EYE WITNESS TESTIMONY

In 1979 , a priest awaited trial for several armed robberies in Delaware.

Seven witnesses had identified him as the “gentleman bandit”,

referring to the robber’s polite manners and elegant clothes. During the

trial, many witnesses identified the priest as the one who committed

the robberies. Suddenly the trial was halted, another man had

confessed to the robberies.

Type of Evidence % guilty votes• Eyewitness testimony 78• Fingerprints 70• Polygraph 53• Handwriting 34

Eyewitnesses are the Most Persuasive Form of Evidence Loftus (1983)

It refers to an account given by people of an event they have witnessed

Evidence given by people who have witnessed a crime-plays an important role in many trials

This includes identification of perpetrators, details of crime scene etc..

Juries tend to pay close attention to eyewitness testimony and generally find it a reliable source of information

Eye witness testimonies, like other memories, generally accurate, but

these report can be false

This also influenced by pre existing schema

The problem is that when a testimony is inaccurate, the wrong person

may go to jail-in worst case-be executed by mistake

Is eye witness testimony is reliable?

Eye witness memory

There are two types of memory retrieval that eyewitnesses perform:

Recall memory: Reporting details of a previously witnessed

event/person

Recognition memory: Determining whether what is currently being

viewed/heard is the same as the previously witnessed

item/person

Lineup

A procedure in which witnesses to a crime are shown several people ,

one or more of whom may be suspects in a case , and asked to identify

those that they recognize as the person who committed the crime

Lineups contain the suspect (who may or may not be guilty) who is

placed among a set of individuals who are known to be innocent for

the crime in question, called foils or distracters

types

1) Sequential lineup: suspects are presented one at a time ,and

witness indicate whether recognize each one

2) Simultaneous lineup: all the suspects are shown at once, and

witnesses are asked to indicate which one they recognize

3) Show up: Only the suspect is shown to the witness

4) Walk-by: Witness is taken to a public location where the suspect is

likely to be

Sequential lineups are better one

Neutral instructions

Biased instructions

Pozzulo and Dempsey – both children and adult-video of staged crime- a

woman’s purse was stolen- lineup- consisting photos of people who

resembled the people who committed the crime- simultaneous

presentation-neutral instruction- biased instructions- led to believe that

person was present- innocent person

Psychological factors:

Anxiety / Stress

Reconstructive Memory

weapon focus

misleading post event information

Leading Questions 

Role of emotion

Time and intervening memory

Anxiety / stress

Anxiety or stress is almost always associated with real life crimes of

violence.  

Deffenbacher (1983) reviewed 21 studies and found that the stress-

performance relationship followed an inverted-U function proposed

by the Yerkes Dodson Curve (1908). 

This means that for tasks of moderate complexity (such as EWT),

performances increases with stress up to an optimal point where it

starts to decline

Memory is most effective at moderate arousal levels

If the witness was in a state of extremely low or high arousal then recall

may be poor

Fuzzy-trace theory

When we make decisions or judgments, we often focus on the general

idea or gist of info stored in memory and not on the info itself.

One result is that we then remember info consistent with the gist of our

real memories even though it false.

Reconstructive memory

Memory does not work like a video recording, meaning that our

memories of an event are often incomplete, as we only recall the

important points.

Reconstructive memory suggests that in the absence of all information,

we fill in the gaps to make more sense of what happened.

According to Bartlett, we do this using schemas.

Weapon focus

This refers to an eyewitness’s concentration on a weapon to the

exclusion of other details of a crime.  In a crime where a weapon is

involved, it is not unusual for a witness to be able to describe the weapon

in much more detail than the person holding it

Role of emotion

Current feelings or emotion can often exert powerful effects on our thoughts, what we remember, and our decisions and judgments.

Intense emotion exert effects on their information processing….occur when a witness is the victim of crime

Time and intervening info

Passage of time between witnessing an event and testifying about what was seen and heard.

The witness is almost always exposed to misleading post event information from police question, news stories and the statement made by others

Suggestibility

Witnesses are sometimes influenced by leading questions and similar

techniques used by attorneys or police officers in line up.

And also they make errors with respect to source of monitoring-

eyewitnesses often attribute their memories to the wrong source.

Mislead info—saw in album

Increasing eye witness accuracy

Interviews with witnesses: may enhance their ability to remember

crucial info accurately- free recall technique

blank lineup control- innocent non-suspests

Presentation of pictures of the crime scene and of the victim to the

witness before an identification is made

Is EWT reliable?

The use of eye-witness testimony is often a primary source of evidence used in the judicial system around the world

Inaccuracy of memory

Stress and anxiety plays a huge role as it can distract the witness’s concentration. 

References

Baron a r, b. n. social psychology. new delhi:pearson.

KM, G. (2007). Cognitive psychology, in and out of the laboratary.

Delhi: Thomson.

S, M. (2009). eye witness testimony. Retrieved sept 1, 2016, from

simply psychology: http://www.simplypsychology.org/eyewitness-

testimony.html