Study Weighs In On the Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony 102
sciencehabit writes The victim peers across the courtroom, points at a man sitting next to a defense lawyer, and confidently says, "That's him!" Such moments have a powerful sway on jurors who decide the fate of thousands of people every day in criminal cases. But how reliable is eyewitness testimony? A new report concludes that the use of eyewitness accounts need tighter control, and among its recommendations is a call for a more scientific approach to how eyewitnesses identify suspects during the classic police lineup.
Reader's Digest Version (Score:3, Insightful)
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Do they mean that eyewitnesses should wear glasses?
Re: Reader's Digest Version (Score:2)
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No, that's not in there at all.
They do make mention of best practices for getting better eyewitness testimony, though.
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Eyewitnesses testimony is not nearly as accurate as one would have hoped.
Theres a lot of creativity involved in memory.
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Note news. (Score:1, Informative)
This has been known for 20+ years.
The problem is that most states don't allow the adverse party to introduce evidence on the general unreliability of eye-witness testimony.
Re: Note news. (Score:1)
At the risk of starting a circlejerk: your point is even more relevant when cops are called as witnesses.
Recommended documentary on eyewitness testamony... (Score:3, Insightful)
"My Cousin Vinny"
Re:Recommended documentary on eyewitness testamony (Score:5, Informative)
That was more a documentary on how police take innocent statements and turn them against you to make you look guilty. People should understand that when the police take his exclamation of disbelief and remove the context and emotion and read that back in court as an admission of guilt by the defendant that this is not only used in real life but used frequently and is precisely why you should never ever talk to the police without a lawyer present.
Re:Recommended documentary on eyewitness testamony (Score:4, Interesting)
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lesson seems to be not to drive drunk and not to run red lights and kill people driving lawfully
if he didn't run a red light he would have told the cops
Re:Recommended documentary on eyewitness testamony (Score:5, Interesting)
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. - H. L. Mencken
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However, California state law says he should have braked even if she entered the intersection illegally, and he did kill a young girl because he was impaired. I don't think you should have your
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I had to refresh my memory of the case. The only reason this was allowed was because the guy voluntarily submitted to questioning then stopped when certain questions were reached. Though I disagree with the supreme court on this there is a significant difference between what you claimed and what precedent this sets. He unwillingness to talk to the police would not have been allowed to be discussed at trial had he not consented to the interview in the first place. The entire justification for allowing this a
Re:Recommended documentary on eyewitness testamony (Score:4, Insightful)
That's part of the problem. Law and court aren't supposed to be a game of "Mother May I" but it's being turned in to one. Nothing in the Constitution suggests that a magic incantation must be uttered.
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The key is that you MUST say that you are not answering because you are invoking your 5th amendment right not to incriminate yourself. If you say nothing at all, then your silence may be used in court. If you say you are not answering because of 5th amendment, then your refusal to answer may NOT be used in court.
It is indeed a perverse ruling, but you can protect yourself by knowing how to respond.
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That was more a documentary on how police take innocent statements and turn them against you to make you look guilty. People should understand that when the police take his exclamation of disbelief and remove the context and emotion and read that back in court as an admission of guilt by the defendant that this is not only used in real life but used frequently and is precisely why you should never ever talk to the police without a lawyer present.
A recent, decent movie featuring such: Gone Girl.
I knew the main character was in trouble when he mentioned that since he was innocent and there was no evidence of his involvement, he didn't need/want a lawyer.
Humans are unreliable (Score:1, Insightful)
And witnesses in a courtroom setting have been counted among the most unreliable sources since, I don't know, forever.
Not news.
Re:Humans are unreliable (Score:5, Interesting)
Defense attorneys and the justice system may know that, but juries don't. Other than DNA evidence, eyewitness testimony (especially from victims) is considered gold standard evidence by juries.
It's unfortunate because eyewitness identification of strangers (especially strangers of a differing race) are very unreliable.
It's not accident that prosecutors and cops have been very upset about the "CSI effect" since it has partly educated juries to expect some physical evidence.
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Have you found that it is difficult to convince other jurors that eyewitness testimony is very unreliable?
