Key Question - Criminal Flashcards
Is Eye-Witness Testimony too unreliable to trust?
Intro - Eyewitness testimony is the account a bystander or victim gives in the courtroom, describing what that person observed that occurred during the specific incident under investigation. Despite being v. compelling and often playing an important role in the juror’s decision, they can often be wrong. The Innocence Project found that, in a study of 350 cases of wrongful convictions, 70% of those were due to inaccurate EWT. Such as in the case of Ron Cotton, in which the victim of a rape was certain it was him who had committed the crime. After 20 years incarcerated, DNA evidence proved it was indeed not Ron Cotton and he had wrongfully been convicted as a result of EWT.
Leading questions can seriously impact the accuracy of recall. It is a form of post-event information. Loftus & Palmer’s (1974) Study on this showed the effect of leading questions - Smashed estimate was 40.8mph, ‘contacted’ was 31.8mph. Experiment 2 found ppts. said they saw glass when there wasn’t any more depending on the verb used - smashed 16 said yes, 7 for hit, 6 in control group. Further improving reliability of L&P’s Research. This research indicates how impressionable human memory is and how it can be manipulated after the event using leading questions, which could be manipulated for personal gain by prosecutors in court. This implies that EWT is too unreliable to be used alone in convictions, which it no longer is. If it is used members of the jury should be cautious on how much weight it holds and laws should be in place on how prosecutors can talk to witnesses to prevent distortion of recall.
However, Hirst believes that events that leave an emotional impact are recalled for a much longer time - he called these ‘flashbulb memories’. This is supported by Yuille & Cutshall’s 1986 study on a shooting case in Canada. 13 Witnesses reported high levels of anxiety (over 5 on 7 point scale) but still accurately recalled events despite the introduction of 2 leading questions. This may have been because the event had an emotional impact on them so was a ‘flashbulb memory’. This contradicts L&P’s conclusion that EWT is unreliable and easily manipulated by post-event information. It also has much higher ecological validity as it is a case study, rather than a lab experiment in which ppts. felt no stress or trauma. For society this indicates that EWT is a reliable source of information, but this should be cautiously considered as there is opposing evidence and this is also a fairly small sample size, one event cannot be taken as true for every criminal event.
Bartlett’s Reconstructive Memory further states how unreliable memory can be. He states that gaps in our memory are filled using schemas, packages of information that is individual to us and our experiences, thus everybody schemas are different - this is supported in his War of the Ghosts research. As a result, different people may have witnessed the exact same event, but recall it differently. This reinforces the idea that EWT is too unreliable to trust.
In 1975, Carol DaRonch identified Ted Bundy, leading to the conviction of the notorious serial killer. Ignoring EWT could also lead to a miscarriage of justice as it is not always inaccurate. Cognitive interviewing could be used to enhance reliability of EWT, as shown by Gieselman. Denying usefulness of EWT would mean greater reliance on forensic evidence which can also lead to a miscarriage of justice as DNA can be present at a crime scene even if the person was never there through secondary transfer.
On balance, there is evidence that EWT is both reliable and unreliable. However, in a topic which is so important and so crucial in determining the outcome of somebody’s life, the amount of caution that should be taken cannot be overstated. If there are any inaccuracies in EWT used in a conviction, it could have an immensely negative impact on the defendant’s life, and therefore, while it shouldn’t be considered too unreliable to trust, as it can be very useful as supporting evidence in cases, it should never be used alone to convict, or when other evidence is insignificant.
