Eyewitness Testimony Paper
Based on the contents of the video, it is quite clear to me that eyewitness testimony is a vital part of the criminal justice process. However, just like every other aspect of the criminal justice system it has to be treated seriously and used with care. Failure to do this can lead to several problems in the criminal justice process such as, leading questions and cognitive interview errors. As a result of these errors, they were subsequently highly analyzed and challenged by Elizabeth Loftus.Leading questions are a major contributor to several interview flaws. They can result in producing changed memories and false memories. Changed memories can arise from leading questions based on the way that the questions are asked. Asking an interviewee, if someone’s hat is black or brown could result in them confirming to you the
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A key example of that is asking an interviewee “if they saw a broken headlight”, or “if they saw the smashed headlight”. (Eyewitness, n.d.). This theory was shown by Loftus and Palmer. Changing the single word of “a” to “the” changes the interviewees perception because it is a potentially true fact about a car collision thus prompting the interviewee to take it as real.Constructive memory was described as the notion that what people will remember from an event, will remember all kinds of things relating to that event. (Eyewitness Testimony, n.d.) This can be good for eye witness testimonies because bits and pieces of memories of an event can result into a wide range of forgotten or lost memories of an event, which is described as cognitive interview errors. It was found through psychologist research that there are two major points of error that inject fallibility into eye witness testimonies. The first one is that is that often times, interviewers are too sure of the witness’s ability to remember events accurately. This
A key example of that is asking an interviewee “if they saw a broken headlight”, or “if they saw the smashed headlight”. (Eyewitness, n.d.). This theory was shown by Loftus and Palmer. Changing the single word of “a” to “the” changes the interviewees perception because it is a potentially true fact about a car collision thus prompting the interviewee to take it as real.Constructive memory was described as the notion that what people will remember from an event, will remember all kinds of things relating to that event. (Eyewitness Testimony, n.d.) This can be good for eye witness testimonies because bits and pieces of memories of an event can result into a wide range of forgotten or lost memories of an event, which is described as cognitive interview errors. It was found through psychologist research that there are two major points of error that inject fallibility into eye witness testimonies. The first one is that is that often times, interviewers are too sure of the witness’s ability to remember events accurately. This