I've found that most jurors are very swayed by eyewitness identifications, heinousness of the crime and if the defendant "looks guilty".
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The other aspect of the CSI effect is that juries anticipate when the prosecutor looks them square in the eye and says there is DNA evidence, they view it as conclusive regardless of how weak the other evidence is.
Trifles such as proper evidence gathering, transfer, and storage techniques, lab accreditation, quality of the specimen, etc. are assumed to be ultra high-tech. I think most people would be horrified at how many lapses actually occur.
And even the DNA evidence is less an absolute, but a probability
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Trifles such as proper evidence gathering, transfer, and storage techniques, lab accreditation, quality of the specimen, etc. are assumed to be ultra high-tech. I think most people would be horrified at how many lapses actually occur.
Quite hilariously, that's again a problem with the people rather than with the physical evidence. :-D So I guess the conclusion is that "humans screw things up whenever they touch something".
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Trifles such as proper evidence gathering, transfer, and storage techniques, lab accreditation, quality of the specimen, etc. are assumed to be ultra high-tech. I think most people would be horrified at how many lapses actually occur.
Do you mean that in real life when the boyfriend of somebody in the crime lab is suspected of a crime they don't assign the case to the person who is personally involved with them? How, undramatic that must be!
Documentary (Score:4, Informative)
I think this information is generally well known in law enforcement by now (at least, I hope so). I saw a news documentary on it and it's surprising how poor an eyewitness account can be, especially if handled incorrectly.
Keep spreading awareness:
Documentary Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Documentary Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Nothing but the truth: 12 is divisible by 4
The whole truth: 12 is divisible by all real and imaginary numbers.
By stating nothing but the truth you can lie by omission. By stating the whole truth you can confuse your audience by focusing on irrelevant details.
(the interesting truth: 12 is divisible by 12, 6, 4, 3, 2 and 1).
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Law enforcement has known this for a long time, but they don't care.
The whole juror system needs to be abandoned (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that justice can be obtained by being judged by a jury of your peers is based on the hidden premise that people who are equal to you in the way in which they are your peers are capable of rendering a fair judgment upon you. This premise is false. Not only are my peers easily influenced by spurious logic, they are also susceptible to all manner of emotional manipulation, subliminal messaging and whatever else. Justice is not rendered by the level to which one of the lawyers is able to influence these factors. Nevertheless, that is exactly how a majority of cases judged by jurors are played out. Being judged by a jury of your peers may have been a good idea 300-400 years ago, but now we know better. Why doesn't the law reflect that?
Re:The whole juror system needs to be abandoned (Score:5, Insightful)
Being judged by your peers isn't about their ability to accurately judge, avoid bias, etc. (that's what juror selection, the judge's instructions, sequestration, etc. are for).
Being judged by your peers is about NOT being judged by a population of powerful/rich/elite fucks who absolutely have no idea what life is like for the people they are judging.
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Re:The whole juror system needs to be abandoned (Score:4, Informative)
Agreed. The flaw in jury by peers is that the law is written to be incomprehensible, so the jury is forced to defer to the lawyers about what actions could possibly be considered a crime. On a related note, modern juries are never informed of their right of nullification (finding the law to be at fault, rather than a simple guilty or not guilty verdict), they are told repeatedly that their only purpose is to assess the guilt or innocence of the defendant.
Coherent laws and a properly educated jury would resolve many of the issues with the justice system in the USA. The only victims would be the legislatures who would have to write better laws or risk the juries striking them down again and again.
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Agreed. The flaw in jury by peers is that the law is written to be incomprehensible, so the jury is forced to defer to the lawyers about what actions could possibly be considered a crime
This is a fallacious argument that simply helps dishonest lawyers make money. Reading the law isn't fun, it's rather tedious, but it's not simply a mishmash of laws. Absent of case law, which has no legal basis in the American judicial system, laws are written to be understood the way a computer would understand a computer problem. You simply read them and apply them. If there are any contradictions or vagueness, then that part of the law is simply void and doesn't apply to that particular case.
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The law is full of vagueness and contradictions. The very term "reasonable", which is common in many criminal statutes, by its very nature is open to interpretation and depends on situation.
You are right in that the laws are written much as computer programs are, except the people writing them don't even have remotely the skill to properly do so. And the law doesn't have an implementation to test against, it's written and goes straight into production. We all know how well that practice usually turns out fo
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You're correct that "case law" is meaningless bullshit.
But you're absolutely wrong about laws being objectively, logically, and deterministically. You're also absolutely wrong about laws that are vague or contradictory. Most laws are vague, contradictory, or both, and they're still in full effect.
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That is not helped at all by the attitude of the courts. Don't have transportation? Too bad. Parking costs more than the 'expenses' check that was adequate in 1960? Too bad. Can't afford to take time off? Too bad. Won't have a job when it's over? Too bad. Single parent and the babysitter died in the living room? Too bad. Work the night shift? Too bad, be here at 8:00 A.M.
No wonder people resent it.
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It's not like the courts can do anything about it. The money to pay for that is set by the legislature. I don't foresee any legislator voting to increase taxes or fees to increase payments for jurors. Coupled with the social stereotype that jury duty is for idiots, it's a downward spiral.
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They can be more flexible about it even without more money. They don't HAVE to threaten with arrest right off the bat. They could not make you wait until after business hours the night before to find out if you will or will not be needed. They could provide enough chairs for everyone to sit. They could avoid calling some people every year and some never. They could waive the parking fee. Instead of arresting people who can't get there, they could give them a lift (don't tell me they don't have the resources
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For that matter, they could make it illegal to cut your hours or fire you if you have jury duty AND enforce it.
Employers NEVER fire people for attending jury duty. They are given all the time they need, and then they are expected to get all their work done on the dates that were assigned before they left for jury duty, doing whatever is necessary to get the job done.
At my workplace I can basically take a day off anytime I like. The consequences come when I either don't get stuff done on time, or I end up working 30 hours every weekend to catch up.
This sort of thing is almost impossible to enforce. It is no differ
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Employers NEVER fire people for attending jury duty.
Sure, where you work. Some people are stuck working McJobs and do get penalized if they dare to ask for a day off, even if it is for jury duty. They don't get the chance to put in 30 hours over the weekend so they don't end up homeless at the end of the month.
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Employers NEVER fire people for attending jury duty.
Sure, where you work. Some people are stuck working McJobs and do get penalized if they dare to ask for a day off, even if it is for jury duty. They don't get the chance to put in 30 hours over the weekend so they don't end up homeless at the end of the month.
I think you missed the point. McJobs never fire people for jury duty either. They only fire people for breaking the rules. Of course, everybody breaks the rules since they're impossible to follow, but you only get written up for them if you attend jury duty, or you don't sleep with the boss, or you're the wrong race, etc.
And yes, for many simply being denied the opportunity to work can be devestating.
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And that needs to be considered when calling people for jury duty. If they are in that category, perhaps they have enough trouble without jury duty.
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That is not helped at all by the attitude of the courts. Don't have transportation? Too bad. Parking costs more than the 'expenses' check that was adequate in 1960? Too bad. Can't afford to take time off? Too bad. Won't have a job when it's over? Too bad. Single parent and the babysitter died in the living room? Too bad. Work the night shift? Too bad, be here at 8:00 A.M.
No wonder people resent it.
Nonsense. The courts are very understanding about real-life demands.
When I was on jury duty a man stood up and said that he had to prepare for a trial that was scheduled for the following week. The judge asked if he was an attorney, and when he said yes he was immediately excused.
And if somebody in the court wastes a lot of time, the attorneys on the other side can argue that this has cost them lost time and ask for reimbursement for this.
Oh wait, you aren't an attorney? Yeah, your time is basically wort
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This does not contradict anything I have said. Furthermore, if that's what juror selection etc. is for, it's doing a piss-poor job. And even if that's what it's for, it's not how it's being used. I have been dismissed from jury duty for being a phd student in an area relevant to the case, ie., someone capable of thinking for themselves.
