Eyewitness Testimony Research Paper
Eyewitness testimony has been used frequently over time in various situations. It sometimes holds more merit then some facts or evidence. Yet it is also the reason why many innocent people go to jail and criminals still walk free. Eyewitness testimony has been used for over 100 years. It has played a major part in convicting criminals, from the common thief to the most dangerous murderer. However, with the time between incident and testimony or even report can vary drastically, the quality of eyewitness testimony wasn 't really recognized as an issue until the 1970 's. With plenty of unsolved crimes and not enough evidence eyewitness testimony was all that was needed. Now with psychologists holding scientific studies to see if it is reliable;
…show more content…
the legal jurisdictions try to pay more attention to the specific details. Through many studies it has been shown how the accuracy of the reports given can be altered by the ethnicity of the person and their current emotional state. It is believed that if a weapon is used in the crime that is witnessed then the eyewitness might become distracted by the event, impairing their judgment (Wagstaff, Macveigh, Boston, Scott, Brunas-Wagstaff, &Cole 2003). This research essay will answer questions about how often faulty eyewitness testimony occurs, how it happens, and finally I will discuss how we as a society can attempt to fix it.
October 2002, ten people were killed and three injured when two snipers went on a killing spree in the Washington, D.C. area. Soon after the first shootings, police announced they were looking for a white male in his twenties, driving a white Van. Loftus gives the example of the sniper attacks in the fall of 2002."Everybody was looking for a white van even though the perpetrators, in actuality, had been driving a dark Chevy Caprice." That 's because some people reported seeing a white van at the scene of the crime. "Witnesses overhear each other," says Loftus, and police may also unintentionally influence people 's memories when they talk about a crime."
This profile was based on the collaboration of a psychologist and eyewitness testimony. In this instance the Police relied heavily upon this profile, which clouded their judgment about other more likely suspects, such as John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo. During the weeks of the attacks, these men were pulled over four times for being in the area of a shooting. However, police allowed them to go without a question, because they were looking for a white male. If law enforcement officials had not relied so heavily on eyewitness reports to connect Muhammad and Malvo with the shootings, perhaps they would have been apprehended before further tragedy. Unfortunately, police used racial profiling, faulty eyewitness testimony and a psychologist who basically guessed, resulting in a faulty investigation. Once again, it proved an ineffective tool for catching perpetrators.
Now in the 20th century we have discovered a new way to prove eyewitnesses wrong and also make sure that the evidence provable beyond a reasonable doubt. In some cases, critical forensic evidence is consumed or destroyed, so that re-testing to uncover the misconduct is impossible. Evidence in these cases can never be tested again. These wrongful convictions will never be overturned. The identification, collection, testing, storage, handling and reporting of any piece of forensic evidence involves a number of people (The Innocence Project, 2010) Evidence can be deliberately or accidentally mishandled at any stage of this process. The risk of misconduct starts at the crime scene, where evidence can be planted, destroyed or contaminated (The Innocence project 2010). The evidence then is sent by police to a state forensic lab or independent contractor, where it can be contaminated, poorly tested, consumed unnecessarily or mislabeled (Deedrick, 2000). The next step is a report, in which technicians and their superiors sometimes misrepresent results. DNA exonerations have revealed on numerous instances of "drylabbing" evidence - reporting results when no test was performed. It is cheaper and faster - but can be fraudulent.
The Innocence Project has uncovered such abuses since 1992 and has developed recommendations for crime labs, law enforcement agencies and courts to ensure that forensic science misconduct is prevented whenever possible (Deedrick, 2000). The Innocence Project calls for states to impose standards on the preservation and handling of evidence. When exonerations suggest that an analyst engaged in misconduct, or that a facility lacked proper procedures and or oversight the Innocence Project advocates for independent audits of their work in other cases that may have also resulted in wrongful convictions.
George Rodriguez was exonerated in 2005 after serving 17 years for a sexual assault he did not commit. Rodriguez 's case helped to reveal a pattern of error and fraud in the Houston Police Department Crime Lab that is still being investigated and corrected today (The Innocence Project, 2010). In Rodriguez 's case, lab director Jim Bolding testified that a hair found in the victim 's underwear could have belonged to Rodriguez. He also testified that blood type evidence showed that Rodriguez, not a co-defendant, could have deposited biological fluids. This was false; later tests showed that the co-defendant could have been a contributor. DNA testing also showed that the hair used against Rodriguez could not have been his. Audits of the Houston lab since Rodriguez 's exoneration have revealed a wide range of misconduct.
