Memory by Fergus Craik

Author:Fergus Craik [Craik, Fergus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2023-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

Eyewitness Testimony: Malleability of Memory

Eyewitness testimony is generally treated as a compelling basis for conviction in court cases. As described above, however, emotion-provoking events can result in false memory that is held with high confidence. Its doing so can have catastrophic consequences. Recent studies show that 3 to 6 percent of all people incarcerated in US prisons were wrongfully convicted. The advent of DNA testing in the late 1980s provided a new level of accuracy for determining the guilt of people incarcerated for a crime and consequently revealed several cases of wrongful conviction. Of those cases, 71 percent resulted from erroneous eyewitness testimony. Among those are cases of a mistaken description of the perpetrator of the sort discussed at the beginning of this chapter as well as wrongful lineup identifications. Of those misidentifications, 41 percent involved cross-racial misidentifications, the vast majority of which were the misidentification of African Americans. In that vein, research has shown that recognition is generally more accurate for persons of the same race and age as oneself. Further, witnesses of a crime or accident are sometimes later misinformed about some aspects of the event as a result of talking with others, including police and lawyers.

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