Summaries of Several Articles on Aspects of Law

In this article, eyewitness testimony is argued to be convincing enough to juries that even in the absence of any other proof of guilt it is often enough to send a defendant to jail for life (About, 1997). Iowa State Psychologist Gary Wells maintains that eyewitnesses often make mistakes but "they can also be highly confident even when they're wrong" (About, 1997, p. 18). This article presents the results of eyewitness testimony research conducted on 172 college students asked to watch a murder captured on a convenience store video tape. Researchers then offered the students a book of photos, the method used by detectives that results in identification 80 percent of the time, and found that even though the real perpetrator was not pictured every student chose someone in the picture book. Researchers then split up, with some of them whispering the students had made the right choice to some participants and saying others had chosen incorrectly to some. Half of those who heard encouraging comments were "quite convinced" they were right (About, 1997, p. 18). This shows that detectives can easily corrupt eyewitness testimo

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