With study of wrongful convictions it has been determined that eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide (The Innocence Project, 2010).
These wrongful convictions played a major role in more than 75% of wrongful convictions overturned by DNA testing (The Innocence Project, 2010). Although eyewitness testimony can be critical evidence before a judge or jury; 30 years of strong social science research has proven that eyewitness identification is often unreliable. The research which was conducted by the Innocence Project revealed that the human mind is not like a tape recorder or video camera; we neither record events exactly as we see them, nor recall the instance exactly how it occurred. Nevertheless, witness memory is like any other evidence at a crime scene, it must be documented carefully and retrieved methodically and quickly, or it can be contaminated (The Innocence project 2010). We as people can carry fibers, through our clothing, skin and hair that can cause the contamination of a crime scene just by not following proper procedure. Furthermore, in these types of cases, DNA has proven what scientists already know, that eyewitness identification is frequently …show more content…
inaccurate.
Child eyewitnesses are even more susceptible to being lead into a lie or telling a story that they "think" they know. The age of the child being interviewed can affect their suggestibility. Ceci and Bruck (1993) generalize that, "young children have been found to be more suggestible than adults or older children, with preschool children being the most suggestible." There are a number of reasons why this is. According to Wilson and Powell, (2001) this is due to the fact that younger children have a smaller knowledge base, limited language skills, and an increased desire to please the interviewer. It is not uncommon for information once known extensively, such as a poem, to be forgotten over time if the poem is not practiced. "It may still be the case that the first interview must occur within a specific time window for it to help buffer against forgetting, and this time window may be longer for older children than that of younger children." (Fivush, Peterson and Schwarzmueller. 2000) Over time, memories are believed to decay. If the memory is incomplete, or not as sharp as it once was, the witness may be more suggestible than if the information was fresh in the mind. "Generally, the sooner we are asked to recall events, the more likely we are able to remember the finer details (Ord, Shaw and Green. 2004).
The interviewer can have a major impact on the suggestibility of the witness. "A child being interviewed by a police officer or a Youth and Family Services Investigator is likely to want to please such an adult figure by providing answers the child believes the authority figure would want to hear." (Kapardis 1997) These answers may not be truthful, but depending on the reactions of the interviewer, a child witness may change his or her answers. Furthermore, "Children are more likely to believe adults than other children, they are more willing to go along with the wishes of adults, and to incorporate adults ' beliefs into their reports." (Ceci & Bruck, 1993). A prime example of this factor affecting suggestibility is where an alleged child abuse victim speaks to a parent about the matter. The parent would then ask questions and there is a great chance of the evidence being corrupted.
In acquiring information from a witness, such as obtaining a witness statement, questions must be asked to elicit the information. Different types of questions can affect the suggestibility of the witness. Selection questions are one example of suggestive questioning. For example, "Was he wearing a red hat or a blue hat?" This is selective as the witness only has two options to choose from. The person in question may not have been wearing a hat at all, but due to the choice of questioning, the witness may be misled to believe that the person was wearing a hat. Leading questions are also considered to increase suggestibility. According to Endres (1997), "A leading question with a premise contains items of knowledge that did not yet occur in the interviewee 's preceding answers." Therefore, details that may not have been known in relation to the incident have been disclosed by the interviewer, thus potentially misleading the witness to believe that this information is true, and that it actually occurred. Similarly the same applies to implied descriptions and evaluations. This can be seen in the study conducted by Loftus and Palmer (1974) where participants viewed a video of a car accident. Following this, participants were then given a questionnaire. Some of the participants were asked, "How fast were the cars going when they contacted?" and others were asked, "How fast were the cars going when they smashed?" The study showed that the group offered the word 'smashed ' believed that the car was travelling at a faster speed then the group offered the word contacted. Therefore, according to Roediger and Gallo (2002) "How a question is asked helps determine the answer given."
