There is a plethora of evidence from research done over many decades, proposing that eyewitness testimony is perhaps the most persuasive evidence form presented in court, unfortunately, its accuracy is doubtful in many cases. This inaccuracy has been proven by many DNA exoneration cases which have identified flaws in eyewitness identification and has indicated close to 75 percent wrongful convictions due to mistaken eyewitness evidence. As such, the inaccuracies of eyewitness has been associated with various factors which include stress or anxiety, weapon focus, reconstructive memories, and leading questions (Wise & Safer, 2012).
Lorenza (2013) asserts that errors of eyewitness are the leading reasons for wrongful convictions. Because it frequently used in the courts as the primary evidence, there is the need for the justice system to improve the ability of legal professionals and judges to evaluate its accuracy to minimize these wrongful convictions. On this background, this focuses on eyewitness testimony and how memory can cause its inaccuracy. The first section will discuss the research on eyewitness testimony while the second part will briefly talk about memory is not just like a tape recorder. The third section will discourse on the constructive process of memory, and the next part addresses how memory inaccuracies can impact eyewitness testimony. Finally, a concluding paragraph based on the discussion observation.
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The Research on Eyewitness Testimony
According to McLeod (2009) eyewitness testimony refers to an account that people provide in a court of law concerning an event they have witnessed, for instance, giving details of the scene of the crime, identification of culprits or victims, the event timelines among others. Research has widely indicated that there are some factors which affect the accuracy of eyewitness evidence including inaccuracies of the memory. One of the factors which distorted memories was demonstrated by Elizabeth Loftus early research as misinformation effect. In this research, Loftus suggested a “destructive updating” process whereby misleading postevent information that is contradictory substitutes the original data, and as a result, erase the original information permanently from memory. This claim of misinformation distorting the original message drew tremendous interests by other researchers (Laney & Loftus, 2018).
Memory is not just like a Tape Recorder
The theory of reconstructive memory is vital to an understanding of eyewitness testimony reliability as it suggests that recall is subject to individual interpretation dependent on the cultural or learnt values and norms, and the way people perceive the world. This is opposed to what most people think; that memory is something which works like a tape recorder (McLeod, 2009). With videotape, recording is like storing information and remembering it is merely by playing back the recorded information, which comes in much the similar form that it was encoded. However, memory does not operate in this manner because it has a unique feature that people cannot store information accurately as presented. Instead, people extract from information the underlying meaning, or gist, meaning that individuals store information in a manner that creates the most sense to them by fitting into schemas, which are methods of organizing information. These schemas are capable of misrepresenting unfamiliar message to fit with the knowledge of a person (McLeod, 2009).
In this context, memory is said to have an active, ongoing, and constructive process consisting of three stages; encoding, storage, and retrieval. In the encoding stage is the process in which information is recorded; storage is the maintenance of the information for a period, and forgetfulness measures it; while retrieval refers to the accessing of the stored information through recall, recognition, or by implicit demonstration. During retrieval, some factors may cause the data to be inaccurate leading to false eyewitness testimonies and hence wrongful convictions (Baddeley, 2014).
How Memory Inaccuracies can impact Eyewitness Testimony
Errors of memory impacts eyewitness testimony because they distort the original information the eyewitness encoded and stored during retrieval. Some of the factors that cause these inaccuracies are misinformation. This misinformation is influenced by information people get from other especially the victim or family to the victim, and also by how we interpret the stored messages to fit our understanding of the words depending on our values, norms and culture, and perception (Lorenza, 2013). Research by Loftus, Miller, and Burns (1978) has supported this point. The researchers subjected undergraduates first to watch a slideshow portraying a driven small red car and striking a pedestrian.
After that, some subjects were asked to leading questions concerning what occurred in the slide. For instance, they were asked “How fast was the car traveling when it passed the yield sign?” but this query was intended to be misleading since the original slide a stop sign and not a yield sign. Later, the subjects were again showed pairs of slides; the original slide with a stop and another with a yield sign. When subjects were questioned which pair they had seen previously, the subjects who had earlier been asked about the yield sign were likely to pick the slide with the sign of yield, even though the sign they had previously seen is the stop sign. This evidence demonstrated that misinformation in the leading query led to inaccurate memory (Laney & Loftus, 2018).
Conclusion
Eyewitness testimony is widely used as primary evidence in courts of law. However, from the above discussion, it is evident that memory errors or inaccuracies have led to false eyewitness testimony resulting in the conviction of innocent people. As such, the justice system has to understand the memory is not like a tape recorder that accurately replays everything recorded, but a constructive process which can be manipulated with factors such as misinformation to distort witnesses’ information as supported by various evidence. Therefore, judges and the professional team’s ability should be enhanced to understand these inaccuracies to minimize prosecution of innocent people due to false eyewitness testimonies.
References
Baddeley, A. D. (2014). The psychology of memory. The essential handbook of memory disorders for clinicians , 1-13.
Laney, C. & Loftus, E. F. (2018). Eyewitness testimony and memory biases. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. DOI: nobaproject.com
Lorenza, S. M. (2013). Factors Affecting the Accuracy of Eyewitness Identification. The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research , 6 (1), 45-50.
McLeod, S. (2009). Eyewitness Testimony. Simply Psychology . Retrieved March 27, 2018, from www.simplypsychology.org/eyewitness-testimony.html
Wise, R. A., & Safer, M. A. (2012). A method for analyzing the accuracy of eyewitness testimony in criminal cases. Ct. Rev. , 48 , 22.
