Question

• What psychological factors might contribute to the memory failures of the eyewitnesses?
  • Think about what the witnesses said regarding their experiences and note relevant psychological components like emotion, attention, and perceptual processes!
• What are some of the most important things to try and remember if you end up witnessing a crime?
• How much should we rely on eye-witness testimony?
• What would an eye witness need to provide to help boost your confidence in their individual report of an event?

Answer 1

1.Eyewitness plays an important role in criminology. There is evidence to prove that the testimony of eyewitness has helped in catching the hardcore criminals. But the question is does all the testimony by the eyewitnesses are correct and the jury should rely on that and punish or leave a person?

In many cases, it was proved that eyewitness’s testimony was wrong and an innocent person was charged and punished for no crime of his. The example is the case of Jennifer Thompson who was a witness against her rapist and identified in the identification parade and photographs a 22-year-old Ronald Cotton, he was convicted and given life imprisonment. After the use of DNA in criminology, it was proved that cotton did not rape her, it was another person Bobby Poole, who was the rapist, and the sketch drawn by the artist did show a resemblance between cotton and Poole. Cotton was released but due to wrong eyewitness identification, he spent many years in jail.

Many psychological factors hinder the eyewitnesses' recollection of the event these can be 1.recall memory: it is evident that recollecting the memory like putting the pieces of the event together, in certain cases, it is impossible to recollect the event in the same sequence. 2. Visual characteristics: The culprit in many occasion change their appearance by using wigs, glasses, and false mustache, etc. thus it can lead to identifying a wrong person.3. Anxiety and Stress: Witnessing a crime or violence leads to anxiety and stress and the eyewitness cannot notice every minute details of the criminal like the weapon used, and how many times the criminal used the weapon to kill/injure the person.
Many other issues can be surrounding the area of the crime which an eyewitness may not remember.

2.The confidence is very important; an eye witness must repeat the same evidence in the same sequence whenever he gives testimony. It is very important to know that the witness is not biased towards the culprit.

If I have to witness a crime I mustn't act bias and know each detail of the crime and crime scene otherwise it is better not to stand as an eyewitness where there are chances of identifying a wrong person arises.

3.The eyewitness testimony is always regarded as evidence of proof. With the new modern technologies, the judiciary can elaborate and find out the evidence provided by the eyewitness by matching using forensic and DNA tastings of the samples collected from the site.

To rely on the eyewitness it is important to know that the eyewitness is of sound mind, he is confident, and how far he was from the site of the crime, was the face of the criminal was visible, and did he see the weapon used by the criminal, does he remember the sequence of the crime that can prove a person guilty without a doubt. The eyewitness also knows that modern methods would countercheck all the evidence provided by him, and if the wrong testimony is given he can be prosecuted.

4. The fact is truthfulness by the eyewitness his unbiased attitude and remembering the details of the incidents /events are important, it can boost confidence in me for an individual report of an event.