one word every 2 seconds. At the finish of the given list, the participant

first introduced, Innocence Project researchers have reported that seventy three percent of the 239 convictions overturned through DNA testing were based on eyewitness testimony. One third of these over turned cases rested on the testimony of two or more mistaken eyewitnesses.” Says an article. However, there are some cons to the eyewitness side

Although PACE provides guidelines for how to conduct line-ups, the incidence of false identifications is still common. It is of great importance to ensure that eyewitness identification of suspect’s can be as accurate and reliable as possible, especially considering the frequency and importance of its use. Factors that affect the accuracy of eyewitness identification must be addressed and ameliorated to avoid future miscarriages of justice (i.e. prosecuting the wrong person). Whilst law enforcements may

Although Eyewitness and Scientific Identifications are important tools for the conviction of criminals, eyewitness testimony has proven to be persuasive evidence before a judge or jury but recent years of strong statistical research has proven that eyewitness identification is often unreliable. And can lead to atrocious acts such as wrongfully stripping an individual of his God given freedom for the majority of his or her life. Two prime examples of the detrimental impact that identifications have

Eyewitness testimony has long been an area of much interest and research in the field of psychology, particularly forensic psychology. Since the flood of reported child sexual abuse cases in the 1980s, there has been a growing interest in children as eyewitnesses and in the fallibility of eyewitness memory. In these types of cases, a child’s testimony is typically the most compelling evidence, sometimes even the only evidence, in the report of sexual abuse. However, this is problematic given what

Eyewitness testimony: The influence of the wording of a question ELIZABETH F. LOFTUS University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195 and GUIDO ZANNI New School for Social Research, New York, New York 10011 This paper examines how complex automobile accident and our perception, recollection and verbalization may not be identical of the original event and interfere with the reconstruction of one’s memory which raises question about the integrity of accounts by eyewitness in a courtroom. The paper

Factors such as misinformation and eyewitness talk can easily affect the memory of eyewitnesses and therefore affect their testimony_. Evidence which is usually provided during eyewitness memory reports helps to determine the guilt or innocence of a perpetrator in a criminal proceeding_. With the help of many basic psychological and neuroscience studies, it has been indicated that because memory is a reconstructive process it is likely to be influenced and vulnerable to change and misinformation_

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

There are many research findings that support the “tips” of ways of improving eyewitness accuracy. One of this tips include avoiding post- feedback. In a research conducted by Wells and Bradfield (1998), 352 individuals watched a video of a gunman who committed a murder. After the video, the participants were then asked to choose the correct criminal from a line up. After they made their choice, they were randomly chosen to either receive a positive feedback, or a negative feedback. The only trick