Category: Eyewitness Testimony

Mistaken eyewitness identifications have contributed to approximately 75% of false convictions. Meaning that more than 100 people each year could be falsely convicted of violent or sexual crimes because of these false accusations from witnesses (Garrett, 2011). Eyewitness misidentification is believed to be the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide which are later overturned through DNA testing.

Research studies since the 1960s (Brandon & Davies, 1973; Huff; Rattner & Sagarin, 1986) have demonstrated that there are significant reasons to question the accuracy of eyewitness testimony used in court trials. Eyewitnesses are often very confident in the accuracy of their memories when identifying a suspect, but in reality, the malleability of human memory and individual perception makes eyewitness testimony a very unreliable source of evidence (Garrett, 2011). Forensic science can disprove the myth that memory provides an accurate recording of experience, like a video camera and instead support psychologists in their claim that people’s memories and visual perception can even be manipulated and biased. Due to this, many countries are now attempting to make changes in how eyewitness testimony is presented in court. But, despite a concrete and growing amount of evidence demonstrating the faults of traditional eyewitness identification procedures and the availability of basic strategies to reform them (Innocence Project, 2009). Research still shows that people naturally rely on witnesses’ statements about their confidence, view, and the degree of attention they paid while witnessing to make judgments about whether to believe the witness (Bradfield & Wells, 2000). Therefore, the purpose of this report is to outline which problems influence the accuracy of eyewitness identification and prove that other procedural measures must be undertaken to minimize the likelihood of an inaccurate identification.

The most common line-up procedure used in the criminal justice system is having all of the lineup members are displayed to the eyewitness at once in a simultaneous lineup. However, during a simultaneous lineup witnesses use a ‘relative judgment’ process, meaning that they compare lineup photographs or members to each other, rather than to their memory of the offender. This is a problem when the perpetrator is not present in the lineup because often the witness will choose the lineup member who most closely resembles the perpetrator (Wells & Seelau, 1995). Research instead suggests law enforcement should implement a sequential line-up procedure (Carlson, Gronlund & Clark, 2008), where the witness is shown only one person at a time and are required make a ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘not sure’ response to each one before moving on to the next. Lindsay, Lea, Nosworth, Fulford, Hector, LeVan & Seabrook (1991) conducted five staged-crime experiments to examine the effect of lineup biases and sequential presentation on eyewitness recognition accuracy. They discovered across their five experiments biased lineup procedures consistently produced higher rates of false identification from simultaneous presentations (51.0%) than from sequential presentations (12.9%). Correct rejections of the biased, criminal-absent lineups were less likely in simultaneous presentations (29.0%) than in sequential presentations (77.1%). Even when the lineups were not biased, false identifications occurred more often with simultaneous (23.3%) than sequential (4.2%) presentations.

These results support the idea that the sequential procedure is more conservative than the simultaneous procedure. The reason for this is because the psychological experience for the eyewitness is dramatically different using the sequential procedure than it is using the simultaneous procedure. Using the sequential procedure, the eyewitness cannot simply compare one photo to another and decide who looks the most like the offender relative to the others. (Klobuchar & Caligiuri, 2005). Although the eyewitness can mentally compare the current photo to those presented previously, the eyewitness cannot be sure what the next photo will look like; maybe the next one will look even more like the offender. The sequential procedure is conducted such that the witness does not know when the last photo is being shown. As a result, the sequential procedure appears to lead eyewitnesses to set higher criteria for making a positive identification because they cannot be sure that they have seen all of the lineup members.

Another recommendation for improving lineup procedures to prevent false identifications is to limit the number of show-ups, in which the police show the eyewitness one person. Show-ups tend to occur when a suspect who fits the description is found close to a crime scene shortly after the crime. However, the suspect is most frequently in handcuffs and may be showing other signs of distress for example sweating. These circumstances create a highly suggestive situation in which the risk of a misidentification dramatically increases. Yarmey, Yarmey & Yarmey (1996) tested one-person and six-person photographic lineup identifications in field situations either immediately, or 30 minutes, or 2 hours, or 24 hours after a 15-second ordinary encounter with a target. They discovered that after 2-h, the mean proportion of false identifications of an innocent suspect was four times likely with show-ups (M = .58) than photo line-ups (M = .14). Similarly, false identifications, again at a ratio of 4:1, occurred significantly more frequently in one-person line-ups (M = .47) than in six-person line-ups (M = .14), 24-h after the original encounter. This supports the claim that show-ups produce higher rates of mistaken identification than do simultaneous line-ups or sequential line-ups. The reason for the higher rate of mistaken identifications when using show-ups is mainly because show-ups do not include fillers that protect an innocent suspect (Gonzalez, Ellsworth & Pembroke, 1993).

