Eyewitness Testimonies Essay

Eyewitness testimonies are commonly used when police are solving a crime. Eyewitness testimonies are an excellent source of information, but the witnesses may be easily read wrongfully by the interviewer. There are multiple factors that can cause the interviewer to read the eyewitness wrongfully. These factors include; when the interviewer does not word their questions carefully, when the interviewer uses leading questions, and when the interviewer presents the eyewitness with false information. Wording of the QuestionAn interviewer must be cautious when interviewing eyewitnesses. This can be said because the interviewer has to ensure that they word their questions carefully because if they don’t they can wrongfully lead the eyewitness to believe they saw events that did
Leading questions are planned questions asked by the interviewer to produce a favourable answer.False InformationThe last factor that interviewers must be aware of is not to use false information when asking eyewitnesses questions. False information occurs when the interviewer asks the eyewitness a question based on the events of a crime that took place, but the question does not have anything in common with the actual event that took place. An example of this is when the interviewer asks the students in the video if they had noticed the weapon that was used in order for the theft of the purse. ConclusionEyewitness testimonies are a valuable tool when conducting police investigations and solving crimes. In order to gain information from eyewitnesses an interviewer must conduct an interview. Unfortunately, there can be sources of error when an interviewer is reading an eyewitness. An interviewer must be aware of these sources of error before conducting the interview in order to have a successful and truthful eyewitness statement as an end