The first thing we need to discuss is what the ideal eyewitness should be and how they are in the judicial system. The eyewitness’ testimony is taken as the fundamental criterion, and the person should be able to perceive all that transpired during the event, accurately encode these perceptions, exhaustively store the encoded perceptions in memory, and accurately retrieve the encodings from memory in the form of later reports (Penrod, 121). I personally feel that eyewitnesses should be honest no matter what, even if they committed the crime. The trial would not be a long investigation if people owned their mistakes. Also when there are lots of witnesses the investigation can change multiple times and feel like the whole thing is starting back at square one. …show more content…
Eyewitnesses in the judicial system have lots of roles. They are called upon to make identifications at two points in the legal process. First during the investigation of suspects, they may be called upon to help compose a facial composite using a “photo-kit,” examine mug shots, pick a suspect out of a photo-spread, or make an identification from a live lineup. Second thing is the eyewitness may be called upon during the prosecution of defendants to make an identification in a courtroom trial (Penrod, 149). Characteristics of the eyewitness may profoundly affect the performance (Penrod, 157). We cannot define everybody to have the same characteristics or personality. Everybody is unique in their own way, and due to that, we have to carefully rely on eyewitness testimonies and their reliability. Overall, we need the eyewitness to be truthful and not making the investigation much harder to determine the person who committed the
Eyewitness accounts play a huge role in general in trials and verdicts, but may be unreliable many times, with certain views placed on evidence provided by children. Unreliability may arise from not being able to recount the identity of the accused, the actions and speech occurring during that time, the relationship of individuals towards the person in question, and many
The case highlights the problems associated with flawed eyewitness identification, prosecutorial misconduct, and inadequate legal representation. By addressing these issues through comprehensive reforms, such as improving eyewitness identification procedures, increasing accountability for prosecutors, and providing adequate resources for public defenders, we can work towards a more just and equitable system. The case of Lamar Johnson not only underscores the importance of rectifying individual wrongful convictions but also emphasizes the broader implications for our society and the urgent need for criminal justice
Syed is spending his fifteen years behind the bars because of Wilds’ testimony; however, throughout the four interviews with the police and at the trial testimony, Wilds provided different statements that made his word a part of invalid evidence of Syed’s guilty. Eyewitness is not the most reliable evidence, for mistakes can be made if a witness misleads the information. In Syed’s case, it is clearly that Wilds was not a reliable person based on his rapidly changing testimony. According to Richard. R Stack, a lawyer and an associate professor at the American University, an eyewitness is only reliable if s/he met all psychological processes, such as acquisition, storage, and retrieval (Stack 88).
Intense training and testing has to happen within all branches of law enforcement. A great teaching method would be to actually put forensics on trial, dissect its entire process relative to eyewitness accounts, stress, and memory. Moreover, as difficult as it is to put any victim through, great benefit can be had from a professional not connected to the investigation, have the victim recount why she/ he is sure they picked the right person. Chances are they will have to all over again if they pick more
Through her own traumatizing personal experiences, Jennifer Thompson has the profound experience to advocate against the strength of eyewitness testimony. As found in her case, the eyewitness testimony that she gave against Ronald Cotton, the accused rapist, was most likely the piece of evidence that put him behind bars. Thompson was a college student with a 4.0 GPA who studied the face of her attacker in order to identify him to the police. She prepared for the identification. She was the perfect eyewitness.
Effects of post identification feedback on eyewitness identification and nonidentification confidence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 334–346. Lindsay, R., & Wells, G. (1985). Improving eyewitness identification from lineups: Simultaneous versus sequential lineup presentations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 70, 556–564.
There are many factors that contribute to a wrongful conviction. Eyewitness misidentification is the greatest cause. The mind is not a tape recorder; it does not record events exactly as it’s seen. Sometimes the witness or victim would choose the wrong person at photo arrays and lineups. The memory of a witness in a crime scene is like any other evidence it must be preserved carefully.
