The Defendant James Lawrence flies this Motion in Limine under Federal Rules of Evidence 401, 403, and 801(d)(1)(A) to admit evidence of Gale Fitzgerald’s prior drug use. FACTS On July 1, 2016, Gale Fitzgerald was working late. After work she was subject to assault and theft. She identified her attacker as a white man, approximately 5’8 to 5’10 in height, and 160-175 pounds.
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
There is a publication ban on the names of the accused [father & stepmother] to protect the identity of the boy [son] involved in this case. In the Ontario Provincial Court House in Ottawa, Robert Maranger sentenced the accused [father] to 18 years of imprisonment after Robert Maranger found the accused guilty of torturing his son. Upon sentencing, Robert Maranger made the following statement in court: “I find it extremely difficult to fathom the horrific crime you have committed against your own son. The accused [father] has been convicted of aggravated assault, forcible confinement, failure to provide necessities of life, aggravated sexual assault, and three counts of assault with a weapon.
In “Memory in Canadian Courts of Law”, Elizabeth Loftus introduces the readers to incidents in Canadian courts where “faulty memory of eyewitnesses” have unintentionally convicted innocent Canadians, causing them to carry a burden of being treated as a criminal even if they were later acquitted in order to use it as a tool to motivate those interested in the court system to display the horrendous flaw of eyewitnesses testifying in courts operating under the adversarial system such as in Canada. The flaw cannot be eliminated “unless or until better proof becomes available for these types of claims”. Ultimately, Loftus wants Canadians who cares about the legal system and the wellbeing of other Canadians who may be confronted with the possibility
9) The testimony of the woman who lived across the el tracks a) The woman testified that she witnessed the murder being committed through the window of her home and the moving el train while in bed. Juror Four recollected that the woman “‘went to bed at about eleven o’clock that night. Her bed was next to the window—and she could look out while lying down and see directly into the boy’s window across the tracks.
This essay will consider whether Robert Solomon should receive a Vye direction at the end of his trial. This will be approached from the defence position and therefore will identify the arguments to support Robert having a Vye direction. Vye directions were established in the case of Vye and are given by the judge when summing up to the jury. There are two limbs to this direction. The first limb relates to the defendant’s credibility and is only available to defendants who made pre-trial statements or give evidence.
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).
The brevity of forensic evidence pointed to a man that would be like Briscoe, but not him indefinitely; the forensic scientist, for instance, upon examining hair found at the scene stated that the hair was similar to Briscoe’s qualitatively, but had no quantitative evidence to prove the relation to the two hairs and therefore founded his conclusions on an inherent prejudice (The Innocence Project). In the end, after many long years, forensic evidence that was deemed by officials to be no longer existent was found, tested, and was found to prove Briscoe’s innocence all along. This case cost Briscoe 23 years of his life, and while faulty evidence was one of the causes of his wrongful conviction, if this case was viewed from the lens of sociology then many other factors begin to play a role in this
Guilty or not guilty, all citizens deserve a thorough trial to defend their rights. Formulating coherent stories from events and circumstances almost cost a young boy his life. In Twelve Angry Men, 1957, a single juror did his duty to save the life of an 18 year old boy by allowing his mind to rationalize the cohesive information presented by the court and its witnesses. The juror’s name was Mr. Davis, he was initially the only one of 12 jurors to vote not guilty in reason that the young boy, sentenced with first degree murder, may be innocent. I am arguing that system 1 negatively affects the jurors opinion on the case and makes it difficult for Mr. Davis to convince the other jurors of reasonable doubt.
There are a significant number of people tried for crimes that they did not commit based off of another’s repressed memory. Elizabeth Loftus made it her goal to find justice for those wrongfully accused. It is hard to say whether or not those accused are truly innocent or not, but what we can say is that too many people are being locked away without all the right evidence; just another’s memory of what might have happened. Loftus found it unlikely that any one person could forget such a traumatic experience, than remember is years later. Plenty of cases have these memory based convictions has their primary source of evidence, however, a repressed memory should not be a legit piece of evidence when attempting to convict another.
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
Part One is very informational and contains the bulk of the book’s research. The information was presented in a thesis format; Loftus stated a claim and then supported her ideas with research and quotations from experts in the field of law and memory. Part One is helpful for psychologists, attorneys, and interested law people. The major principles concerning the errors in eyewitness testimony are supported by research and are accepted by psychologists (Kassin, Ellsworth, & Smith, 1989). Part One will contribute to the future of psychology by showcasing how the memory works and the different ways it is manipulated and changed: this will allow jurors and lawyers to become more wary when dealing with a traumatized
False Confessions One of the biggest problems that our criminal justice system is facing is false confessions, whether they are coerced or done for attention. In an article written by the Innocence Project, it states "More than 1 out of every 4 people wrongfully convicted but later exonerated by DNA evidence made a false confession or incriminating statement. "(1). What would lead someone to open their lives to judgment and persecution, by confessing to a crime that they didn 't commit? There are many possible reasons, ranging from duress, ignorance when it comes to community laws, and mental impairment.
The ‘Story Model’ is the most popular model to describe decision making by a jury which rests on the assumption that jurors organize evidence in a narrative, story-like format. The reliability of the witness has also been questioned by psychologists. Many factors may affect the reliability of eyewitness evidence. One factor may be the kind of information that the witness is exposed to after the crime has occurred. This distortion in memory after exposure to post-event misinformation is known as the ‘postevent misinformation effect’ or the ‘suggestibility effect’.
Pros and Cons of Eyewitness Testimony To see is to believe. For many years, we have relied so much on our sight to validate our perception and understanding of the world around us. But just how reliable are our eyes and how trustworthy is eyewitness testimony? Eyewitness testimony is any account provided by an eyewitness, a statement made under oath (sworn statement), which is either written on paper (affidavit) or done in court (court testimony).