There is a strong case against repeating both questions and interviews. A number of studies have shown that asking children the same question repeatedly within an interview and across interviews, especially a yes/no question (e.g., Poole & White, 1991), often results in the child changing her original answer. "When children are asked the same question again, they may assume that the adult interviewer did not approve of the first answer given." (Mosten 1987 in Fivush, Peterson and Schwarzmueller. 2000)
Can someone remember something that never happened to them? Elizabeth E. Loftus 's article, _Creating False Memories_, in the September 1997 issue of Scientific American, proves the answer to be yes. It shows many instances where people have remembered eating babies, being raped, seeing their best friend murdered, or have belonged to a satanic cult. Most of the time these memories are false, and have been brought on by misleading questions asked by psychiatrists or another authority figure. As the questions progress witnesses start to imagine that for instance they were raped when they were eight years old; it then seems as if they really do remember most of the circumstances related to their rape. They then often sue the person whom they think raped them resulting in an innocent person being convicted. In some cases like this it has been proven afterwards that they are experiencing a false memory.
As psychology defines memory - memory is an organism 's ability to store, retain, and also retrieve information. Memory is divided into three separate categories: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. An example of sensory memory is a subject 's ability to observe an object for a very short period of time such as 1 or 2 seconds, and recall what that item looked like or what was printed on it. Short-term memory is a combination of some sensory memories and memories you can recall several seconds or minutes after initially being exposed to it. George A. Miller worked with short-term memory in his experiments and found that the average person could memorize 7-9 figures after a short period of time, but this memory could be enhanced if the person used a process called "chunking". Memories that go into the sensory and short-term storage have a strict limit on capacity and duration which makes them unavailable after long periods of time. Long-term memories however can be accessed for a much longer period of time sometimes an entire lifetime. However, a person 's memory of an actual event is still able to be contaminated or even misguided. The hope is to obtain new research, so the instance of falsely accusing someone is greatly decreased.
In conclusion, the problem of wrongful convictions in America is much larger than many people appreciate, but that should not stop Americans from trying to seek out the truth to release the innocent people that have been wrongly convicted. Daily, throughout this country people are convicted of crimes they did not commit, or worse, set free when chains of investigators fail to prosecute those guilty of a crime. The future of our criminal justice system 's success relies heavily on today 's education system and the hiring process of highly educated individuals. A deeper understanding of the mind, memories and how they work will also help maintain a just judicial system. A solid education system will produce competent and reliable police officers, forensic scientists, lawyers, and every other employee in our criminal justice system. More knowledgeable and competent employees in the criminal justice system will be better equipped with the tools they need in order to reduce or possibly eliminate these errors that exist in our systems current state.
References
Ceci, S.J., & Bruck, M. (1993). Suggestibility of the Child Witness: A Historical Review and Synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 113, 403-439.
Dorahy, M. (1998). Cognitive Interviewing: A User Friendly Guide. (Unpublished)
Endres, J. (1997) The Suggestibility of the Child Witness: The Role of Individual Differences and Their Assessment. Psychological Institute, University of Bonn 1997. From. http://truth.boisestate.edu/jcaawp/9701/9701.html
Fisher, R.P.
& Geiselman, R.E. (1992) Memory Enhancing Techniques for Investigative Interviewing: The Cognitive Interview. Charles C. Thomas Publishers. Springfield Illinois.
Fivush, R. Peterson, C. & Schwarzmueller, A. (2000). 'Questions and Answers: The Credibility of Child Witnesses in the Context of Specific Questioning Techniques ', in Memory and Suggestibility in the Forensic Interview, M Eisen, J Quas & GS Goodman (eds), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, New Jersey.
Gray, P. (1999). Psychology. 3rd edn. Worth Publishers Inc. Boston.
Kamira, J. (2002). Revisiting the Interview - Cognitive Interviewing and Communication for General Duties Police. (In Print.)
Kapardis, A. (1997). 'Children as Witnesses ', in Psychology and Law: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Loftus, Elizabeth. Creating False Memories. Scientific American. September 1997: 30-35.
Loftus, E., & Palmer, J. (1974). Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An
Example of the Interaction Between Language and Memory. Journal of
Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 13
McCloskey, M., & Zaragoza, M. (1985). Misleading Post Event Information and Memory for Events: Arguments and Evidence against Memory Impairment Hypotheses. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,
114(1)
Memon, A. (1999) Interviewing Witnesses: The Cognitive Interview, in Handbook of the Psychology of Interviewing. A Memon & R.H.C Bull John Wiley: West Sussex England.