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1: judges
2: law professors
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You really want to abandon your right to be judged by your peers in favor of being judged by appointees of the executive branch and/or locally-elected politicians, or, alternatively, by the people who are from rich enough families that they can go to nice schools?
There are all kinds of problems with juries, but the nice thing about them is that they are fairly consistently good/bad over time. In contrast, put the rich folks, appointees, and politicians in control over the outcomes of cases, and you can pret
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No, that's not what I said. I want people to judge over me who have been judged to be capable of doing so by people who have spent their lives studying the basis on which judgments are and should be made. This does not rule out the judge judgers making decisions based on other criteria (such as political affiliation (though the effect of this can be mitigated by requiring meta-judgments to be performed by a committee) but it is a vast improvement over the current system.
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I gotcha. I thought you were answering his first question (who should you be judged by?), but you were actually answering his second question (who decides who judges you?), correct?
If so, that makes a lot more sense, and it wasn't clear from the context that that's what you meant, hence my reaction, since I assumed you were answering the first question.
My primary issue with the jury system is that oftentimes the people selected as jurors are not actually peers, other than that we may both be citizens. Hypot
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Yup. I thought numbering the questions I was answering would make that clear but I suppose I should have written "question 1:" and "question 2:" instead of "1:" and "2:" to remove all ambiguity.
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Oh well. So much for thinking I understood. >_<
Regardless, I still have issues with what you said. I think my issues are evident, so I won't repeat them.
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I think you need to put more responsibility on the shoulders of the highly paid professional lawyers and presiding judges to present the case to the jurors so they can understand the issues and facts, including any emotional elements. These professionals are paid not only to be experts in law, but to effectively communicate the law to jurors, judges, and clients. If they fail in that, that's on them, not necessarily the jurors or the larger system. Unfortunately, their failure could cause injustice to indiv
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I knew a lawyer once that told me they try to weed out critical thinkers in the selection process. If you have an engineering or science degree they don't want you. If you have a law degree, they really don't want you.
Re: The whole juror system needs to be abandoned (Score:5, Interesting)
My psych research specifically investigated the impact of warning a jury about the impact of social contagion on eyewitness statements. It found if you warned jurors they actually take this on board and shift their judgment of the testimony appropriately. This suggests that jurors specifically aren't the problem as such it is more about education - it is a very commonly held belief that eyewitness testimony is strong because people themselves don't question the accuracy of their own memories and tend to apply this in assessing the memory of others.
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The practical issue that you can't educate a jury about every possible form of bias and fallacy remains, however. Jurors, being regular people, will insist on using heuristics that have served them well in everyday life in judging the matter before them (even though those are not typically logically valid but based on induction and fuzzy logic). Lawyers know this, and can exploit those heuristics in obtaining a verdict.
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The trial attorneys I know tell me that shows like NCIS and Criminal Minds really skew juries' expectations of testimony. There's an unrealistic expectation of high-tech magic that's simply not there.
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Do you have a link to this specific research or an article about it?
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That's taking a conclusion and working back an argument.
A jury of your peers was actually meant to be just that - your social/societal peers. People who *knew* you or at least knew of you. In those days they didn't need RICO laws as if you were nicked for something minor, the jury, knowing you're a right asshole who routinely infringes on others' rights, will convict on lesser evidence than Joe from down the street.
By the same token, if these same people knew you had beef with the local constable and the
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Having the property of "being a person who knows me personally" does not render you immune to being manipulated into making judgments you wouldn't otherwise have made by people who have made a career out of achieving just that effect. This is what lawyers do. That they didn't always is no reason to maintain the laws written in a time when they didn't.
Re:The whole juror system needs to be abandoned (Score:4, Informative)
We have juries not because they are great, but because the alternative is worse. Sure, if everything goes as it should, a judge or panel of professional jurors would be more accurate than a bunch of novices. But then there is nothing to stop corrupt judges (remember that judge who got bribed to fill up a juvenile for profit prison?).
The jury is there as the final check and balance on the judicial system (deciding guilt or innocence) and also on the legislative branch (jury nullification, declaring innocence because the law itself was wrong).
