Eyewitness reliability - Essay Example

?Eyewitness reliability Interest in human memory and its reliability is not new; there have been many efforts to establish empirical evidence about human memory’s reliability (Baddeley, 1990). However, the fact that human memory is not a single system, rather a complex integration of several systems which can hold information from a few seconds to a life time, from small momentary data to long-term storage of information (Baddeley, 1990) has made it difficult to analyse. In this essay it will be argued that even though eye witness testimony is crucial in cases, dependency on it is risky due to the unreliability of the circumstances of the eye witnessing. The essay will first discuss the first the study done by Lindsay (2008), which explains that distance can mislead the accuracy of identification of a suspect thus can weaken the judgement through recalling ability. Time also plays vital role in witnessing process where a glance can collect less information rather than few minutes can provide ample opportunity to remember all the details of a suspect. Secondly, the essay will discuss the study done by Fahsing (2004), which explains that, the physical description witness provides is of high importance but the accuracy of recalling is never questioned upon as the only source of criminal identification is considered crucial and undisputed for further investigation.. Witnesses’ description of offender is highly imperative and court trials rely upon it which increases the vitality of authenticity of those witness statements. The purpose of the study done by Lindsay (2008) is to find out how the distance can affect the authenticity of eye witness testimony. The study is done by assessing the independent variable and dependant variables concerned with the experimental research. The independent variable was the distance of the person or object. There were two levels of the independent variable. The first was 4-15m distance and the second was 20-50m. The dependent variable was the time to recall the person or object. Participants were adults and where recruited from public places .Participants ranged in age from 17 to 82 years and 54% of them were females. There were participants who belong to different ethnical backgrounds like Europe, Asia and Africa. As part of experiment, participants were asked to observe the target from varying distance to analyse their visibility of a person or object and give results. The response of the participants were collected and compared to find its validity. Factors which effect the result of the research is related with witness and witnessed events. Results differ by the delayed condition both in timings that is the retention time between the event and the interview. Witness’s age, sex, ethnicity and weather not wearing glasses was considered and participants described the target in terms of weight, height, sex, and ethnicity and estimated the target distance as well. Lindsay (2008) concluded that the accuracy of the identification of criminal decreases with the increase in distance. The purpose of the study done by Fahsing (2004) is to understand how the presence of increased number of offenders can create confusion in the mind of the eye witness as it can interfere with the description of single one offender to the other. The independent variable in this study is the eye witnesses’ memory and process of recalling the description of the offender. The condition is the number of offenders at the crime scene and the accuracy of their description by the witnesses’ were judged. The number of offenders, weapons used, duration of event, retention time between the event and the interview are dependable variables of the event and witness factors include age, gender and witness role (customer or a bank employee). In this study, the participants were the eye witnesses of bank robbery. The study is done with the help of video documentation of bank robbery crimes where offender description was provided by the eyewitnesses on the same day of the robbery, within a week and with in a month of the robbery and total 250 descriptions were available to analyse on the basis of offenders basic features, clothing, gender, height and sex etc. Participants were the bank tellers and the customers who witnessed the robberies which were being analysed for the study. Result for second study is that when number of offenders increases the eye witness testimony can be misleading. Conclusion: This essay argued that even though eye witness testimony is crucial in cases, dependency on it is risky due to the unreliability on the circumstances of the eye witness. The first evidence state that as the distance increases the validity of the statement of the eye witness decreases because distance can create hurdles in understanding and visualizing a person and an event and then he can make discrepancy in identifying the criminal. The second evidence state that, when there is a presence of more number of offenders, the eye witness can have hurdles in identifying and memorizing the crime and the criminals. This is true as when there are multiple people at crime scene, and then any person can have confusion and misunderstanding in identifying a person as it interferes with the accuracy of description perceived by the witness of the offender. Sometimes due to poor eyesight or other external factors such as stress or fear can influence the testimony of the witness. Moreover