Moston, S. (1987). The Suggestibility of Children in Interview Studies. First Language.
Mura, K., Stacey, H. (2005). JST313, Investigative Interviewing. Learning Materials Centre, NSW.
Ord, B., Shaw, G., & Green, T. (2004). Investigative Interviewing Explained. LexisNexis Butterworths, Sydney.
Peterson, C., & Biggs, M. (1997). Interviewing Children About Trauma: Problems With "Specific" Questions. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 10, 279-290.
Poole, D.A., & White, L.T. (1991). Effects of Question Repetition on the Eyewitness Testimony of Children and Adults. Developmental Psychology, 27, 975-986.
Roediger, HL & Gallo, DA, (2002). 'Processes Affecting Accuracy and Distortion in Memory: An Overview ', in Memory and Suggestibility in Forensic Interview, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, New Jersey.
Rubin, Z & McNeil, E. (1985). 'Memory ', in Psychology: Being Human, 4th edn. Harper and Row, New York.
Schacter, D. L. (1999). The seven sins of memory. Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist, 54, 182-203.
Shaw, G. (1996). Go With the Flow. Police Review, 19 January.
The Suggestibility of Children: Evaluation by Social Scientists (From the Amicus Brief for the Case of State of New Jersey v. Michaels, Presented by Committee of Concerned Social Scientists) from http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mcmartin/suggestibility.html
Wells, G. L., & Bradfield, A. L. (1998). Good, you identified the suspect: Feedback to eyewitnesses distorts their reports of the witnessing experience. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83, 360-376.
Wells, G & Olson E. A. Olson. (Annual Review of Psychology, 2003, Volume 54, pp. 277-295). _"EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY,"_
Wilson, C & Powell, M. (2001). 'Understanding a Child 's Mind ', in A Guide to Interviewing Children. Allen and Unwin, Crowns Nest, Sydney.
Websites
http://www.memorylossonline.com/eyewitness.htm
http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/02/wrongful-conviction-feedback-increases.php
http://www.abuse-excuse.com/home.html
http://www.acfnewsource.org/science/false_memories.html
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1101/hotline/hschacter.htm
http://www.innocenceproject.org/
the legal jurisdictions try to pay more attention to the specific details. Through many studies it has been shown how the accuracy of the reports given can be altered by the ethnicity of the person and their current emotional state. It is believed that if a weapon is used in the crime that is witnessed then the eyewitness might become distracted by the event, impairing their judgment (Wagstaff, Macveigh, Boston, Scott, Brunas-Wagstaff, &Cole 2003). This research essay will answer questions about how often faulty eyewitness testimony occurs, how it happens, and finally I will discuss how we as a society can attempt to fix it.
October 2002, ten people were killed and three injured when two snipers went on a killing spree in the Washington, D.C. area. Soon after the first shootings, police announced they were looking for a white male in his twenties, driving a white Van. Loftus gives the example of the sniper attacks in the fall of 2002."Everybody was looking for a white van even though the perpetrators, in actuality, had been driving a dark Chevy Caprice." That 's because some people reported seeing a white van at the scene of the crime. "Witnesses overhear each other," says Loftus, and police may also unintentionally influence people 's memories when they talk about a crime."
This profile was based on the collaboration of a psychologist and eyewitness testimony. In this instance the Police relied heavily upon this profile, which clouded their judgment about other more likely suspects, such as John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo. During the weeks of the attacks, these men were pulled over four times for being in the area of a shooting. However, police allowed them to go without a question, because they were looking for a white male. If law enforcement officials had not relied so heavily on eyewitness reports to connect Muhammad and Malvo with the shootings, perhaps they would have been apprehended before further tragedy. Unfortunately, police used racial profiling, faulty eyewitness testimony and a psychologist who basically guessed, resulting in a faulty investigation. Once again, it proved an ineffective tool for catching perpetrators.
