Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Psychologists have probed the reliability of eyewitness testimony since the beginning of the 20th century. [1] One prominent pioneer was Hugo Münsterberg, whose controversial book On the Witness Stand (1908) demonstrated the fallibility of eyewitness accounts, but met with fierce criticism, particularly in legal circles. [2]
Although eyewitness testimony is often assumed to be more reliable than circumstantial evidence, studies have established that individual, separate witness testimony is often flawed. [4] Mistaken eyewitness identification may result from such factors as faulty observation and recollection, or bias, or may involve a witness's knowingly giving ...
In eyewitness identification, in criminal law, evidence is received from a witness "who has actually seen an event and can so testify in court". [1]The Innocence Project states that "Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing."
Eyewitness memory is a person's episodic memory for a crime or other witnessed dramatic event. [1] Eyewitness testimony is often relied upon in the judicial system.It can also refer to an individual's memory for a face, where they are required to remember the face of their perpetrator, for example. [2]
Cognitive interviewing can impair an eyewitness's ability to accurately identify a face in comparison to a standard police interview. Though this problem can be resolved by implementing a short delay of as little as 30 minutes, if interviewers are unaware of the need for a delay, the impairment caused by cognitive interviewing strategies could ...
The rule excluding hearsay arises from a concern regarding the statement's reliability. Courts have four principal concerns with the reliability of witness statements: the witness may be lying (sincerity risk), the witness may have misunderstood the situation (narration risk), the witness's memory may be wrong (memory risk), and the witness's perception was inaccurate (perception risk). [8]
Amicus curiae briefs were filed by the American Psychological Association, [4] the Innocence Network, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. [5]The U.S. Supreme Court [6] delivered its 8–1 decision on January 11, 2012, deciding that judicial examination of eyewitness testimony was required only in the case of police misconduct.
Eyewitness testimony is frequently unreliable, or subject to conflict or outright fabrication. For example, the RMS Titanic sank in the presence of approximately 700 witnesses. For many years, there was vigorous debate on whether the ship broke into two before sinking. [ 9 ]