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The complicated confidence of eyewitness memory
- pseingatl 11y agoUnless this information gets before the judge and/or jury; it is useless. A defense attorney bringing up any one of the studies mentioned here would be sanctioned by the judge. Even if the studies show that 75% of the time, eyewitness identification is wrong; you might be dealing with the 25% of the time when the identification is correct. That is for the trier of fact. It is unfortunate--no, tragic--because eyewitness misidentification is commonplace.
- savanaly 11y agoDid you get the 75% number from the article? Because what the article in fact said was that 72% of cases that are subsequently overturned by DNA evidence involve mistaken eyewitness identification, which is very different than 75% of all eyewitness identifications.
- larrik 11y agoI interpreted the 75% as a hypothetical.
- jimrandomh 11y agoThis article discusses research which shows that eyewitness' confidence in an identification when they first make it is reasonably predictive of whether the identified suspect is guilty, but confidence later at trial is not. Given how structured the pick-person-from-lineup ritual is, it would be trivially easy to record a witness' reactions and level of initial confidence. If the US criminal justice system cared at all about truth, it would be doing this and would have been doing it decades ago. But they don't care. This is one more facet of an extensive pattern of corruption, including dropping the number of trials-per-arrest to near zero and faking an entire field of forensic science (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/04/fbi_s_flawed_forensics_expert_testimony_hair_analysis_bite_marks_fingerprints.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudenc...).
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jlgaddis 11y agoReminds me of something I heard once. I don't remember who said it and I'm paraphrasing but... > "In the scientific community, eyewitness testimony is the least credible evidence there is; in the legal community, it is the most credible."
- rrauenza 11y agoI had this happen firsthand - witnessed two cars racing on the street, one hit a light pole, the other ran off. I even knew at the time that eye witness testimony could be unreliable. I tried to keep in mind the description of the other car as I waited for the officer - and accidentally overheard another witness describe the car. I immediately could no longer discern whether the color in my mind was the real color or a newly formed memory. It was super frustrating ... And frightening.
- jamestnz 11y agoYou've reminded me of a quote from the great Christopher Nolan film, Memento: Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts.