Nguyễn Đặng Thùy Linh 18BSM

Why are eyewitness testimonies sometimes unreliable? What can we do to help the
testimonies less affected by the eyewitness’s false memory?
In 1984, Kirk Bloodsworth was convicted of a rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl and
sentenced to a gas chamber, a result largely based on the testimony of five witnesses. At trial,
five witnesses testified that they had seen Bloodsworth with the victim because he was suitable
for the description of the eyewitness. They mentioned the perpetrator was a tall white man with
curly blonde hair and skinny while Kirk Bloodsworth had a red hair and was well over 200 pounds.
However, two of these witnesses were unable to identify Bloodsworth in a squad but saw him
after the crime was committed on television. Although there was no physical evidence
connecting him to the crime, Bloodsworth was convicted of rape and murder and was sentenced
to death row. Moreover, the police failed to apprise of the defense that there maybe have
another suspect. Bloodsworth's conviction was overturned by the court of appeals two years
after the initial conviction and he was retrieved. This time, he was sentenced twice to life instead
of death row inmates. After Bloodsworth was sentenced to 9 years in prison, DNA testing proved
him innocent. According to a report of the Innocent Project, such a devastating mistake is not
uncommon, according to a report of the Innocent Project, an organization associated with
Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University, history Use DNA tests to eliminate those
who are wrongly convicted. Since the 1990s, when DNA testing was first introduced, researchers
from the Innocent Project reported that 73% of 239 people were sentenced through DNA testing
based on their testimony proof. One-third of these overturned cases are based on testimonies of
two or more mistaken witnesses. How many witnesses can be wrong?
Witness identification often involves selecting the alleged perpetrator from the police lineup, but
it can also be based on police sketches and other methods. Immediately after selecting a suspect,
witnesses were asked to give a formal statement confirming the ID and try to recall any other
details about the events surrounding the crime. At the trial, it is possible that many years later,
witnesses often testify in court. Because people with certain psychological disorders, such as
antisocial personality disorder and drug dependence, are at high risk of crime, they are also at
high risk of misidentification by witnesses.
Roughly accepting witness accounts can stem from a common misconception about how memory
works. Many people believe that human memory works like a video camera: mind recording
events and then, on hints, replay an exact copy of them. In contrast, psychologists have
discovered that memories are recreated instead of replayed every time we remember them. The
memorandum, said the memory researcher and famous psychologist Elizabeth F. Loftus of the
University of California, Irvine, is a person who is more like putting puzzle pieces together than
taking a video again. pieces of memory may inadvertently be combined with information
provided by the asker, resulting in an incorrect recall.
Many researchers have created false memories in ordinary people; more than that, many of
these topics make sure that memories are real. In a famous study, Loftus and his colleague
Jacqueline Pickrell have written topics on four events, three of which they actually went through.
The fourth story is fiction; it focuses on the topic of being lost in a shopping center or another
public place when a child is between four and six years old. A relative has provided practical
details for the misleading story, such as a description of the shopping center that the parent
theme shopping for. After reading each story, the subjects were asked to write down what they
remembered about the incident or tell them that they had absolutely no memory of it. It is
noteworthy that about one-third of the subjects reported remembering part or the whole of the
wrong event. In the next two interviews, 25 percent still claim that they miss the bogus story, a
number that matches the results of similar studies.
With the danger of false convictions based on faulty witness testimonies, how can we minimize
such errors? The Innocent Project has proposed laws to improve the accuracy of witness IDs.
These include recording identification procedures so that the assessors can determine whether
it is done correctly, putting individuals in the same team as the witness's description of the
culprit, notifying Tell viewers about the lineup that the culprit may or may not be in it, and make
sure that the squad manager or other identification procedure does not know who the suspect
is. Although only a few cities and states have passed laws to improve the accuracy of witness
identification, there seems to be a growing interest in doing so.
In addition, allowing witness identification experts to testify in court can educate the jury and
perhaps lead to a greater assessment of the testimony. Most jurisdictions in the United States do
not allow such professionals in the courtroom for the reason that laboratory research in the
laboratory does not apply to the courtroom and in any case, its conclusions. Mostly common
sense and therefore not enlightened. However, Iowa State University psychologist Gary Wells
and colleague Lisa Hasel collected significant evidence that experimental findings apply to
testimony in the courtroom and they are often counter-scientific.
Science can and should inform judicial processes to improve the accuracy and assessment of
witness accounts. We are seeing some small steps in this direction, but our court still has a long
way to ensure that innocent people are not punished for errors in the type of evidence that are
very influential this.