Eyewitness Testimony in Criminal Justice: Challenges and Solutions

🧠 Quick Study Guide: Eyewitness Testimony in Criminal Justice

• 🔍 Definition: Eyewitness testimony is an account given by people who have witnessed an event (e.g., a crime) and are later asked to identify the perpetrator or describe what happened.
• 💡 Memory is Reconstructive: Human memory is not like a video recorder; it is actively reconstructed each time it's accessed and can be influenced by post-event information.
• 💬 Misinformation Effect: Occurs when misleading information presented after an event alters a person's memory of the event itself.
• 🎯 Weapon Focus: The phenomenon where the presence of a weapon causes an eyewitness to focus attention on the weapon and less on other details, like the perpetrator's face.
• 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Cross-Race Effect (or Own-Race Bias): People are generally better at recognizing faces of their own race than faces of other races.
• ⚡ Stress and Arousal: While moderate stress can enhance memory, extreme stress or high arousal levels can impair memory accuracy, especially for peripheral details.
• 🕰️ Retention Interval: The time gap between witnessing an event and recalling it can lead to memory decay.
• ⚖️ Lineup Procedures: Traditional simultaneous lineups (all suspects shown at once) can encourage relative judgment (picking the person who looks *most like* the culprit). Sequential lineups (suspects shown one by one) promote absolute judgment and reduce false identifications.
• 🗣️ Cognitive Interview: A technique designed to enhance memory recall by encouraging witnesses to recreate the original context and report every detail, even seemingly trivial ones.
• 🔬 Double-Blind Administration: Lineup administrators should not know who the suspect is to prevent unconscious cues to the witness.
• 🧑‍🎓 Expert Testimony: Psychologists can provide expert testimony in court to educate jurors about the limitations and factors affecting eyewitness reliability.

📝 Practice Quiz

1. Which psychological phenomenon describes the tendency for eyewitnesses to focus on a weapon during a crime, thereby neglecting other important details like the perpetrator's face?

1. Weapon Focus
2. Misinformation Effect
3. Cross-Race Effect
4. Retention Interval

2. The 'misinformation effect' primarily demonstrates that:

1. Witnesses are intentionally deceptive.
2. Post-event information can alter a person's memory of an event.
3. Stress always improves memory recall.
4. Sequential lineups are less effective than simultaneous lineups.

3. What is a key advantage of using a sequential lineup over a simultaneous lineup in eyewitness identification?

1. It allows witnesses to compare all suspects at once.
2. It encourages witnesses to make a relative judgment.
3. It reduces the likelihood of false identifications by promoting absolute judgment.
4. It is faster to administer.

4. The 'Cross-Race Effect' suggests that an eyewitness is generally better at:

1. Recalling details from highly stressful events.
2. Identifying perpetrators of a different race.
3. Recognizing faces of their own race.
4. Resisting the misinformation effect.

5. Which of the following is a recommended best practice for administering eyewitness lineups to reduce bias?

1. Allowing the administrator to subtly nod when the witness points to the suspect.
2. Ensuring the administrator knows which person in the lineup is the suspect.
3. Using a double-blind procedure where the administrator is unaware of the suspect's identity.
4. Presenting all lineup members at once for quick comparison.

6. How does extreme stress typically impact an eyewitness's memory accuracy for peripheral details of an event?

1. It significantly enhances memory for all details.
2. It has no measurable effect on memory.
3. It tends to impair memory for peripheral details.
4. It only affects memory for the main perpetrator.

7. The Cognitive Interview technique aims to improve eyewitness recall by:

1. Asking leading questions to guide the witness's memory.
2. Encouraging the witness to report only the most important details.
3. Having the witness recreate the original context and report every detail.
4. Administering a polygraph test during the interview.