Civil Commitment of Sex Offenders / Eye-Witness Testimony

civil commitment

involuntary confinement of a person judged to be a danger to the self or to others, even though the person has not committed a crime

2 justifications of civil commitment

1. *police power*: gov has a responsibility to protect society
2. *parens patriae*: state has requirement to protect its citizens, esp. those unable to make rational health-related decisions

standard of law

clear + convincing evidence is about 75% certainty

How long does civil commitment last?

no limits but goal is to release someone w/regular evaluations/mandated treatment to decide that

Kansas v. Hendricks (1997)

- *first time* court said that pedophilia could be considered a mental abnormality
- upheld civil commitment, stating that it is a civil rather than criminal statute

post facto clause

forbids any new punitive measure for a crime that one has already been convicted of

What is the hierarchal importance of evidence?

1. physical evidence
2. confession
3. eye-witness testimony

eye-witness testimony

considered sig. factor in determining guilt/innocence although it's overestimated how accurate it is & has been shown to be less reliable than believed

not everything we see makes it into long-term memory

encoding failure can led to inaccurate testimony

even if something is encoded, it doesn't mean we will be able to retrieve it later

retrieval failure can lead to the reshaping of a memory/inaccurate details

interference

when processing multiple levels at once, each set of info has the potential to interfere w/the other

Yerkes-Dodson Law (emotional interference)

relationship between arousal + performance
- too much stress > impairs memory
- not enough arousal > no stimulation

weapon focus theory; Loftus

when a gun is present during a crime, the efficiency of memory goes down

expectation bias

tendency to have preconceived expectations + believe that we hear/see to fit these even when they don't

impression formation persistence

initial impression tends to stay even when there's contrary evidence

individual differences that impact testimony

- age & memory
- gendered diff. in remembering certain details
- facial recognition skills
- racial identification bias

racial identification bias; Burma & Davy

ppl are better at accurately identifying + remembering faces of the same race

persuasion, suggestion, & contamination

often unintentionally, info can enter our brain during an investigation > difficult to separate what's T/F
- ex. car accident exp