In the United States, people have been and continue to be wrongfully convicted by eyewitnesses. A majority of those convictions have been overturned by DNA testing (Yarmey, 2001). Eyewitness testimony is unreliable based on the findings psychologists have discovered through the research and study of memory.
The Case for Expert Testimony about Eyewitness Memory, an article written by Michael Leipee, is sure to make known the importance of psychology in the courtroom. Eyewitness testimony is known as weak argument in the court of law, as a judge may appoint a knowledgeable psychologist as an expert authority. The psychologist may be put on stand to show the jury recently discovered research about recollection and the vulnerability memory. The expert testimony uses scientific evidence to help jurors in understanding what the witness may have interpreted and what the defendant may have done (Leippe, 1995). With more research on memory being executed, it is easy find evidence of how little a person can recollect. …show more content…
The writing focuses on an experiment done on subjects who average the age of nineteen to test their memory recall. Two hundred and eight freshmen in college were divided in to small, not number specific, groups. In the group they watched a two minute video made to look like a surveillance tape of a violent robbery taking place. The scale was set from one to seven; one being no detail recalled and seven being full detail recalled. A hundred and nineteen male students averaged a four point six for where the incident took place (Areh, 2011). This experiment was focuses on the differences between male and female memory recall but further data analysis will show that even the best memory can recall a little over half of one piece of evidence in a crime
The Case for Expert Testimony about Eyewitness Memory, an article written by Michael Leipee, is sure to make known the importance of psychology in the courtroom. Eyewitness testimony is known as weak argument in the court of law, as a judge may appoint a knowledgeable psychologist as an expert authority. The psychologist may be put on stand to show the jury recently discovered research about recollection and the vulnerability memory. The expert testimony uses scientific evidence to help jurors in understanding what the witness may have interpreted and what the defendant may have done (Leippe, 1995). With more research on memory being executed, it is easy find evidence of how little a person can recollect. …show more content…
The writing focuses on an experiment done on subjects who average the age of nineteen to test their memory recall. Two hundred and eight freshmen in college were divided in to small, not number specific, groups. In the group they watched a two minute video made to look like a surveillance tape of a violent robbery taking place. The scale was set from one to seven; one being no detail recalled and seven being full detail recalled. A hundred and nineteen male students averaged a four point six for where the incident took place (Areh, 2011). This experiment was focuses on the differences between male and female memory recall but further data analysis will show that even the best memory can recall a little over half of one piece of evidence in a crime