Eyewitnesses

Eyewitnesses:

Criminal Cases, Reliability, and Reducing Error

An eyewitness is someone who sees something happen, and in the Criminal Justice System, when officers are trying to identify a suspect, it makes their job easier if there is an eyewitness who can describe and/or identify the person accused of committing the crime. However, when officers are using eyewitnesses they need to understand just how unreliable some eyewitnesses can be, and how to get the most accurate information out of them. This paper focuses on three questions:

1. How is eyewitness testimony used in criminal cases?

2. How reliable is eyewitness testimony?

3. How can we reduce error from eyewitnesses?

How is eyewitness testimony used

in criminal cases?

Eyewitnesses are usually used as evidence against the defense in order to convict the defendant in criminal cases. Eyewitness testimony can be crucial to the outcome of the case. Elizabeth Loftus, who is recognized for her excellence in the research of eyewitness testimony, showed just how crucial eyewitness testimony could be in a study she performed. She presented a hypothetical murder case to three different groups of students. The first group only heard the circumstantial evidence; there was not an eyewitness. The second group heard the same circumstantial evidence, but there was a single eyewitness in their case. The third group heard the evidence and an eyewitness, but in their case the defense attorney discredited the eyewitness by telling them that the witness had 20/400 vision and was not wearing glasses.

What was the result? Well, in the first group, evidence only, only 18 percent voted for a conviction. In the second group, with one eyewitness, 72 percent of the students voted for conviction. And, in the third group, where the eyewitness was clearly discredited, 68 percent still voted for a conviction (Myers, 2005, p. 607).

After learning about this study, it is clear that eyewitnesses have a huge impact on criminal cases. I found a quote in one of my online sources that fits well here: "The bottom line is that criminal cases where an eyewitness is produced is more likely to result in a conviction" (Social..., 2005, p.1).

How reliable is

eyewitness testimony?

"At the turn of the millennium, DNA testing had exonerated more than 100 who had been convicted of crimes they did not commit, more than 75 percent of whom were victims of mistaken eyewitness identifications" (Myers, 2005, p. 608).

For many years, there have been all kinds of studies done about the reliability of eyewitnesses. Most of the studies proved eyewitnesses to be quite unreliable. Many of these studies were done on the misinformation effect; remembering misleading information (Myers, 2005, p. 612). An example of a study on the misinformation effect was one done by Elizabeth Loftus, where she showed memories could be manipulated by information presented to witnesses shortly after exposure to the event. In this study, there were two groups of students. Each group saw a series of clips from an automobile accident. In one of the clips, one group saw a car at a stop sign and the other group saw it at a yield sign. After viewing the slides both groups were asked a series of questions. Early in the series, they were asked if they saw another vehicle pass the car while it was at (either the stop sign or the yield sign), and later in the series they were asked what type of traffic sign the car had been at. In answering this later question, 75 percent were correct if the early question was consistent with the slide they had actually viewed (for example, they saw the car at the yield sign and were then asked if they saw another vehicle pass the car while it was at the yield sign). However, if the early question was not consistent with the slide they had viewed, only 41 percent answered the later question correctly. And, although these students supplied wrong answers, they were highly confident that they had supplied the correct ones (Social..., 2005, p.5).

In 1972, the United States Supreme Court declared, "the level of certainty demonstrated by the witness," was one factor to be considered in determining how accurate eyewitnesses are (Myers, 2005, p. 610). As we have learned from many studies, including the one from above done by Loftus, witnesses are often much more confident than they are correct. Thankfully, the Supreme Court now realizes that confident witnesses do not necessarily make good witnesses.

Another factor to consider is that a lot of times witnesses are identifying people of a different race than themselves. This is another area of eyewitness reliability that has been broadly studied, and researchers have found, without doubt, "people are generally poor at identifying people of distinctly different races" (Leinfelt, 2005, p.321).

Although, many of the studies used to criticize eyewitness testimony are done in laboratories, I found one, very interesting study that was not done in a lab. A man named Buckhout did it in 1974. He filmed a 13 second, staged purse stealing in New York. He then put this film on the news, along with a line-up of six men, for viewers to try to determine