7 ms·

At what point are "eyewitness testimonies" and "identity parades" going to legitimately be called out as questionable. The science certainly points towards the

At what point are "eyewitness testimonies" and "identity parades" going to legitimately be called out as questionable. The science certainly points towards their lack of credibility in many many circumstances. I guess there is no real incentive on the part of the criminal justice system to resolve this.

rayiner 4y ago
Eyewitness testimony has been called out for being questionable for more than a decade now. So have the less reliable aspects of forensic “science.” Courts have made progress in addressing both through jury instructions and gate keeping on expert testimony through the Daubert process. For example, here is the current Massachusetts model jury instruction on eyewitness testimony: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/model-jury-instructions-on-eyewitness-identification-model-eyewitness-identification-instruction https://www.mass.gov/info-details/model-jury-instructions-on... It mentions, for example: > People have the ability to recognize others they have seen and to accurately identify them at a later time, but research and experience have shown that people sometimes make mistakes in identification. > The mind does not work like a video recorder. A person cannot just replay a mental recording to remember what happened. Memory and perception are much more complicated.[a] Remembering something requires three steps. First, a person sees an event. Second, the person's mind stores information about the event. Third, the person recalls stored information. At each of these stages, a variety of factors may affect -- or even alter -- someone's memory of what happened and thereby affect the accuracy of identification testimony.[b] This can happen without the witness being aware of it. Eyewitness testimony also just matters less these days. Today, the trial would have involved cell phone location tracking from the accused showing he wasn’t in the area at the time.
fsckboy 4y ago
Human societies have relied on eye-witness testimony since Cain and Abel. Sure, you can study it and discover that humans are unreliable (film at 11!) but it's silly to think that we are going to have trials and testimony and leave out eye witnesses. What's important about our trial system and juries-of-peers is that the average person feels the system is doing its best to find the truth so that it's not necessary to form vigilantes. Our system is overall pretty good, better than asking all the people who show up at a crime scene or later to protest.
- Teever 4y ago
  It is true that trials are imperfect. They are an imperfect approximation of an ideal truth finding endeavour implemented by imperfect humans. That doesn't mean that the imperfections are a feature, it means that as time goes on society should work towards making more accurate approximations of this truth finding process. Just as we have done away with things like expert testimony on phrenology, cruentation, or trial by ordeal there may come a time when we do away with witness testimony or restrict the kinds of things we allow witnesses to testify about, like we already do with hearsay.
- zarzavat 4y ago
  Cain and Abel didn’t have DNA evidence, security cameras, digital forensics, etc. It’s right to reevaluate in light of the modern world. Some eyewitness testimony is acceptable. People can be reliably expected to recognize people who they know. If a woman’s mother said that she saw the boyfriend hit her daughter, that’s an acceptable form of eyewitness testimony. The kind of eyewitness testimony that should not be accepted, is when the person in question was not previously known to the witness. This kind of evidence has been proven time and time again to be entirely unreliable and should be considered no more compelling than lie detectors.
  - ars 4y ago
    BTW Biblical eye witness testimony requires the witness to know they person they are identifying. So, fsckboy, what we are doing today is not exactly what has been done since Cain and Abel, we took the ancient idea of eye witness and extended it beyond where it is reliable.
    - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
      This is a detestable way of disagreeing.
      - ars 4y ago
        That's his name on hn!! I just realized it looks like I'm calling him a bad name!
banannaise 4y ago
> I guess there is no real incentive on the part of the criminal justice system to resolve this. Correct. The numbers for both police and prosecutors are still anchored on convictions, and the police worldview is still largely based on the idea that the people they're dealing with are a "criminal class" who largely deserve to be in prison whether they happened to commit that particular crime or not.

rayiner 4y ago

Eyewitness testimony has been called out for being questionable for more than a decade now. So have the less reliable aspects of forensic “science.” Courts have made progress in addressing both through jury instructions and gate keeping on expert testimony through the Daubert process. For example, here is the current Massachusetts model jury instruction on eyewitness testimony: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/model-jury-instructions-on-eyewitness-identification-model-eyewitness-identification-instruction https://www.mass.gov/info-details/model-jury-instructions-on... It mentions, for example: > People have the ability to recognize others they have seen and to accurately identify them at a later time, but research and experience have shown that people sometimes make mistakes in identification. > The mind does not work like a video recorder. A person cannot just replay a mental recording to remember what happened. Memory and perception are much more complicated.[a] Remembering something requires three steps. First, a person sees an event. Second, the person's mind stores information about the event. Third, the person recalls stored information. At each of these stages, a variety of factors may affect -- or even alter -- someone's memory of what happened and thereby affect the accuracy of identification testimony.[b] This can happen without the witness being aware of it. Eyewitness testimony also just matters less these days. Today, the trial would have involved cell phone location tracking from the accused showing he wasn’t in the area at the time.

fsckboy 4y ago

Human societies have relied on eye-witness testimony since Cain and Abel. Sure, you can study it and discover that humans are unreliable (film at 11!) but it's silly to think that we are going to have trials and testimony and leave out eye witnesses. What's important about our trial system and juries-of-peers is that the average person feels the system is doing its best to find the truth so that it's not necessary to form vigilantes. Our system is overall pretty good, better than asking all the people who show up at a crime scene or later to protest.

Teever 4y ago
It is true that trials are imperfect. They are an imperfect approximation of an ideal truth finding endeavour implemented by imperfect humans. That doesn't mean that the imperfections are a feature, it means that as time goes on society should work towards making more accurate approximations of this truth finding process. Just as we have done away with things like expert testimony on phrenology, cruentation, or trial by ordeal there may come a time when we do away with witness testimony or restrict the kinds of things we allow witnesses to testify about, like we already do with hearsay.
zarzavat 4y ago
Cain and Abel didn’t have DNA evidence, security cameras, digital forensics, etc. It’s right to reevaluate in light of the modern world. Some eyewitness testimony is acceptable. People can be reliably expected to recognize people who they know. If a woman’s mother said that she saw the boyfriend hit her daughter, that’s an acceptable form of eyewitness testimony. The kind of eyewitness testimony that should not be accepted, is when the person in question was not previously known to the witness. This kind of evidence has been proven time and time again to be entirely unreliable and should be considered no more compelling than lie detectors.
- ars 4y ago
  BTW Biblical eye witness testimony requires the witness to know they person they are identifying. So, fsckboy, what we are doing today is not exactly what has been done since Cain and Abel, we took the ancient idea of eye witness and extended it beyond where it is reliable.
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    This is a detestable way of disagreeing.
    - ars 4y ago
      That's his name on hn!! I just realized it looks like I'm calling him a bad name!

banannaise 4y ago

> I guess there is no real incentive on the part of the criminal justice system to resolve this. Correct. The numbers for both police and prosecutors are still anchored on convictions, and the police worldview is still largely based on the idea that the people they're dealing with are a "criminal class" who largely deserve to be in prison whether they happened to commit that particular crime or not.