On the other hand, line-ups and photo arrays of course, are far less suggestive; if conducted properly, the witness will not know which person the officer believes to be the true perpetrator and, therefore, will not be influenced in the identification process. If the witness makes a false identification, he will identify a subject that the police have purposely inserted as filler (Gronlund, Carlson, Neuschatz, Goodsell, Wetmore, Wooten & Graham, 2012). Consequently, the witness’s misidentification will be known to the police, who can then continue with their investigation and their search for the true perpetrator. However, there are problems within traditional line-up procedures that need to be reformed as well in order to reduce misidentification.

Another cause of inaccurate identification within police line-ups are ones that do not include the perpetrator of the crime. When the actual perpetrator is not included in the line-up, the police suspect faces a significantly heightened risk of being incorrectly identified as the culprit. Wells’ (1984) meta-analysis of issues and data on eyewitness identification discovered that witnesses who might correctly identify a culprit from a culprit-present lineup will misidentify an innocent suspect from a culprit-absent lineup, leading to a significant increase of incorrect identifications from 20% to 70%. This suggests that eyewitnesses are most likely a relying on a ‘relative judgement’ process again (Sobel, 1972; Clifford & Bull, 1978). Whereby, they tend to select the person who looks ‘most like’ the offender. When the actual perpetrator is not present in the line-up, the police suspect is often the person who best fits the description, hence his or her selection for the line-up (Doob & Kirshenbaum, 1973).

Thus, since eyewitnesses approach line-ups with the goal of finding the offender. They should be cautioned that the offender might not be in the line-up because they need to understand that they are not ‘failing’ if they do not choose someone. Studies have shown that instructing a witness that the perpetrator ‘may or may not be present’ in the line-up can dramatically reduce the likelihood that a witness will identify an innocent person. Whereby, Malpass and Devine (1981) found that failure to warn witnesses that the culprit may or may not be in the line-up resulted in 78% of witnesses making identifications from a target absent line-up, whilst maintaining a high level of hits in the target present line-up. With the warning that the perpetrator may not be in the target absent line-up the false identification rate fell to 33%. Therefore, providing a cautionary instruction legitimizes a ‘no choice’ selection for the eyewitness who might otherwise select the individual who most closely resembles the perpetrator. If the perpetrator is absent, because the suspect in the lineup is actually an innocent person, the use of a cautionary instruction thus lessens the chance of a mistaken eyewitness identification.

In standard line-ups as well, a set of ‘fillers’ will accompany the suspect in the line-up whereby the line-up administrator may choose to compose a live or photo line-up where non-suspect ‘fillers’ do not match the witness’s description of the perpetrator or do not resemble the suspect. This can cause the suspect to stand out to a witness because of the composition of the line-up. A meta-analysis by Clark, Howell & Davey (2008), of a staged-crime experiment suggests that approximately 50% of witnesses presented with a perpetrator-absent line-up select an innocent suspect. Furthermore, Valentine, Pickering & Darling (2003) analyzed data from the Metropolitan Police and in 640 attempts by eyewitnesses, to identify the alleged culprit in 314 line-ups, approximately 33% of those identifications included a known-innocent filler. This shows that placing an innocent suspect who fits the description of the offender in a line-up in which the fillers do not fit the description, results in a high rate of mistaken identifications of that person, even when absolute similarity between the innocent person and the offender is only moderate (Carlson, Gronlund, & Clark, 2008).

Research instead suggests that suspect photographs should be selected that do not bring unreasonable attention to him/her. Non-suspect photographs and/or live line-up members should be selected so that the suspect does not stand out from among the other fillers. Lindsay & Wells (1980) found in a stage crime paradigm that in the culprit-absent line-ups, there was a significant difference in the proportion of choices for the innocent suspect between low (.70) and high (.31) line-up similarity. Therefore, law enforcement should select fillers using a blended approach that considers the fillers’ resemblance to the description provided by the eyewitness and their resemblance to the police suspect, to improve the accuracy of eyewitnesses.

Another factor that can cause misidentification is investigator bias. In a standard line-up, the line-up administrator typically knows who the suspect is, and research has shown that administrators often provide biased unintentional cues to the eyewitness about which person to pick from the line-up (Clark, 2005; Steblay, 1997). Devenport & Fisher (1984) examined the effect of biased instructions alongside the presence of authority where in different conditions the line-up administrator was dressed casually or as a police officer. They discovered, in culprit-absent line-ups, a difference in the proportion of choices for the foils between unbiased (.471) and biased instructions (.706). This proportion increased further when the investigator gave biased instructions as a police officer; .800. This supports the idea that the investigators knowledge of the line-up can influence an eyewitness’ decision in choosing suspect. Hence, since 92.1% of live line-ups are conducted by an administrator who knows the identity of the suspect (Police Executive Research Forum, 2013), the ideal solution is to prevent any opportunity for administrators bias that could lead to intentional or unintentional cues.