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Yes, the jury system is flawed.
What do you suggest replacing it with?
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And what's your problem with accuracy exactly? Is it finding too many innocent people guilty or vice versa? And what methods do you propose take over? The telescreen? Mass surveillance of every moment of our lives? Not at the cost of right to privacy. Take some comfort in knowing our justice system is intended to let guilty men go free over incarcerating innocent men.
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The use of peers is to avoid situations like the Star Chamber and the Inquisition.
Humans are suspectible to tricks. (Score:4, Interesting)
You can watch a man in an ape suit dance and never see him. http://www.theinvisiblegorilla... [theinvisiblegorilla.com]
That's why cops are supposed to do mug shots/line ups sequentially instead of simultaneously (i.e. "Is this the guy? No. How about this guy? No." Rather than "Pick the guy from these people.")
It's also why so many people confess to crimes they did not do.
Their is no such thing as indisputable proof. Just our best guess.
Re:Humans are suspectible to tricks. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's why cops are supposed to do mug shots/line ups sequentially instead of simultaneously
I actually read the article, and I noticed this tidbit:
For some of the scientific controversies surrounding eyewitness accounts, the new report withholds judgment. For example, the traditional police lineup can be performed in one of two ways: The witness can be shown people sequentially, or all of them at once. The goal is to minimize bias, but scientists disagree on which approach is better—or if it matters at all. The report calls this debate "unresolved."
So, it doesn't disprove what you said, but it does suggest that it's not quite so black-and-white as you put it. They did point out that there is clear evidence in favor of conducting the police lineup in a double-blind fashion, which should be a "no duh" sort of thing for any of us, but apparently is a novel idea for many police departments.
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Sequential has fewer positives - true or false. Simultaneous has more positives - true and false.
If you care more about getting the guy, you want simultaneous.
If you care more about not getting the innocent man, you want sequential.
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The real problem isn't sequentially or simultaneously, the problem is that the "experiment" isn't blinded in any direction. Witnesses will assume that if they've been called in for a line up, a suspect must be present, making them more likely to identify someone, anyone, as the perpatrator. Meanwhile the very cops that are trying to build their case are usually in the viewing room with them, consciously or unconsciously they're going to affect who gets identified.
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Precisely, which is why a blinded approach works so much better. What the study proposed is a computer-aided system that selects similar-looking candidates for a lineup at random, and then generates lineups that may or may not contain the suspect. Officers need not even be involved in such a system, preventing the sorts of abuses you're talking about, where the officers hint to the witness (consciously or not) which selection is the "correct" one.
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People also believe their own memories. But these are easily distorted and often wrong. People will be shown pictures of something in their past that contradict their memories and then declare that the pictures must be fakes. I see this myself when I start to pay attention, realizing that my memory is wrong. This isn't just long term memories that degrade, but even for short term memories.
Essentially memory doesn't operate like a book or a photograph. Instead it's a network of concepts and ideas that g
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TFA led me to this list of interesting studies:
http://faculty.washington.edu/... [washington.edu]
the 400-pound gorilla (Score:3)
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A new report concludes that the use of eyewitness accounts need tighter control, and among its recommendations is a call for a more scientific approach to how eyewitnesses identify suspects during the classic police lineup.
The whole lineup process is usually rigged, and can easily be rigged to single out an individual from a pack of "suspects". The lineup is the problem as that tool can too easily be manipulated to garner eyewitness testimony from someone that only "thinks" that's the person they saw and is then coached to say they are "positive" that's the person they saw. And yes, I like the example noted above of "My Cousin Vinny". It's somewhat comically presented, but the f
12 Angry Men (Score:2)
the police and prosecutors need to do their job (Score:1)
trust but verify should be the principal, and the police need to do the verify part before presenting a case to the court that has not been properly solved.
I was on a jury, the fucking stupid police and the fucking stupid crown prosecution service let down a victim, by trusting but not verifying her story. I can't tell anyone what actually happened because that would be contempt of court. As foreman, I had to stand up and tell her that he wasn't guilty (he wasn't) but I couldn't tell her that it happened, b