Zhaorong Tu, Week 14: The Case Against Eyewitnesses
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| via Colby College Community Web |
Eyewitness accounts are traditionally considered to be some of the most convincing forms of evidence in criminal trials. I’m sure we’ve all seen dramatized uses of eyewitnesses in popular movies and shows, where the testifying witness accuses the defendant or identifies a weapon that results in a surefire conviction. Even though such testimony is heavily dependent on the infallibility of human memory, it’s often still offered in court to reveal the truth behind a crime, recount its exact events, and detail all necessary information from the crime to the day of the trial.
There seems to be so much trust put into a form of testimony that’s likely overvalued for its accuracy. The Innocence Project details a countless number of cases in which people have been wrongly convicted, often due to faulty witness testimony. For death sentences alone, there’s been a recorded 46 cases in which eyewitness testimony has falsely sent innocent people to death row. And that database is only limited only to wrongful convictions that have been overturned, which often required extraneous efforts from outside investigators or previously unknown witnesses coming forward to reveal the truth. There’s even been records of witnesses misidentifying people that differ from them in race, leading to a disproportionately high amount of convictions for minority defendants.
But why do jurors still place so much faith in the direct accounts of witnesses? Crimes are typically traumatic, terrifying, or stressful events, which leads to the perception that they are easily memorable. However, stressful stimulants in an individual's environment have been shown to reduce the accuracy of their testimony, even increasing the rate of memory decay in some cases. In addition, eyewitness testimony often comes with a degree of confidence, as witnesses tend to stick to their version of the events regardless of any unconscious memory distortions that may have taken place.
Memory biases such as the misinformation effect directly alter a witness’s understanding of a series of events with the information that they’re exposed to afterward. Pressure to convict may lead to faulty identifications, especially in police lineups and in criminal testimonies. Facts like times and places that are essential to a case can easily be mixed up. In a perfect world, there would be security video and audio recordings of every major crime that took place. Unfortunately, since that rarely happens, we’re still limited to the inaccuracies of witness testimonies and whatever physical evidence is available.
Hi Zhaorong! I don't invest in crime related media that often, but I have experienced quite a few different ones, and I never even noticed the problems with eye witnesses, except for in To Kill a Mockingbird. I always get really frustrated when the good guys require so many extra steps to get enough evidence to convict the person who is obviously the bad guy as there are usually unnecessary casualties because of this obligation. I was glad that didn't happen in In Cold Blood as they were able to quickly get a confession directly from Dick and Perry. It is quite unfortunate that 46 people have unjustly died because of incompetent eye witnesses and the jury's reliance on them.
ReplyDeleteHey Zhaorong, you discuss a really important facet of the legal system in your blog post this week, as well as indicate that a lot of weight is placed on eyewitness testimony despite statistics indicating that a more-than-expected amount of them are faulty and false. Wrongful convictions have been made as a result of these faulty recollections, impacted by a wide variety of circumstances, whether it be high stress misunderstandings, odd shapes being perceived as weapons, personal biases, or even suggestions and questions from interrogators or officers that might lead them to confirm different versions of their stories that could fit what they saw. Because of this, I'm glad that substantial evidence needs to provided in conjunction with these testimonies in order to definitively create a judgement or ruling.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that eyewitnesses are completely impartial, have the best interests of the law in mind, and actually viewed the crime or are witness to it and wanted to testify is practically impossible. There have, as you have written, a "countless" amount of court cases that have led to citizens being falsely convicted simply due to incorrect eyewitnesses. Then there are the cases where the eyewitness is not at fault and simply does not have the ability to go up on stand and be useful but does so nonetheless. Then there is bribery and perjury, then there is the police department. The legal system plays far too much emphasis on eyewitness testimony when there are much more reliable forms of testimony.
ReplyDeleteHello Zhaorong, I never realized that eyewitness testimony is such a big part of the court system, although it makes a lot of sense. As a kid, I would always think about how bribery could come into play during testimonies. However, I never thought about the other factors that could mess up an eyewitness testimony. I agree that the eyewitness testimony is not a very great way to come to a decision, but that sort of leads to a next question. Is there a better form of testimony out there, and if so what is it?
ReplyDeleteHi Zhaorong, your blog was very interesting. I had never really considered the accuracy of eyewitnesses in the justice system before. I agree with you that there are a lot of problems with relying on eyewitnesses. First of all, there are implicit biases, and the misinformation effect, which makes witnesses believe that they saw things that they actually did not. The actual stress of witnessing a crime scene is also undoubtedly a huge obstacle that prevents witnesses from having a perfect memory of the event. In addition, eyewitnesses can also easily be bribed or threatened to falsify information. Thus, it can be really hard to get accurate information out of eyewitnesses because of the imperfect human memory and other biases and corruption. It is also tragic that 46 people have died because of false information from eyewitnesses. However, at the same time, I think that the judicial system does not have a better alternative. If there are no cameras in the area of the crime scene, then the only way the truth can be uncovered is by asking eyewitnesses for their memory of the event. This memory might not be perfectly accurate but it is necessary. Criminals can easily build their defense against other mechanisms such as lie detector tests or matching for fingerprints. Ultimately, I think that it is important that the legal system takes eyewitness accounts with a grain of salt, but these accounts are still necessary.
ReplyDeleteHi Zhaorong, this was a really interesting blog post for me as I never thought about whether witnesses would actually incorrectly recall information about a case, without explicitly lying. It's just another blemish on our justice system, but also it's hard to not include eyewitnesses' testimonies on a case because they are beneficial to a jury's decision, as you mentioned. It becomes a matter of trying to figure out whether the witnesses' testimonies are totally accurate, which is obviously a hard thing to do. Whenever I think of witnesses and court, I always think of the "Legally Blonde" scene which is funny since you mention in the beginning of your blog post that those are largely dramatized. It's nice to think courts work the same way though.
ReplyDeleteHi Zhaorong! The eyewitness accounts that are usually found as the most cogent and convincing type of evidence are most likely depicted in criminal trials. I do agree that at times, the eyewitness trials themselves could include a set of offerings on predictions that could be made based on older events; however, this information could also like you said include “infallibility of human error” since they were generated by human beings. Many schools, in fact, also face a lot of budget cuts that could cause inaccuracies to arise since there is no physical evidence to back up claims that could be brought up by a possible victim from another end. Regardless, I feel we tend to heavily rely on these witnesses who might have biases of their own that could pass over misinterpreted information from multiple sources. Thank you for shedding light on this problem and I hope to read more!
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