One was to do this, is implanting a double-blind procedure, where neither the administrator nor the eyewitness knows who the suspect is. This prevents the administrator of the line-up from providing inadvertent or intentional verbal or nonverbal cues to influence the eyewitness to pick the suspect. In Greathouse & Kovera’s (2009) study, witnesses and line-up administrators completed an identification task in which administrator knowledge, line-up presentation, instruction bias, and target presence were manipulated. They discovered that single-blind investigators were more likely than double blind witnesses to examine the lineup carefully (F(1,144) = 6.88), to tell witnesses that they know who the suspect is (F(1,144) = 7.41), to tell witnesses to take another look at the lineup if they did not make an identification (F(1,144) = 5.54), and to remove a picture slowly if witnesses said no to a particular photograph, F(1,144) = 3.91). Therefore, research shows that double-blind lineup procedures are needed not only to prevent the investigator from unintentionally influencing which person the eyewitness picks, but also are needed to prevent the investigator from influencing the certainty of the eyewitness.

Another area in which investigator bias can appear is post-identification feedback, this might be partially to blame for wrongful convictions because it inflates eyewitnesses’ reports of their confidence and other testimony-relevant eyewitness reports (Wells & Bradfield, 1998). Steblay, Wells & Douglass (2014) conducted a meta-analysis of studies involving over 7000 participant-witnesses. They discovered that the percentage of mistaken witnesses who reported confidence levels of 80% increased from 6% to 29% when they were given feedback following their mistaken identifications. This supports the claim that suggesting to eyewitnesses who mistakenly identify someone from a lineup that they identified the right person leads them to recall having been more certain, having a better view during witnessing, and having paid closer attention during witnessing. Furthermore, confirming feedback can even distort evaluators’ abilities to discriminate between accurate and mistaken eyewitness testimony.

Therefore, at the time an eyewitness makes an identification, a statement should be obtained from the eyewitness in a double-blind procedure, indicating how confident he or she is that the person identified is the offender. This will allow investigators to assess the confidence of the eyewitness before that person can be influenced by other events, such as learning the status of the identified person. A recent survey of law enforcement agencies by the Police Executive Research Forum (2013) found that 76.2 percent document statements of certainty related to a positive identification. These confidence statements can be strengthened through preparing a complete and accurate record, audio or visual, of the outcome of the identification procedure. This will improve the strength and credibility of the identification or nonidentification results obtained from the witness (Du Toit, De Jager, Paizes, Skeen & Van der Merwe, 1987). Hence, if the eyewitness was in fact uncertain at the time of the identification, then this record should be made aware to all agents involved in the criminal justice system.

So, in conclusion, mistaken identifications are the primary cause of convicting the innocent and if implemented, these recommendations for line-ups would advance justice in several ways. First, these recommendations would benefit innocent suspects because they would be less likely to be misidentified. Second, implementation of these procedures would help keep the focus of investigations on guilty persons. Third, implementation of these procedures would be of assistance to those involved in evaluating the identification testimony such as prosecutors, judges, and jurors. Finally, the use of these procedures would lessen the need for expert testimony because expert testimony commonly focuses on the inadequacies of the procedures used in line-ups. Therefore, reforms to how eyewitness identification evidence is collected, preserved, and used must take center stage within the UK government’s institute of justice, to improve the criminal justice system and prevent the conviction of the innocent as well as facilitating conviction of the guilty.

In this paper, I am going to talk about eyewitness statements. I will discuss what they are and why they are important, as well as analyzing and evaluating two different influences on eyewitness testimonies. The two influences which I will discuss are misleading information and anxiety.

Firstly, what are eyewitness testimonies? Well, an eyewitness testimony is evidence that is provided in a police investigation or in court. The information is provided by someone who has witnessed a crime or an accident. Next onto why they are important. Eyewitness testimonies are important to investigators because they provide some very important insights into precisely what happened during a crime or accident. However, where eyewitnesses might describe accurately what they saw take place, it may not be an accurate description of the events that took place. This could be due to the event being seen from a distance, in the dark or during adverse conditions.

The next area that I will discuss are influences on eyewitness testimonies. There are many inaccuracies in eyewitness testimonies, and these inaccuracies account for 75% of the incorrect convictions which are later found to be innocent through DNA evidence.

