Problems with Eyewitness Testimony

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

Related Essays

Neorobiological Basis of Memory Introduction Memory is a .... who have organic brain disorders leading to memory problems have led .... paradigm, encoding paradigms, repetitions paradigms, and the eyewitness testimony paradigm .... (2936 12 )

Children as Witnesses in Court .... can be carefully established in order to minimize problems with testimony .... Witness testimony, including eyewitness testimony, has always been subject to more .... (2023 8 )

DNA fingerprinting evidence .... problems associated with other types of identification, such problems being the .... traditional methods of proof such as alibis and eyewitness testimony until its .... (3144 13 )

HYPNOSIS and Memory Recall .... of hypnosis in memory recall by citing their methodological problems. .... In GL Wells, & EF Loftus (Eds.), Eyewitness testimony psychological perspectives (pp. .... (3090 12 )

Indian Wars & Battle of Wounded Knee .... Another survivor eyewitness, Joseph Black Hair, began his account with .... of both the hazards of testimony and the .... A more concise summary of the problems faced by .... (10951 44 )

Category: Government - P