if the offenders are more in number, the testimony can further become invalid. Interpretation of study by Lindsay: In this study, the strength is that people from various ethnical backgrounds had been included. People were also willing to do the experiment and provided their email address .the ecological factors like sunlight etc were beneficial for the correct identification. And people didn’t know they were taking part in a research study so they didn’t alter their behaviour towards the target and noticed the target generally as they would have normally done. The limitation of this study was that the participants might not respond if not willing. Such experimental studies are hard to replicate as there was no control over the variables and other situations might have taken place leading to inconsistent results. When considering generalization, the first experiment was done in public place and if done in a laboratory can give different outcome. The public place has sunlight and the experiment is visualizing people from a distance and from laboratory, results can be varying. They were not able to provide the physical features of the people and also the identification of objects as the distance increased. The population who were represented were of European ancestry, Southeast – Asian(1.5%) and Asian(4.6%), Indian(1.5%), Australian(1.1%) and Australian aboriginals(1.1%), Mediterranean(1.0%), Africans(0.4%), South Americans(0.2%) and South Pacific(1.0%). The confounds of the study might be due to a number of other situational variables and the presence or absence of the target or their look alike in line up can also decrease the accuracy of the result. Other distinguishing features of the target might effect their identification rather then the distance so it can also interfere with the result. Population validity was high making the study reliable. The strength of evidence is strong as it is done on the spot and in front of the researchers and with large number of sample. The thesis suggests that eyewitness is not reliable due to the circumstances of the eye witnessing and the distance between the crime and criminal might hinder the authenticity of the eye witness. The participants are not horrified and scared like in a real criminal situation and don’t forget any detail due to stress. Interpretation of study by Fahsing: the strength is that the information the researchers have is of primary nature as it was police records and video documentation of crime and the use of firsthand data. Use of newer techniques made it possible to detect the attributes (basic features, details) which would have gone unnoticed otherwise and statistical test can be applied on the data to determine its accuracy. The weakness is that the verdict of eyewitness was not credible. The nature of description may differ from person to person as in case of bank robbery customers are usually less reliable then the bank tellers and several of the other psychological processing of the witness memory might affect the study for example the interview technique might influence the description extracted from the witness and this cannot be estimated by archival data that how much variance an interview technique can cause. Generalization can be applied as the study is based on video documentation and same can be done in a lab by showing a video of the robbery and then interviewing the witnesses, no ecological effects would matter in the case but the number of witnesses are controlled and population validity is low as well because most of the witnesses would be students rather then general public where as in this field study recruitment was large and reliable. When it comes to confounds, since the number of offenders was more, the testimony of the eye witnesses were misleading and confusing For example, while identifying a target from a line up of criminals, the sequential (one by one) line-up is more accurate then the simultaneous (all in a row) line-up otherwise witness can mix up with identification. Whereas offenders disguise also causes confusion with their age and other aspects. When evaluating the strength of the evidence, which is video documentation, it is strong and eye witnesses of the study were partly reliable .The thesis suggests that circumstances can create obstacle in eye witnessing reliability. Even the weapon used by the robber might not be remembered by the witness because of interference with its memory. Most robbery cases can have masked robbers and hence eye witness is not of much help. The factors such as distance between the witness and the offender, number of offenders at the site of event, time difference between the event and the interview, all of these can affect the memory of the witness in describing the perpetuator and under certain limitations the description of the witness can be relied upon, thus the evidence projected by both the studies support the thesis, as both the studies show difficulty of eye witness in identifying the criminals due to external and internal factors. References Baddeley, A. D. (1990). Human memory: theory and practice. East Sussex: PSychology Press Ltd. Fahsing, I. A. (2004). The Man Behind the Mask: Accuracy and Predictors of Eyewitness Offender Descriptions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(4), 722-729. Lindsay, R. (2008). How Variations in Distance Affect Eyewitness Reports and Identification Accuracy. Law Human Behaviour, 32(10), 526-535. Read More