The first factor which can result in negatively influencing the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies is misleading information. This is information that leads to a person giving a particular response rather than a necessarily accurate response. There are two types of misleading information, the two different types are: leading questions and post-event discussion. Leading questions are questions that require a desired answer. On the other hand, post-event discussion is information that is provided after an event, this involves where the information has the potential to influence the memory of the event. This can include misleading questions.

Next onto two examples of studies that have taken place and provide evidence on these sources of misleading information. These two examples were conducted by Elizabeth Loftus. Who is a key researcher when looking into eyewitness testimonies. The first study is Loftus and Palmer (1974) and Loftus. The first study of Loftus and Palmer (1974) set out to see if the language that is used in eyewitness testimonies can alter memory. With leading questions having the ability to distort eyewitness testimony accounts. This was done through asking people to estimate the speed of motor vehicles, and they did this whilst using different forms of questions. With the findings being that the answers from the participants changed depending on the verb used, for example when the verb ‘smashed’ was used the estimated speed averaged at 40.8mph, compared to when the verb ‘contacted’ was used the estimated speed averaged was 31.8mph. This shows that depending on how a question is asked and what words are used in these eyewitness testimonies can have an impact on the answers received.

The second study is Loftus (1975). The aim of this study was to explore what the effects of question wording on answers to future questions, through four experiments. The participants were shown a video of a lecture being disrupted by 8 demonstrators and were then tasked with filling out a questionnaire containing a critical question in one of two versions: ‘Was the leader of the 4 demonstrators male?’, or ‘Was the leader of the 12 demonstrators male?’. The answers received showed that the mean number estimated by participants asked about the group of 4 demonstrators was much lower than those that were asked about the group of 12 demonstrators. This therefore supports the claim regarding how post-event information can have a negative influence on the accuracy of memory recall.

Lastly, onto the strengths and weaknesses of misleading information. First looking at the strengths. There is a large amount of evidence that suggests misleading information can lead to inaccurate eyewitness testimonies, this has led to awareness being raised that the criminal justice system cannot always rely on eyewitness testimonies as a basis for convictions. By this highlight of misleading information being seen as a negative factor in eyewitness testimonies it has led to new techniques being designed to improve memory retrieval, this includes the cognitive interview which was developed by Geiselman and Fisher in 1992.

Next onto some of the weaknesses. Laboratory experiments may have low external validity. For example, they have little to no relation to a real court scenario. The participants in research may also be more likely to be able to anticipate truthful information from experimenters, whereas eyewitnesses in court cases may be able to anticipate being subject to leading arguments, where guilt or innocence is advocated and therefore identify attempt to avoid being misled. A further realism downfall is that watching a video is arguably less emotionally arousing than witnessing the real incidents that took place, and therefore some evidence does suggest that emotional arousal can indeed increase and improve the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies and therefore by only showing videos emotional arousal is automatically reduced. Lastly, it cannot be proven that whether misleading information does indeed influence the memory ‘trace’ itself, and therefore it could just be demand characteristics that are driving changes in recall. The experiments which have taken place also show how depending on how the question is asked it can have an impact on the answers that were given. With a more severe verb being used the greater the exaggeration on the estimations in the eyewitness testimonies compared to when a less severe verb is used.

The next influence on eyewitness testimonies is anxiety, and whether it influences the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies and the facial recognition of the people who are involved in these incidents that they are recalling. Loftus (1979) reported the findings of Johnson and Scott (1976), who conducted an experiment on the influence of anxiety on eyewitness testimonies. The experiment involved participants being invited to a laboratory and being asked to wait in the reception. A receptionist who was seated there would then excuse herself from the room, this left the participants alone. With the experimenter using independent group design and the participants being exposed to one of two situations. The first situation was the ‘no-weapon’ condition, this was where the participants would be able to hear a conversation in the laboratory about the failure of some equipment. Moments later and individual left the laboratory and walked past the participant holding a pen, with hands covered by grease. The second scenario was the ‘weapon’ condition, where the participants would hear a heated exchange and then the sound of glass breaking and chairs crashing. Then within moments an individual would run into the reception holding a knife and a bloodied letter. Both groups of people from both scenarios were then asked to identify the person who had left the laboratory and entered the reception. They were shown 50 photos of potential targets, however the participants were also informed that the suspect may or may not be present in the photographs that they are shown. The people who were in the first scenario where the individual was holding the pen, successfully identified the suspect 49% of the time, compared to those in the second scenario where the individual was holding a knife, who only correctly identified the target 33% of the time. Loftus claimed that the participants that were exposed to the knife had much higher levels of anxiety and were therefore more likely to focus on the weapon and not recall the face of the target, this is what is known as the weapon focus effect. Therefore, the anxiety that is associated with seeing a knife does reduce the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies.

