Justice is a means of seeking rest and retribution over a matter that has occurred in an individual’s life or an organization. The accurate delivery of justice relies on evidence for or against, admitted to the court, and the adjudication. The court trusts eyewitness testimonies on the precipice that they take an oath to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth. This testimony can then be used to convict a criminal. The accuracy of the testimony relies on the memory and recall of the witness. Researchers have found the human brain as a complex machine capable of many things. However, as compared to the computer, the computer has a more accurate memory. This is due to how human beings encode memory and retrieve it. This fundamental weakness is the reason why humans have limitations in the accuracy of their memories. Following this revelation, the question begs, is it right to use eyewitness testimonies in court as evidence?
In a study by Gustafsson et al. (2019) conducted on 22 psychology students, they examined the effect of cues on the speed of recall. The subjects were shown a video of a simulated crime and asked in interviews to recall details of the crime and record on a sheet of paper their confidence level. The interviewers also noted the cues in between recalling efforts. The interviewees in the process of recounting the simulated crime used pauses, words such as “Uhm,” filler words, and hedges indicating retrieval difficulty (Gustafsson et al.,2019). This shows that human memory is not reliable in recalling events as evidence. The researchers also echo this fact as they try to control the truth and falsehood in witness statements.
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The use of cues indicates the accuracy of recall. According to Gustafsson et al. (2019), most of the cues observed in the interviewees predicted the accuracy of the recount of the crime in the video. These cues can be used to verify the admissibility of eye witness evidence in court, as pauses and gaps could indicate poor recall of an event or a person. This could help in investigations to prevent erroneous convictions due to the weaknesses of human memory.
Further, confidence in the recall of memory does not mean accurate recall. According to Gustafsson et al. (2019), despite the high confidence rating by interviewees, the correctness of their recall was not similar. This finding proves that a witness may be inclined to believe their account of events in front of a court and swear by it. Therefore, misleading not only themselves but also the justice system.
Police and law enforcers need to be taught to use cues. Gustafsson et al. (2019) find that it could be prudent to train stakeholders in the justice system to determine the accuracy of witness statements using cues. This is due to the accuracy of cues in predicting memory recall accuracy. Considering the critical nature of the eyewitness statements in concluding an investigation, it is important to verify their truthfulness. This will avoid situations such as in Grison & Gazzaniga (2019), where due to memory distortion, innocent people are mistaken for the guilty and spend time behind bars.
Another article discusses Applied Cognitive Psychology (ACP) developments and how it has influenced eyewitness testimony. According to Loftus (2019), the field of ACP has grown rapidly in the past thirty years. The knowledge about memory that has been discovered is immense and groundbreaking. Psychologists have gained interest in the topic of eyewitness testimony, sparking debates that led to disagreements on a few issues. However, one thing was for sure; there is a fault in human memory.
The human memory is suggestible. Loftus (2019) finds that another can override a fact about an event; an example is a witness remembering the green traffic light. Another witness comes and convinces the first confidently that the traffic lights were red. Consequently, the first witness becomes confident in the red light and therefore changes their testimony. Grison & Gazzaniga (2019) state that memory can be distorted. This is done due to vulnerability in the encoding process of human memory. Loftus (2019) finds this dangerous for justice as witnesses can testify confidently before a jury with manipulated memories, in the process skewing justice.
Confident retrieval of memories cannot be equated to accurate remembrance. Loftus (2019) discusses findings in the body of research in ACP on witness memory and finds that confidence is not directly related to the accurate recall. Persons could easily claim confidence in the occurrence of an event yet deviate from the truth of the matter. When taken to court, such confident witnesses could mislead a judge.
As research on memory grew, there grew a need to bring memory experts to court testimonies and to involve scientific methods in lineups. Loftus (2019) explains that it was difficult to convince judges to accept the science behind memory fault without enough academic evidence. The discovery of a human fault in memory meant many past and future convictions that relied on eyewitness testimony. The realization that many convicts were probably innocent caused a reversal of landmark rulings (Loftus, 2019). It suddenly became compulsory to have memory experts in certain cases that relied on eye witness testimony.
Conclusively, eyewitness memory cannot be trusted. The reason is due to the overwhelming research that indicates the susceptibility of human memory, which is relied on for eyewitness accounts. It has been proven that memory decays over time and can also be distorted. To avoid the miscarriage of justice, it is necessary to reduce eyewitness testimonies in court or supplement it with other forms of reliable evidence such as DNA.
References
Grison, S., & Gazzaniga, M. S. (2019). Psychology in Your Life . WWNORTON.
Gustafsson, P. U., Lindholm, T., & Jönsson, F. U. (2019). Predicting accuracy in eyewitness testimonies with memory retrieval effort and confidence. Frontiers in Psychology , 10 . https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00703
Loftus, E. F. (2019). Eyewitness testimony. Applied Cognitive Psychology , 33 (4), 498–503. https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.1002/acp.3542
