Eye-Witness Testimony - Case Study Example

Topic: Eye Witness Testimony Eye witness often is fallible and many variables influence the likelihood of theevidence given being true or false. Intensifying before a jury, there needs to be the consideration of the believability of the evidence given and hence if eye witness has no impact then mistaken identification as an issue is less serious than it would otherwise be, (Goldstein, & Weiner, 2003). The chances of an eye witness to testify and be believed by the jury calls for the ability to discriminate between accurate and inaccurate eye witnesses. The need to make this distinction by the jury as well as the court will be essential in knowing if the witnesses will be believed primarily when they are accurate and be disregarded when they are not. The innocent would still suffer the social and financial hardships associated with arrest and trial but would rarely be convicted as a result of mistaken identification. On the other hand there are the cues available that can help people to calibrate their belief of the likelihood that an eye witness is accurate. If so, then eye witnesses will be believed in those situations in which they are most likely not telling the truth. In 1974, the delving commission was formed in England to examine eye witness procedures after several cases of mistaken identification came to light. Delving (1976) examined all the police line-ups that are commonly referred to as identification parades conducted in England in 1973. In the process over 2000 parades were analysed and a suspect was identified in 45 per cent of the parades where 82 per cent of those identified were subsequently convicted. The identification comprised the only evidence in over 300 cases and of these 75 per cent of the suspects was found to be guilty showing the compelling real world evidence that eye witnesses are believed. However, suspects identification in the Devlin report were made in less than half of the cases analysed and it could be argued that the identified suspects were indeed guilty in these cases. The accuracy of the identification was believed to be high and the suspects were guilty thus the eye witnessed should have been believed. On the other hand, the advent of DNA evidence has made it increasingly possible to prove that innocent people are convicted. To date, innocence projects have helped to exonerate at least 142 wrongly convicted people (Scheck & Neufeld, 2004) which have been attributed to mistaken identification as the primary reason for the conviction in over 80 per cent of these cases. This clearly shows that mistaken eye witnesses have ben believed and have led to the conviction of people who are rather innocent and the cases closed. In reference to the case under study, it can be argued that 1.30am is too dark to make a facial recorgnition accurately. More over since it is at a night club that the whole event took place, there are high chances that the eye witnesses in the group of five friends were drunk hence reducing the accuracy of their testimony. The fact that there is nof foreinsic evidenve to back up the claims of the assult makes the case harder to convince a jury. The last chance is left for the CCTV cameras to give a clear understanding of the occurences at that hour. This is because the chances of the five friends corroborating a story of one of their friends to exonerate him are high and hence the real victim will be hard to determine. The state of mind of the friends can also be brought into question having been at a night club. According to Johnson, (2007), police too are often faced with various challenges when it comes to situations they need to make quick decisions and judgements about the motives and motives of people based on little information as the case above. In handling such crime situations, they need to make quick judgments on who is the offender as well as the victim and act appropriately. Hence they have to use the non-verbal cues as survey revelas that police officers (Akehurst, Kohnken, Vrij & Bull, 1996; Stromwall & Granhag, 2003; Vrij & Semin, 1996), correctional officers (Lakhani & Taylor, 2003; Vrij and Semin, 1996), parole officers (Porter, Woodworth, & Birt, 2000), prosecutors (Stromwall & Granhag, 2003), and judges (Stromwall and Granhag, 2003) often perceive that frequent speech disruptions (such as stutters and long pauses), frequent or inappropriate smiles, the avoidance of eye contact, and increased hand gestures are interpreted as non-verbal indicators of nervousness related to involvement in crime, or that a person is trying to be deceptive. The perception of a non-verbal behavioral indicator has been reinforced by formal police training when dealing with eye witnesses. The most widely accepted interview and interrogation training provided to the police in the USA, the Reid Method of Interviewing and Interrogations, incorporates many techniques to determine the truthfulness of interviewee statements especialy those coming from eye witnesses (Blair & Kooi, 2004). As part of this training, the Reid Method teaches officers to observe for non-verbal indicators of stress or deception, including fidgeting; shifting of body posture; frequent leg and foot movements; frequent hand gestures; avoiding eye contact when speaking; fast or stuttered speech; frequent pauses while speaking; excessive