However, a real-life case study by Yuille and Cutshall in 1986 contradicts the results of Loftus’ 1979 study and the weapon focus effect. Yuille and Cutshall looked at the effect of anxiety on a real-life shooting, in which one person was killed and another was seriously injured. 21 witnesses were originally interviewed by police and 13 witnesses aged 15-32 agreed to take part in Yuille and Cutshall’s (1986) follow up research interview which took place 4-5 months later. The research found that the 13 witnesses who took part in the follow up interview provided accurate information in their eyewitness testimonies 5 months after the original event, and all had little change. All major details of their reports stayed the same with only minor details such as the estimation of the suspect’s height, weight and age changed. The witnesses also avoided any leading questions and the anxiety which they experienced during the event had little to no effect on their memory of the event. Therefore, the information that was found from this study refutes the weapon focus effect and the results of the study from Loftus (1979). It also helped to show how that in real-life cases of extreme anxiety where someone has been killed, the accuracy of a witnesses’ eyewitness testimony is not affected. This has been supported by Pickel (1998), where a thief entered a hair salon with either a gun, a wallet, a pair of scissors or a raw chicken, and the identification of the target was least accurate for the thief with the chicken and not the gun. This therefore refutes the idea of the weapon focus effect.

Loftus’ (1979) Johnson and Scott’s research has also been criticized for lacking ecological validity, where the participants may have been able to anticipate that something was going to happen, which could have affected the accuracy of their judgements. The results from the real-life case studies refute the ideas of Loftus (1979) and suggest that her results do not actually represent the real-life cases of extreme anxiety. Lastly, real-life cases have proven that anxiety does not have as big of an impact on eyewitness testimonies as the studies carried out by Loftus (1979) and Johnson and Scott (1976) have suggested. Therefore, although this can lead to inaccuracies in eyewitness testimonies, for the majority of the time there are little inaccuracies caused.

In conclusion, eyewitness testimonies are very helpful for law enforcement to find the criminals that commit crimes. However, these testimonies can also be affected by other things which can lead to inaccuracies which sometimes lead to incorrect convictions.

The term ‘eyewitness’ is a legal term that refers to an account by people of an event that has been witnessed. The testimony is slowly being treated less and less credible because DNA evidence is becoming more accessible and accurate memory testing reveals the errors of your memory. The eyewitness testimony involving criminal justice is being questioned and becoming a controversial topic because the human brain can only hold so much memory.

Recalling information can be very difficult as well, something that can prevent an innocent person from being convicted. A woman named Aileen Clare, a South Carolina district attorney, published an article referring to the reliability of eyewitness testimonies in the United States courts. In the article, it says that Clare started to list examples of men charged wrongfully because of testimonies. Aileen Clare also went into detail about the factors that could lead to misidentification and that includes suggestive identification procedures which is when it’s time to lineup the eyewitnesses and put them in different situations or scenarios to identify the suspect in ways that aren’t natural and doesn’t make each suspect seem equal (Clare, A.P.). It’s as if they are suggesting to the witness that a particular suspect could be a predator or killer even worse a rapist. Despite the fact that eyewitness testimony has not been seen reliable in recent year’s researchers decided to test different abilities of females as opposed to males when it comes to testimonies and what was found was stereotypical and true.

A professor for the University of Maribor taught criminal justice and security, his name was Igor Areh. Igor wrote an article about the experiment and the findings in the study of memory. In the article Areh didn’t focus on just one aspect of memory he tested everything from facial recognition to recollection of everyday tasks and names (Areh, I.). In all of the test runs the females outperformed the males expect when it came to spatial memorization which was tested with the use of maps (Areh, I.). In Igor explanation of why these things occurred, he stated the differences between the genders and that seemed to be the result of the female’s superiority when it comes to verbal recall (Herlitz,A., & Rehnam, J.). Women seemed to have a more intense need to be correct and efficient with that being said they tend to act this way because of the fact they make more mistakes than men in the same experiment (Herlitz,A., & Rehnam, J.).

In his article, author Daniel Yarmey wrote about the expert eyewitness testimony and it provided the chance for lawyers to get help in making sure the convictions of innocent suspects get minimized and the convictions of guilty suspects get put in jail. A while ago Hugo Munsterberg believed in experimental psychology concerns itself with the scientific study of human behavior and experience and the result of the laboratory studies on human perception and memory should be relevant to American courts ‘evaluations of witness testimony’ (Munsterburg, 2001). The field research could contribute to the court and have a better understanding of those factors that contribute to both accurate and mistaken eyewitness information. The result of this experiment suggested that females outperformed men when it came to accuracy of descriptions of people both victims and perpetrators but the men were more confident in their answers and more accurate in describing the different situations and the actual crimes committed.

