Analysis Of Eyewitness Testimony

I always thought that eyewitness testimony was a bullet proof plan in the judicial system. I always thought that eyewitness testimony wasn't malleable. You would think that when you are being raped and you analyze the rapist face you will know exactly who it is. I never considered how a weapon can effect what the brain focuses on. But if I thought about it more it does make sense. Because your brain is in survival mode because there is a knife to your neck. Your brain is not focusing on remembering a face rather focusing on the knife and how to stay alive. Your brain is telling you to do and say certain things that the brain thinks will leave you alive and not dead. I was always certain that if anything like that happened to me I would be able
to point him out instantly without any hesitation, to know I picked the right man with everything in me, and to have the satisfaction that I pickted the right man and he could never do this to another woman again. I always say that I have a hard time remembering name and faces that I have met briefly but I always said I could pick out the true culprit with no hesitation. Learning about eyewitness testimony and the Picking Cotton story, I will be caucious of my own and how other stimuli like a weapon could interfere with my testimony.
Survival is primitive and it is embedded in our brain. That is why Jennifer and many other victims of crime with deadly force have falsely accused an innocent woman or man. I also cannot belive that a lot of states do not take into account other stimuli that can affect an eyewitnesses testimony. They don’t clarify these in the courtrooms either. Even though there has been hundreds of false convictions appealed. There is ample evidence to support how faulty eyewitness testimony is especially when there is a weapon involved.