or inappropriate smiling; and profuse sweating (Blair & Kooi, 2004; Brown, 2001; Inbau, Reid, Buckley & Jayne, 2001). Social psychological research has provided support for the belief that such non-verbal behaviors are accurate clues to detecting deceptive activity and this plays a key role in assessing the believability of an eye witness. According to Cutler, (2009), there are cognitive structures as well as encoding capabilities that come in the form of fears or values that a witness brings to the witnessing situation in their affective responces. This is one of the considerations in crime investigation and ultimately the trial of an accused perpetrator. In the night club case, there is possibility of cognitive impairment through alcohol or drug inducement and hence a reduced accuracy in identification process. The opportunities and constraints afforded in the witnessing situation will also be brought to scrutiny and this may include the distance to the crime scene. It was in the wee hours of the morning and hence the lighting and time to view the events have all to be shown to influence the accuracy of witness identification. Probably the incorporation of the CCTV footings will be the best way to bring an accurate conclusion. The information he five friends encode about the offender from the initial viewing of the event will depend both on environment and personal attributes. If initial encoding is weak, then subsequent memory-contaminating events are likely to distort the information given by the witness and hence the accuracy of the testimony. These and other factors such as the history of the friends, investigator leading questions and circumstances surrounding the identification process will influence the information yielded from the incident. It will be thus important for the jury to be aware of these circumstances in listening to the accounts being given by the eye witness Lampinen, Neuschatz, & Cling, (2012) argue that eye witness identification is purely based on the memory; the science of witness identification has been around for over a century and narrowing down to the last three decades it has been instrumental in shaping the criminal justice system through the recommendations of social policy makers. The suspect being the person the police think he or she might have committed the crime has to be identified from foils who are innocent but matching the general description of the culprit. If the line-up procedures are fair and the suspect is innocent, a witness who makes a mistake is more likely to pick one of the foils than he or she is to pick the suspect as such line-ups may be in live form or the presentation of photos to the eye witness. For the most part, research psychologists look into the memory of the eye witness by use of experiments to assess the ability to rely on the testimony given. References Akehurst, L., Kohnken, G., Vrij, A. & Bull, R. (1996). Lay persons’ and police officers’ beliefs regarding deceptive behaviour. Applied Cognitive Psychology. 10(4), pp. 461- 71 Blair, J. & Kooi, B. (2004). The gap between training and research in the detection of deception. International Journal of Police Science and Management. 6(2), pp. 77-83. Brown, M.F. (2001). Criminal Investigation: Law and Practice, 2nd ed. Butterworth- Heinemann, Boston, MA. Cutler, B. L. (2009). Expert testimony on the psychology of eyewitness identification. Oxford: Oxford University Press Cutler, B. L., & Kovera, M. B. (2010). Evaluating eyewitness identification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cutler, B. L., & Penrod, S. (1995). Mistaken identification: The eyewitness, psychology, and the law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Delving, H. P. (1976). Report to the secretary of state for home department of the departmental committee on evidence of identification in criminal cases Goldstein, A. M., & Weiner, I. B. (2003). Handbook of Psychology: Forensic Psychology. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Inbau, F.E., Reid, J.E., Buckley, J.B. & Jayne, B.P. (2001). Criminal Interrogation and Confessions. Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, MD. Johnson, R.R. (2007). Race and police reliance on suspicious non-verbal cues. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management. 30(2), pp. 277-290 Lakhani, M. & Taylor, R. (2003). Beliefs about the cues to deception in high- and low-stake situations. Psychology, Crime & Law. 9(4), pp. 357-69. Lampinen, J. M. M., Neuschatz, J. S. S., & Cling, A. D. D. (2012). The Psychology of Eyewitness Identification. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis. Loftus, E. F. (1996). Eyewitness testimony. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Porter, S., Woodworth, M. & Birt, A. (2000). Truth, lies, and videotape: an investigation of the ability of federal parole officers to detect deception. Law and Human Behavior. 24(6), pp. 643-58 Schneck, B. & Neufeld, P. (2004). The innocence project. Retrieved March 2, 2014 from http://www.innocenceproject.org/ Stromwall, L. & Granhag, P. (2003). How to detect deception? Arresting the beliefs of policeofficers, prosecutors and judges. Psychology Crime & Law. 9(1), pp. 19-36. Vrij, A. & Semin, G. (1996). Lie experts’ beliefs about non-verbal indicators of deception. Journal of Non-verbal Behavior. 20(1), pp. 65-80 Read More