Eye witness testimony

Eye witness testimony

1. =Giving evidence on crime, used by police and in trial for guilty or not BUT not always reliable

2. Crombag et al (1996) 747 jet crash in amsterdam, no visual reportings but people created visual scenes- FALSE CLAIMS

   • Albert von shrenk-nortzing- Retroactive Memory Falsification- confusing real life events with what they read in press
     • Falsification=difficult to rely on photo identification- think weve seen someone when really we havent

3. Witness evidence important for police investigation- statically victims know offenders it proves difficult when offender is a stranger

   • British police survey- witnesses usually correct
     • Kebell&milne 1998- witnesses dont remember as mush as officers would like
       • Geilseman (1984) Cognitive interview to improve witness recall

4. Inaccuracies can incriminate innocent people

   • Wells et al (2007)- line up of 1 suspect 5 innocents with 20% chance an innocent is picked
   • Ronald Cotton- 10 years for rape committed by Bobby Poole- wrongly identified released when DNA of semen wasnt his
     • Relative judgement theory- person who looks similar to suspect is chose when suspect is not present(wells 1984)
       • To prevent- 2 stage line ups- 1 black full of innocents- if dont choose suspect then more accurate in next line up

5. Memory 3 stages- distorted at any stage- encoding, storage, retrieval.

   • Weapon focus effect affects encoding
   • Age- children and elderley have poorer accuracy
   • Shock, fear,distress
   • Distance away, duration of crime, fear of threat
   • Post-event information- information after event can cause corruption to original memory due to new info- 10 week wait for line up

6. Loftus&Palmer 1974- verbal info can affect visual recall- particpants watched car accident then asked questions

   • Car was going faster when term smashed was used 34% saw broken glass compared to 14% when hit

7. 1972 supreme courts said witness confidence is great predictor for accuracy- lawyers and jurors accept

   • Wells et al 2009- 100 eyewitnesses half gave accurate identifications 70% were confident in accuracy- compared to 30% who were less confident and less accurate
     • Cutler&penrod (1989) weak correlation of 0.2 for confidence and accuracy- less confident witnesses shouldnt be ignored
       • Dunning& Perratta (2002) 10-12 second rule better predictor for accuracy- if quick suspects characteristics are recognised

8. Improving validity of line ups

   • Double-blind procedure- person conducting doesnt know suspect and witness is aware they dont know (wells 1998)
   • Suspect doesnt stand out in the line up and witness makes a statement before and after
   • One suspect per line up (brewer&palmer,2010)
   • Kassin(1998) line ups should be videoed- UK Viper is used- less stress less time consuming
   • Good Line ups: people with similar description to witness, option not to choose
     • Bad line ups: people look like suspect rather than witness description

9. Accuracy of EWT

10. Factors affecting EWT

11. Problems with EWT

12. What is EWT

13. What its used for