Eyewitness Testimony Essay

practitioners alike share a widespread belief that the single greatest cause of wrongful conviction is because of an eyewitness testimony. April 23, 2007, marked the 200th criminal conviction exonerated by DNA evidence in the United States of America. According to www.innocenceproject.org, over 75% of the 200 criminal cases revealed to be wrongful convictions involved a faulty eyewitness testimony. Collectively, these 200 people spent a total of 2,475 years in prison. With factors such as witness memory,

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. Loftus and Palmer conducted their research using two laboratory experiments. By using this method, the IV (the verb used) directly effects the DV (estimate of speed) which creates a cause and effect relationship

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

Eyewitness testimony often serves as direct evidence and has strong influences on juries during trial. While these testimonies are invaluable there has been a lot DNA exoneration that shows the flaws in eyewitness identification, leading to false convictions. A pre-trial identification is important in establishing eyewitness testimony. There are multiple types of identification used to make a positive ID, though lineups and showing photos are used the most. Unfortunately, misidentifications

is not caused by the act of forming a memory. My personal experience of trying to remember my surgeons name under stress was made extremely difficult because of distortion caused by my emotions. The students referenced in "The Problem with Eyewitness Testimony: Commentary on a talk by George Fisher and Barbara Tversky" used recognition, remembering something with the help of a stimulus or related aid, based on bias and expectation rather than distortion in the memory being formed. When a group of

Various factors play into a juror’s decision about a defendant’s guilt and sentence. Two great issues are in regards to eyewitness testimony and a defendant’s characteristics that serve to be great influences on a juror’s decision (Shermer, Rose, & Hoffman, 2011; Sommers, 2007). Research has shown that an eyewitness’ credibility also has a large effect on a juror’s decision (Pozzulo & Dempsey, 2009). When a discredited witness is introduced in a study, it can greatly influence the decision of whether

people think things happened that never truly happened. Eyewitness testimony has always played an important role as evidence in the courts system. Juries on a trial tend to believe eyewitness testimony over any other evidence, even if other evidence differs from the eyewitness testimony. When little other evidence is presented, eyewitness testimony tends to be the primary focus. Many wrongful convictions have occurred due to these false eyewitness statements. According to George Vallas, in “A survey

I knew that eyewitness testimony was faulty and not always as reliable as investigators would like it to be, but I was astounded to find out that 70% of innocent people who had been exonerated had been convicted because of eyewitness testimony. It is crazy to think about how many innocent people may be sitting in prison, wasting away, because of their wrongful conviction. I liked that they stated that a non-witness should not be able to identify a suspect from a photo lineup based solely on their

Unreliability of Eyewitness Testimony, as a Result of Leading Questions Eyewitness testimony is a legal term that refers to an account given by individuals of an event they have witnessed. Juries tend to pay close attention to eyewitness testimony and generally find it a reliable source of information. However, research into this area has found that eyewitness testimony can be affected by many psychological factors. Loftus and Palmer (1974) Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus conducted a study in

There has been several previous finding of studies confirmed that eyewitness testimony is unreliable sources. The presence of unintentional phrases (e.g., pause, or phrases such as “um”, and “uh”) as part of an eyewitness testimony often assume as indication for doubt or uncertainty. This study examined the presence of unintentional items that accompanied the correctly recalled information. This study was conducted with forty-two undergraduate students, divided into two groups. It employed a 2