Problems with Eyewitness Testimony
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The American legal system places much importance and value on eyewitness testimony, and the public at large also seems to see such testimony as reliable. Given the fact that there are strong indications that such evidence is highly unreliable, this fact is troubling in a system that depends so heavily on jurors to know when to accept such testimony and when to reject it. An examination of some of the research findings shows that there is a need for jurors to be given more guidance in how to interpret eyewitness testimony either from the court or as a matter of course by the defense attorney. Cognitive psychology shows that there is a problem with the blind acceptance of eyewitness reliability, but we should also realize that overcoming the tendency of jurors to accept such testimony on its face will be a difficult undertaking. People tend to believe what they see with their own eyes, and when they become jurors, they put themselves in the place of the eyewitness and think that they can again believe in the reliability of their "own" senses.We are all familiar with classroom demonstrations of eyewitness unreliability--even if we have never experienced such a test ourselves, we have seen it depicted on television and in movies. Scrivner and Safer (1988) report on such a test, in this case with the use of a videotape instead of a live "perpetrator." The videotape is unusually dense with details, showing 47 violent and nonviolent details of a burglary in a two minute peri
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Scrivner Safer, Treadway McCloskey, , eyewitness testimony, Social Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Applied Psychology, racial stereotypes, scrivner safer, treadway mccloskey, Brigham JC, MA Safer, play role, eyewitness identification, accept testimony, M McCloskey, eyewitness identification accuracy, relationship confidence, cognitive psychology, reports expectations, jurors accept testimony,
Approximate Word count = 1079
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page)
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