Eyewitness Testimony

Eyewitness Testimony

Jeremiah Muscan

Grand Canyon University: PSY 102

October 20, 2018

Eyewitness Testimony

        Every time something bad happens or just a big event occurs there usually is someone on the site who saw what happened. And then they are asked to recall of what just happened. And this is called an Eyewitness Testimony, and they are to account what they just witnessed in the crime scene. Testimonies can be very powerful in the right circumstances and can give someone total justice. But you have the other side of it where someone is wrongly convicted of a crime they did not commit. The question everyone is asking is that whether or not should eyewitness testimonies be allowed. First, we have to understand that the justice system is not perfect and there are flaws in it. But on the other side of it is you have someone on the podium pointing out who the perpetrator is, and they choose the wrong one. And that person spends so many years in jail for being wrongfully convicted.  So, Eyewitness Testimonies should not be allowed because they are not reliable and have been so many cases where people have been wrongly convicted and ruins their whole life because of it.  

Article One

In the research that was conducted, it was showing mugshots of potential perpetrators who could have committed this crime. And the person was asked to point and choose out the real criminal (Kersten, A., 2017). When the bystander who saw what happened was asked to point out the real person their short term and long-term memory was being shown on what they actually saw. The victim was taking their face and mixing it with other people they saw throughout that whole scene. (Kersten, A., 2017). And the results shown in their research was that the perpetrator that was chosen was wrongfully convicted because the victim mixed the body of the real perpetrator with the face of another victim (Kersten, A., 2017).

Article Two

Researchers have shown and demonstrated that false information lead to people reporting events that never actually happened (Wade, 2010). The Misinformation comes in so many different forms, such as a leading question or even a co-witness’s testimony. Which can dramatically alter the whole eyewitness testimony which leads to someone being wrongly convicted for a crime they did not commit (Wade, 2010). They have found that digital video has changed a person’s thought of what they that actually saw, and it combined their original pictures in their mind with someone and mad it into someone else. This has altered their memory of who they think they saw commit this crime and led them to choosing the wrong person in the experiment that was conducted (Wade, 2010).

Reliability

        Based on the founding’s that were found it was shown clearly that eyewitness testimony is not reliable, and they are not able to find the right perpetrator hundred percent of the time. And the justice system needs to be able to be a hundred percent right because they are dealing with someone else’s life (Wade, 2010). If they chose the wrong person because someone else think they saw them commit the crime. Then someone else is going to jail for so many years and it ruins their life in so many ways. The justice system can fix the mistakes they make but they can never fix the time they took from the victim (Kersten, A., 2017). Time is something we can never get back and never can undo. Time is precious, so they need to be a hundred percent right that it is the right criminal and if they can’t then eyewitness testimony is unreliable.