In the article, I read about the only reasonable conclusion that came to thought is the eyewitness testimonies are not reliable because of the three main points. The first point is violence and weaponry do actually hurt their ability to recall information. The second point is men and women don’t have equal recollection abilities and that it can vary within the different genders. The last and final point is that eyewitness can be persuaded by outside sources about what happened in the crime scene and they interpret what they saw but it’s not reality and they replace it with the information they received from the outside source.

​References

1. Clare, A.P. (2012). Is Eyewitness Testimony Inherently Unreliable? Trial Evidence, 20(2), 2-5.
2. Areh, I (2011). Gender-Related Differences in Eyewitness Testimony. Personality and Individual Differences, 50559-563. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.11.027.
3. Herlitz, A., & Rehnman, J. (2008). Sex Differences in Episodic Memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(1), 52-56. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00547.x.
4. Munsterberg, H. (1908). On the Witness Stand. New York: Doubleday.

Any statement made by an eyewitness, a sworn statement or oath, which is written either on affidavit or paper done in court testimony, is eyewitness testimony. It is the main researching field in human memory and cognitive psychology. Eyewitnesses are only acceptable if the story they tell is consistent, comprehensible, and cohesive. Many psychological factors can affect eyewitness testimony. They are: anxiety stress, weapon focus (focus on the weapon during the event), reconstructive memory (the ability to reconstruct memory), leading questions (asking questions again by inserting certain words).

The advantages and disadvantages of eyewitness testimony signify that it is a main segment of any private cases or criminal justice proceedings.

Advantages of Eyewitness Testimony

1. Eyewitness testimony can influence the decision of jury. Witness testimony allows the jury to hear the crime story directly from the person. Then, by having a credible witness take the oath, the jury will be able to determine whether the defendant has committed the alleged crime.
2. Eyewitness testimony depicts the sequential picture of events. The testimony of eyewitnesses helps to get the correct sequence of events, which is essential for understanding what happened, why it happened, and who was responsible. This helps the jury and lawyers better understand what the motive might be settle down.
3. Eyewitness testimony is seen as evidence in the court. The witness report can prove that the crime actually occurred and can support the criminal case presented to the court. In the absence of DNA and other substantive evidence, the witness statement was considered persuasive and sufficient to implicate the defendant’s evidence. This is especially true when the testimony is obtained immediately after the incident, when the memory is still clear.
4. It gives a direct connection to the events in question. Only the witnesses were involved in the series of events that initially prompted the investigation. What they can remember provides investigators with a direct link to what happened, enabling them to determine who was involved.
5. It gives supplements and strength to other evidence available. Eyewitness testimony itself can have credibility issues, but when used in combination with other evidence, it can provide the defendant with conclusive evidence and promote judicial justice.
6. It validates the early statements written at the beginning. A written statement is taken from eyewitnesses after the crime events which reinforces the memory. This will create a written record of the testimonial for future reference.
7. It is used in association with other eyewitnesses. Having multiple people remember their memories of an event helps the audience start to piece together the pieces of the puzzle.

Case Study: Eyewitness Testimony in the Flowers Case

On July 16, 1996 in Winona, Mississippi, four people were shot and killed in a Tardy furniture store. Prosecutor Doug Evans tried six times for the crimes of former Tardy employee Curtis Flowers. According to the prosecutor on the day of the murder, around 7 am, Flowers walked from his home on the west side of the town to the parking lot of a sewing factory on the east side of the town, crossing Highway 51. Flower snatched Doyle Simpson’s gun from the glove box of Doyle’s keyless car and walked back to his home in the west of town. Flowers then walked from his home to Tardy Furniture again to commit the murder, passing an auto repair shop, a dry cleaner, and Highway 51 along the way.

The testimony of at least twelve witnesses helped the theory of the prosecution, with each witness placing Flowers in an inconspicuous part of the route they were to take that day. Most of these witnesses knew Flowers. A careful examination of the testimony of these witnesses revealed some disturbing factors. However later, a man named Roy Harris said he saw a man fleeing the scene and confirmed it was not Flower, who was later identified as another man in the photo.

