Eyewitness testimony

asserted that “perception is a constructive representation of reality”. What it means is that we conceive memories with biases and based on our experiences. We are not viewing the world as it is, but the way our brain is designed. In the reading, “Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Bias”, Laney and Loftus, supports this thesis by commenting on that people make mistakes in their memories by mixing up details and places across time and “because many aspects of our everyday lives are full of…

reliability of the minds cognitive processes is memory. Memory is a very significant part of eye-witness testimony (EWT) which is a statement given by people that were either involved in an event or witnessed the event. EWT is vital in the criminal justice system as a way of testifying in criminal trials and relies solely on the accuracy of the person’s memory. Therefore, it is a very important that the testimony is reliable as it often has the power to determine one’s future. Before recent…

Adam Liptak wrote an article in The New York Times about reliability of witnesses testimonies and judges discretion to include or exclude such testimonies in the court. This article came in light after the Supreme Court ruling on the same issue at hand. The Court and multiple studies all suggest how “unusually problematic and unusually persuasive” eyewitness testimonies are (Liptak, 2011, para. 1). In Barion Perry's case, the members of the court did not seem moved to challenge the…

courts require eyewitness testimony from people at to scene of the crime to help convict the person being tried. However, most trials don’t happen immediately after the crime and it could take up to a year or even longer. That could lead to many inaccuracies in those testimonies because “the content of our memories can easily change over time” (Chabris and Simons). In a situation where if too much of the memories change over the long wait for the trial, the eyewitness testimonies might have…

The film Twelve Angry Men (1957) exhibited the power of an eyewitness, the characteristics of the defendant, and the power of group influence that affects the jury. Throughout the film, the reliability of the eyewitness was questioned. There were two eyewitnesses in the movie, the old man, who lives in the apartment below of the crime scene, and the old woman, who lives across the street. According to the film, there is a possibility that the eyewitnesses misinformed the jury about the crime…

on events. Eyewitness testimony plays a huge role in determining research within human reconstructive memory and cognitive psychology. These two terms elaborate on the cognitive processes through language, and imagination by the given account received by individuals that witnessed a certain event. Loftus & Palmer believed that individuals tended to overestimate the recalling of events on memory. Thus, they believed that providing leading questions could distort the eyewitness testimony accounts;…

Witness testimonies are often unreliable due to the nature of human memory. For this discussion, 'testimony ' will be used loosely to represent a statement, written or spoken, made by any person claiming to have seen or experienced anything relating to their respective case. The chosen scope for this discussion is cases of sexual assault because very often in such cases the only evidence presented is a testimony, either by the victim or a witness. Aside from the aforementioned, DNA evidence has…

Psychological research shows eyewitness testimony, detailing events observed during the commission of a crime, has a high probability of containing significant memory errors. In response to these findings, the question is should witness testimony still be admissible in a court of law? Obviously, the answer to this question is an important one, and, is debatable depending on who you ask. Consequently, what we know is many innocent people are falsely imprisoned due to eyewitness…

When one thinks of memory, they usually think of past events that happened or something that they had learned. Although one can recall certain memories, can they recall every single detail? This semester, we were asked to recall the events of a day that happened six weeks prior to the beginning of class. While some students could explain some details of what they had done that day, not all could be certain. Details may not seem to be that important when telling a story from a childhood…

old boy that would go on to spend 20 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Hunt was convicted based on eye-witness testimony and informants, but was later exonerated based on DNA evidence that matched a man that was caught just a few months after the murder took place. This case is an exemplar of the strength of DNA evidence and the fragility of eyewitness testimony. When 911 was called on the morning of the murder, the caller identified himself as Sammy Mitchell. This man was friends…