Registration number
201417876
Class
Cognition
Class Leader
Madeline Grealy
Date
7/2/17
Title of Coursework
Reliability of eyewitness testimony
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There are times within society in which people commit acts, which are punishable in a court of law, and there are often witnesses to these incidents. Witnesses of a crime are often asked to give testimony when/if the case goes before a court of law. These are known as eyewitness testimonies, which require the individual to explicitly state what they saw and who the perpetrator of the crime was. In the analysis of an eyewitness testimony, psychology plays an important role in determining whether or not it is a reliable source of information.
Mr and Mrs K
The identity of an offender is the key aspect in criminal convictions and this identification is usually done by the victim of the crime or by the witnesses of the crime, in this case elderly couple Mr and Mrs K. Both Mr and Mrs K gave a description of the assailant, Mrs K had also explicitly stated that she would be able to identify the assailant again; this allowed the police force to gather suspects and present them in a video identification parade (VIPER). Several studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of identification parades in relation to age-related deficits, such as visual activity, ability to pay attention and short-term memory (Bruce & Young, 2012). Within any police line-ups whether they are video identifications or the witnesses are asked to view the suspects face to face the perpetrator of the crime is either present or absent. It has been argued that older individuals tend to make more false identifications by picking out the wrong person in the line-up compared to younger individuals (Goodsell, Neuschatz, & Gronlund 2009). There is a line-up procedure which is said to decrease the number of false identifications made this is known as the sequential line-up, which is when the witness is shown each member of the line-up one at a time and once a face is chosen the line-up stops and remaining members are not seen (Mickes, Flowe, & Wixted, 2012). Lindsay and Wells (1985) found for younger individuals that the sequential line-up reduced the number of false identifications made. In their study, they showed a video of a staged crime within a house in which there were two suspects, an older man who went upstairs and a younger man who remained downstairs. There were a total of four line-ups that included a target present and a target absent for both younger and older individuals. Half of the participants received both enhanced line-up instructions as well as basic line-up instructions while the other half only received the basic instructions. The findings of the study found that the older participants were less accurate at picking out the perpetrator than the younger participants. (Lindsay & Wells, 1985)
However, there have been a number of studies, which found that older individuals are just as capable as younger individuals at picking out a culprit in a target present line-up (Memon & Gabert, 2003). It is the target absent line-up which causes a problem for older adults. They may have seen a picture of the culprit beforehand and assume that they are present in the line-up as one of the suspects has familiar features but, this is not the case (Memon, Hope, Bartlett, & Bull, 2002). In order to test line-up accuracy a study conducted by Havard, Laybourn and Klecha (2016) conducted a study in which participants viewed a video of a crime taking place and then were asked to pick out the culprit in a VIPER parade. The study found that by using a silhouette the accuracy for target absent line-ups would increase, as older adults would make more correct rejections. This would allow the eyewitness testimony to increase in reliability as the witnesses would feel confident in their rejection of the target absent line-up and perform similarly to younger adults in the target present line-up. (Havard, Laybourn, & Klecha, 2016).
Witnesses of a crime are asked to recall what they saw and who they saw, there has been several debates made regarding whether older individuals are able to provide accurate testimonies. Brimacombe, Jung, Garrioch and Allison (2003) investigated the way jurors perceived the quality of an older eyewitnesses’ testimony through a three-phase experiment. Phase 1 showed a video of a staged theft to both older and younger adults and asked them questions about what they saw. In phase 2 the jurors viewed the video recordings of the testimonies and in phase 3 new jurors re-evaluated the testimony transcripts. The results indicated that older adults tended to provide greater details about a crime this can be due to their ability to use their mental organisation skills. They also tended to be just as accurate as a younger individual when responding to the questions regarding the theft (Brimacombe, Jung, Garrioch, & Allison, 2003).
Some individual’s might have distinct features, which will make them easier to identify such as tattoos or a scar. Those with distinct features tend to stand out within a line-up, as noted by Mrs K questioning the blonde stripe in the accused’s hair. In a study conducted by Zarkadi, Wade, & Stewart, (2009) digitally added features towards a suspects’ face such as a bruise or piercing and tested participants memory on the faces. It was found that when markings were replicated on other suspects rather than concealed the identification of the correct suspect increased (Zarkadi, Wade, & Stewart, 2009). In Mr and Mrs K’s case the blonde stripe in the suspect’s hair may have been digitally added making it more difficult for them to pick him out.
Police force
The accused, James McClumpherty is well known to the police although several members of the force do not know him personally they have seen his face on several mugshots and according to the CCTV footage it places him at the scene of the crime. However, matching the image of a person on a camera or photo sounds simple enough but is prone to errors (Bruce, Henderson, Newman, & Burton, 2001). Studies have been conducted using witness as well as police line-ups, if a police investigator believes that the witness has a clear memory for the perpetrator they tend to bias the instructions of the line-up to cause the witness to choose the known perpetrator. In a study conducted by Thomson and Johnson (2008) they investigated biased and unbiased instructions regarding the perpetrator and the line-up and gave participants a matching task to determine if the perpetrator was present or absent. The findings of the study showed that the by using biased instructions caused the witness to make more false identifications within target absent situations and they tended to perform better on the video-matching task compared to the recognition task when they had biased instructions (Thomson & Johnson, 2008).
However, the accused claims that he had an alibi which would confirm his location during the time of the crime, this is the accused’s friend Shug. An alibi is a powerful aspect which can affect a juror’s opinion. There is an important issue regarding an alibi and that is whether or not it can be proven. In this case, Shug is the accused friend and there has been research which has shown that those who are familiar to the suspect are more likely to lie for them making the alibi less believable (Olson & Wells, 2004). The same can also be said about someone who has had a prior conviction as they are more likely to be found less credible thus they will be found guilty (Clary & Shaffer, 1985). In a study conducted by Allison and Brimacombe (2010) participants are shown a crime scenario and then 6 suspects were then interviewed regarding the crime and they had to present evidence to support their alibi. It was found that individuals who had been convicted previously were found to be less believable and were more likely to have less credible alibis as the evidence of their whereabouts at the time of the crime was not strong enough (Allison, & Brimacombe, 2010).
In conclusion, the overall stability of the eyewitness testimony from Mr and Mrs K is not a reliable source of evidence to fully accuse James McClumpherty due to the indecisiveness they displayed during the VIPER parade. However, there is the evidence that he is well known to the police for prior convictions and that while he provided an alibi it is not strong enough to prove that’s where he was when the crime took place as there was only one person in the house at the time and that was Shug and due to him being a friend he may be more inclined to lie. Overall, the evidence given by the police may be enough to convict the accused but until the witnesses are fully confident that he is the correct person it can be argued that the eyewitness testimony is unreliable.