Disadvantages of Eyewitness Testimony

1. Eyewitness testimony can be corrupted and inaccurate. Research has shown that when incorrect events are introduced into a person’s memory, it is often difficult for the person to remember what actually happened and may even recall incorrect or corrupted memories and believe that they are true. Also, the longer the event lasts, the more difficult it will be for people to remember it.
2. Eyewitness’s memory is the basis of eyewitness testimony procedure. The problem is that human memory is susceptible to bias, especially when the trigger phrase used by a third party will affect the witness’s better judgment and, more importantly, affect the memory of what actually happened. Also, few people will retell a story in a neutral way, which affects memory.
3. It is influenced by personal emotions and causes dishonesty. Witnessing the trauma of crime and the fear of becoming involved in chaos or being the target of retaliation is enough to dilute your description of a trustworthy and honest criminal call. Negative thoughts and emotions and external threats can cause witnesses to hide certain facts or provide false testimony. Stress can also affect a person’s memory.
4. It can get the wrong person in jail. When the court decides to testify based on witnesses who have memory problems or are dishonest, the wrong person may be sent to prison. False witnesses can unfairly convict a person and change their lives forever, even if the court’s decision is later overturned.
5. It can be changed by buying it from the witness. The testimony of an eyewitness is as reliable as the person who gave it. In order to prevent witnesses from lying about what they saw and heard, the perjury law and the witness tampering law were formulated. This does not prevent some people from bribing witnesses to say specific things.
6. It will let the perception changed to reality. Over time, the memory of a particular sequence of events began to fade. These events can be affected by other memories and perceptions. People may think they have seen something because they have seen similar events in movies or TV shows. Adrenaline at this time also affects perception.

Case Study: Trouble with Lydell Grant

Based on the identification of the lineup of six witnesses, Lydell Grant was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2012 for the murder of Texas youth Aaron Scheerhoorn, who was in Houston in 2010 Stabbed outside a nightclub. But the 6 eyewitnesses were wrong. Under the work of the Texas Innocent Project, a new DNA test on biological material collected under the victim’s fingernails cleared Grant and involved another man, Gemari Kokat, who police say admitted to the murder. Carter is now charged with murder by the grand jury and Lydell Grant is released from prison. But the trust in the witnesses was so deep that despite the vast amount of evidence that Grant was innocent, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals initially rejected his request for innocence. Instead, they asked the six witnesses who initially testified for Grant to respond to his claim of innocence. Finally, almost a year later, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that Grant was innocent on May 19, 2021. One might think that Grant is the unfortunate clone of the killer, leading to false testimony.

Conclusion

To conclude, eyewitness testimony has both advantage and disadvantage and studying about both will let to carefully examine all the faults that may be occurred during the court testimony. Eyewitness testimony is very powerful and convincing to jurors, even though it is not particularly reliable. Identification errors occur, and these errors can lead to people being falsely accused and even convicted. Likewise, eyewitness memory can be corrupted by leading questions, misinterpretations of events, conversations with co-witnesses, and their own expectations for what should have happened. People can even come to remember whole events that never occurred. A number of specific recommendations has already been made, and many of these are in the process of being implemented to improve the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. Eyewitness testimony can be of great value to the legal system, but a decade of research now argues that this testimony is often given far more weight than its accuracy justifies.

On July 17, 1982, a young woman was raped by a black man in Virginia, who approached her on a stolen bicycle, and beat her, threatened her with a gun, and raped and sodomized her. After reporting the crime, due to the perpetrator mentioning that he had a white girl at home and was black, a police officer singled out Marvin Anderson, who was an 18-year-old local black man with a white girlfriend. As Anderson had no criminal record, the officer obtained a colored employment ID from his employer as a photo which was later shown to the victim along with six other black and white mugshots of potential suspects. Marvin was falsely identified by the victim, and identified again in a live lineup, with the added detail of Anderson having a white girlfriend only confirming who she thought was the perpetrator. From the beginning of the case, the community suspected another man, John Otis Lincoln, who had stolen the bicycle involved in the rape from a man half an hour prior to the incident. Although Anderson requested for both the owner of the bicycle and Lincoln as witnesses, his counsel denied. Anderson was convicted by an all-white jury on all accounts and sentenced to 210 years imprisonment, despite being his first conflict with the law and having an alibi, as his mother, girlfriend and neighbors saw him washing his mother’s car at the time of the crime. Lincoln later confessed, but the same judge from the original trial refused to vacate the conviction. Only when his case was accepted by the Innocence Project in 1994, and they were able to win access to DNA testing in 2001, did DNA evidence exclude him as a suspect, was Anderson proven innocent. Then in 2002, Anderson received a full pardon by the Virginia Governor, Mark Warner, after spending 15 years in prison and 5 years on parole.

What Surprised Me?

What surprised me was the inadequate defense given to Anderson, and that his request for Lincoln and the bicycle owner to testify as witnesses was denied. However, the most surprising fact was that Anderson was falsely convicted despite a clear alibi supported by his mother, girlfriend and neighbors who stated that he was in the driveway washing his mother’s car at the time of the crime and the government misconduct by the jurors.

