Inaccurate Eyewitness Testimony

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Imagine you are accused of committing a crime that you vehemently deny ever committing, and one eyewitness’ convincing testimony is all it takes for you to spend time behind bars. This scenario has unfortunately been the case for many individuals who have been wrongfully accused and convicted of crimes they did not commit. This is not to say that some defendants have not been accurately picked out for crimes committed, but there is staggering data showing that many have been inaccurately accused of crimes they are later charged with committing. Eyewitness testimony is one of the most researched topics within autobiographical memory (Matlin, 2009). Decades of research has gone into the topic and an overarching degree shows the inaccuracies, …show more content…
This paper will explore how several cognitive concepts affect the accuracy of eyewitness testimony when focusing on the example of a woman who claims to have witnessed, from 100 feet away, and pointed out the defendant of a three to four second crime involving a diamond necklace being stolen, and how these cognitive concepts would be explained from an expert witness to lay …show more content…
As I hope to be an expert witness one day, it is important to be able to accurately relate these concepts to a case in order to assist jurors, or lay people, to understand the topic at hand and its potential uncertainty. If I were presented with the case described in the prompt for this essay I would state to the jury that the witnesses report may be greatly flawed, inaccurate, and unreliable. I would go into the research and state that the topic of eyewitness testimony is one of the most researched topics and many great findings have come from this research. I would discuss that based on the distance of the witness to the crime and the fact that she was in a grocery store when it occurred, she essentially did not have direct vision to the crime and most probably had many potential obstructions that could have played a role in her misinterpretation of what she saw. It would be important to stress that the witness estimated she only was exposed to the crime for about 3 to 4 seconds and that with such a short exposure and high emotional or adrenaline provoking event the possibility that she misinterpreted the information based on her existing schemas is high. That is, her short exposure to the event and her belief that one of the individuals shown to her had to be the defendant could have triggered biases that unintentionally affected her
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