For instance, if an eyewitness misidentifies a person whom they believe to be the suspect and report that person to the police and the “suspect” reacts out of anger when stopped by police causing an altercation to take place, which often times may be physical. Now that person may be facing charges for a crime they didn’t commit and also may be facing charges for the altercation that occurred during the arrest for the crime they didn’t commit. It is extremely important for eyewitnesses to have a clear and convincing description of the suspect because it can easily cause further complications. It can also ruin an innocent persons life if they are wrongfully convicted of the crime because of the
Although, most witnesses are reluctant to stand up and testify against a prosecutor in any case, it is the fear of one’s safety and witness intimidation which is the reason many are hesitant to take action. An individual witness a violent crime in the neighborhood, and is able to identify the perpetrator, he should contact the authorities and testify against the criminal. Whenever someone is a witness to a crime, one’s should feel guilty if it is not reported. The witness of any crime should have integrity and do what is right and not fear what may happen because their rights are protected by the law. If you’ve witnessed a crime you should report it because you could potentially save someone’s life, and help put away a dangerous threat to
Witnesses to crimes are sometimes asked to view a police lineup to see if they can identify the culprit. Using experimentally created events, psychological researchers have long warned that eyewitness identification evidence is less reliable than people seem to believe. Corroborating the concerns of psychologists, since the advent of forensic DNA testing in the 1990s, 258 people convicted by juries in the United States have been freed based on exculpatory DNA tests, and 200 of these were cases of mistaken eyewitness identification (Innocence Project, 2010). Examination of the reasons for these mistaken identifications has provided rich avenues of investigation guided by cognitive and social perspectives. Here we focus on (a) variables that
This week’s topic was very interesting to learn about how important eyewitnesses can be when a crime and accidents do occur. In the case that was presented in the 60-minute segment of Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson is exactly how legal system can fail us when it comes to the eyewitnesses’ identification testimony and how a person’s perception and memory can be altered. The aspect of psychology and law research from this week’s course material is most relevant to the topic of perception and memory. The memory has different stages the first is encoding the process of entering perception into memory.
This creates a major issue within a judicial system. It takes a few eye witness testimonies towards the prosecuted individual to incarcerate them, even if they did not commit the crime. It is because of this reason that Scott Fraser chooses to speak out against eye witness testimonies. In his speech, he argues that memory is fallible and should not be as heavily relied upon within the judicial system.
Luckily, it is known what causes wrongful convictions and how to fix them. Many wrongful convictions are due to mistaken eyewitnesses, jailhouse snitches, or false evidence. I think many of the wrongful convictions could be solved with harder evidence, more information. A case should not rely on a single eye witness but multiple.
Furthermore, there can be several factors at play when a wrongful conviction occurs and each case is unique. Three of the more common and detrimental factors that will be explored in this essay are eyewitness error, the use of jailhouse informants and professional and institutional misconduct. Firstly, eyewitness testimony can be a major contributor to a conviction and is an important factor in wrongful conviction (Campbell & Denov, 2016, p. 227). Witness recall and, frankly, the human emory are not as reliable as previously thought. In fact there has been much research showing the problems with eyewitness testimony such as suggestive police interviewing, unconscious transference, and malleability of confidence (Campbell & Denov, 2016, p.227).
This clearly sows that the memory is an active process and is expected to alter an opinion based on understanding society (Simple Psychology, 2014) . Eyewitness testimony is unethical as the evidence that is supplied can be provided by someone with stress or anxiety issues this can assist by distraught the image of the suspect. Wrongfully sending an innocent individual to prison. Bloods worth’s case displays it is unethical as there was no psychical evidence nor appearance matched that supported Bloodsworth was responsible for the murder and rape of the victim. Three eyewitnesses were able to identify the perpetrator out of the five and this was based from evidence that he was spotted with the young girl hours earlier before the crime was