Ways that Memory Can Be Altered

The reconstructive nature of memory is a major reason that memory can be altered. By combining information stored in the long-term memory with other available information to form what seems to be a coherent and accurate memory, various alterations can occur. These can involve the addition of extra information, the simplification of information, the loss of specific or incongruent details and changes to a memory to suit a person’s knowledge and beliefs. Bridge (2012), a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, further illustrates reconstructive memory as follows: “Memories aren’t static…by remembering something in the context of a new environment and time, or in a different mood, your memories might integrate the new information”. Furthermore, Nader (Miller 2010), a neuroscientist at McGill University, concludes that “it may be impossible for humans or any other animal to bring a memory to mind without altering it in some way”, with every recollection of a memory having the potential to change it. Both Bridge and Nader highlight the plasticity of memories, and demonstrate that memory is not always a completely accurate record of a crime or event.

The Influence of Prior Knowledge, Biases and Expectations, and Interval Between Crime and Retrieval on Eyewitness Testimony

Prior knowledge, biases and expectations can affect eyewitness testimony as they can result in an inaccurate recollection of events during memory reconstruction, as we usually fill any missing gaps in memory with logic which may not always be correct. As a result, a false memory can occur, which is a fabricated or distorted recollection of an event. False memories can then cause eyewitnesses to give inaccurate information or differing accounts of the same incident. Therefore, our tendency to reconstruct memories through prior knowledge, biases and expectations can lead memories to become unreliable from witnesses, making eyewitness testimony untrustworthy.

Depending on the time of the interval between the crime and the retrieval of the memory, more details of the incident will be lost. Based on the research of Hermann Ebbinghaus in his famous set of experiments on forgetting, it has been shown that around half of a memory is lost within the first hour after learning or experiencing it. As a result, eyewitness testimony can become much more unreliable the later the memory is retrieved by a witness, and specific details of the event are lost. This eyewitness testimony can become more untrustworthy depending on the age of the victim and if there is stress or trauma involved at the time of the event.

Pros and Cons of Police Officers Wearing Body Cameras

The pros of police officers wearing body cameras are that they increase the accountability of officers and prevent officers from being accused of misconduct, they provide video footage which can be used as evidence, and increase the safety of both police and the general public. Body cameras can both detect misconduct in police officers and improve the accountability of officers and public, resulting in better interactions between law enforcement and officers. Video footage can also provide evidence in many legal proceedings, as technological evidence is unbiased, and can help to confirm eyewitness testimony. Finally, the presence of body cameras can encourage good behavior in officers and citizens, resulting in a decrease in violence, use of force or attacks on officers, reinforcing the safety of law enforcement officials and the public.

In contrast, there are also cons regarding the use of body cameras, as they can be unreliable, create a privacy concern, and are expensive to use and maintain. Despite being able to record the actions of officers and the public, they are only useful if operated properly and if pointed at the direction of the suspect or action. As a result, if a camera is not turned on before facing a suspect, or if an officer is faced with a complex situation, the camera may not capture the incident. These videos can still be interpreted and face issues with quality and storage. During incidents requiring social work by law enforcement officials, body cameras can also pose a privacy concern, being obtrusive and making it more difficult for officers to interact with youths and people who are mentally ill, or assisting with the injured and mediating disputes. Lastly, body cameras are also extremely expensive as police departments require extra staff, equipment and training, as well as data storage facilities and maintenance, ultimately making them difficult and costly to use and manage.

Suggested Procedures for Law Enforcement to Use When Collecting Eyewitness Testimony

There are many suggested procedures for law enforcement officers when collecting eyewitness testimony, such as training officers in eyewitness identification, implementing procedures for double-blind lineups, and using standardized eyewitness instructions, as recommended in the study report, ‘Identifying the Culprit’, developed by the National Research Council (NRC) (2014).

Law enforcement officers should be educated on the various factors which can affect and alter memory, and should be trained on minimizing the effects of distortions to their memories of events and incidents which could occur at a crime. Officers should also be aware of asking information using open ended questions which are non-leading to reduce the possibility of revealing information to an eyewitness. Double-blind lineups are lineups in which both the witness and the administrator do not know the potential suspect. This can prevent potential biases from the witness due to prior knowledge, or unintended expressions or comments from the administrator that could reveal the suspect, allowing the witnesses to be uninfluenced. Finally, standardized eyewitness instructions should be implemented to further reduce biases from the witness, as a standard set of instructions used during the identification process would not be revealing of who the possible perpetrator is, and if they are in the lineup or not.