Debate: reliability of eyewitness testimony

What is an eye-witness testimony?

Legal term that refers to an account given by people of an event they have witnessed

Eye witness testimony IS useful- weapon focus

Presence of weapon can improve ewt weapon triggers fight or flight. Adrenaline gets released for eg. Norephenine in amygdala and activation of fight or flight. Stress caused by danger of weapon enhances storage memory. Not allowing people to give ewt can cause mental health problems as they want to get justice. ROLE OF EMOTION

Memory is reconstructed.

We may think we remember accurately we are continually trying to make sense of what is around us and our memory tend to be assimilated into existing schemas. Study found people recalled events incorrectly as replaced words with ones that made sense to their own cultural experience

Against this if misleading info is clearly incorrect witnesses generally more resistant to be misled and tend to stick to events they remember witnessing. Showed participants set of slides of a handbag robbery. Immediately after seeing slides 98% gave right colour of handbag. Can lead to wrong convictions 607 wrongful convictions cost 221 million

Eyewitness testimony is NOT useful- weapon focus

When a weapon is present the participant/witness is so focused on the weapon that they don’t notice anything else. Study found to support this- original weapon focus study by Johnson and Scott 1976

No weapon condition: Participants overheard a conversation about some equipment not working and then a man walked through the room holding a “grease pen”*.

Weapon condition: While participants were waiting, they heard a loud argument, crashing chairs and breaking glass next door. A man then walked through the room holding a paper-cutter knife with bloody hands.

Results: participants were asked to identify the man from 50 photographs. In Condition A, 49% of the participants correctly identified the man. In Condition B, 33% of the participants could identify the man.

People less able to report facial features if weapon present as attention diverted to weapon. Can teach people about this. Bank tellers, shop keepers to overcome this

Eyewitness testimony IS useful- age

• Davis et al (1989) reviewed literature on child eyewitnesses and came to the following conclusions:

• Children between the ages of 6-7 and 10-11 are fairly accurate in their memories of an event, they do not usually ‘make things up’

• A child’s memory is not significantly changed by adult suggestion after the event.

• These conclusions challenge claims made by other researchers that EWT from a child is inaccurate.

• Anastasi and Rhodes

• Therefore, a witness to a crime committed by someone of a similar age is likely to be more accurate suggesting older and younger witnesses CAN be reliable.

Eyewitness testimony is NOT useful- age

• Children may be particularly unreliable due To their desire to please adults, there are more affected by suggestion and prone To fantasy

• A group of 9-year-olds and a group of 14-year-olds were introduced to a confederate. Later in the day they were asked to pick a photo of the confederate from a line up up, even though their photo wasn’t present.

• 9-year-olds chose a photo from the line-up. whilst 14-year-olds didn’t.

• It was suggested that younger children are more likely to make a false identification as they have been reinforced to trust adults from a young age and their desire to please adults overrides their desire to be accurate.

• Schaefer et al 1991

• Therefore, an eyewitness testimony account from a very young or old person is more likely to contain errors and be unreliable.

Eye witness testimony IS useful- memory may be reconstructive but isn’t easily altered

• In many crimes the victim knows the perpetrator of the crime therefore they do not need to refer to their schemas making their EWT reliable.

• Rape Crisis reports that 90% of rapists are known to their victims meaning they are able to correctly identify their attacker.

• Most research into reliability of EWT is carried out in lab environments therefore the findings may not be generalizable to real life EWT.
  Yuile and Cutshall found that eye witnesses for a real life armed robbery were still accurate 4 months after the event and despite 2 pieces of misleading information.

• If memory is reconstructive then it would be expected that the witnesses recollections would have faded and become less accurate over time. However, Yuille CutshaIl’s research clearly shows the opposite and that real life EWT IS accurate.

Eye witness testimony is NOT useful- memories are constructive- affected by schemas

• Schemas help us process information quickly however this can lead to distortions in memory.

• e.g. in your ‘criminal’ schema, you will have an expectation of what a criminal will look like.

• Yarmey (1993) asked 240 students to look at videos of 30 unknown males and classify them as either ‘good or ‘bad’ guys.

• They found that there was high agreement suggesting there is similarity in information stored in ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guy schemas.

• This suggests that due to schemas, eyewitnesses may pick the person who most looks like a criminal rather than the actual criminal and therefore be inaccurate.

Ethical implications?

Huff et al (1986) reported that nearly 60% of 500 cases of wrongful convictions involved eyewitness identification errors. This has serious
implications ethical implications for both the victim of the crime and the wrongly convicted. The victim will not get the justice they deserve. The wrongly convicted may spend time in prison, suffer reputational damage, experience the breakdown of relationships with loved ones and carry a criminal record. The ability to convict on the basis EWT alone when it may be inaccurate raises big ethical concerns.

Social implications?

There are social implications when EWT results In the wrong person being convicted this means that the real perpetrator is able to walk free in society and commit further crimes. Therefore, unreliable EWT poses a
threat to the safety of society.
- HOWEVER, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE} 1984/1995 offers a code of practice concerning carrying out identification attempts. eg: leading questions cannot be asked. This should help make EWT more accurate and lead to less incorrect convictions