Now in the 20th century we have discovered a new way to prove eyewitnesses wrong and also make sure that the evidence provable beyond a reasonable doubt. In some cases, critical forensic evidence is consumed or destroyed, so that re-testing to uncover the misconduct is impossible. Evidence in these cases can never be tested again. These wrongful convictions will never be overturned. The identification, collection, testing, storage, handling and reporting of any piece of forensic evidence involves a number of people (The Innocence Project, 2010) Evidence can be deliberately or accidentally mishandled at any stage of this process. The risk of misconduct starts at the crime scene, where evidence can be planted, destroyed or contaminated (The Innocence project 2010). The evidence then is sent by police to a state forensic lab or independent contractor, where it can be contaminated, poorly tested, consumed unnecessarily or mislabeled (Deedrick, 2000). The next step is a report, in which technicians and their superiors sometimes misrepresent results. DNA exonerations have revealed on numerous instances of "drylabbing" evidence - reporting results when no test was performed. It is cheaper and faster - but can be fraudulent.
The Innocence Project has uncovered such abuses since 1992 and has developed recommendations for crime labs, law enforcement agencies and courts to ensure that forensic science misconduct is prevented whenever possible (Deedrick, 2000). The Innocence Project calls for states to impose standards on the preservation and handling of evidence. When exonerations suggest that an analyst engaged in misconduct, or that a facility lacked proper procedures and or oversight the Innocence Project advocates for independent audits of their work in other cases that may have also resulted in wrongful convictions.
George Rodriguez was exonerated in 2005 after serving 17 years for a sexual assault he did not commit. Rodriguez 's case helped to reveal a pattern of error and fraud in the Houston Police Department Crime Lab that is still being investigated and corrected today (The Innocence Project, 2010). In Rodriguez 's case, lab director Jim Bolding testified that a hair found in the victim 's underwear could have belonged to Rodriguez. He also testified that blood type evidence showed that Rodriguez, not a co-defendant, could have deposited biological fluids. This was false; later tests showed that the co-defendant could have been a contributor. DNA testing also showed that the hair used against Rodriguez could not have been his. Audits of the Houston lab since Rodriguez 's exoneration have revealed a wide range of misconduct.
With study of wrongful convictions it has been determined that eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide (The Innocence Project, 2010).
These wrongful convictions played a major role in more than 75% of wrongful convictions overturned by DNA testing (The Innocence Project, 2010). Although eyewitness testimony can be critical evidence before a judge or jury; 30 years of strong social science research has proven that eyewitness identification is often unreliable. The research which was conducted by the Innocence Project revealed that the human mind is not like a tape recorder or video camera; we neither record events exactly as we see them, nor recall the instance exactly how it occurred. Nevertheless, witness memory is like any other evidence at a crime scene, it must be documented carefully and retrieved methodically and quickly, or it can be contaminated (The Innocence project 2010). We as people can carry fibers, through our clothing, skin and hair that can cause the contamination of a crime scene just by not following proper procedure. Furthermore, in these types of cases, DNA has proven what scientists already know, that eyewitness identification is frequently …show more content…
inaccurate.
Child eyewitnesses are even more susceptible to being lead into a lie or telling a story that they "think" they know. The age of the child being interviewed can affect their suggestibility. Ceci and Bruck (1993) generalize that, "young children have been found to be more suggestible than adults or older children, with preschool children being the most suggestible." There are a number of reasons why this is. According to Wilson and Powell, (2001) this is due to the fact that younger children have a smaller knowledge base, limited language skills, and an increased desire to please the interviewer. It is not uncommon for information once known extensively, such as a poem, to be forgotten over time if the poem is not practiced. "It may still be the case that the first interview must occur within a specific time window for it to help buffer against forgetting, and this time window may be longer for older children than that of younger children." (Fivush, Peterson and Schwarzmueller. 2000) Over time, memories are believed to decay. If the memory is incomplete, or not as sharp as it once was, the witness may be more suggestible than if the information was fresh in the mind. "Generally, the sooner we are asked to recall events, the more likely we are able to remember the finer details (Ord, Shaw and Green. 2004).
The interviewer can have a major impact on the suggestibility of the witness. "A child being interviewed by a police officer or a Youth and Family Services Investigator is likely to want to please such an adult figure by providing answers the child believes the authority figure would want to hear." (Kapardis 1997) These answers may not be truthful, but depending on the reactions of the interviewer, a child witness may change his or her answers. Furthermore, "Children are more likely to believe adults than other children, they are more willing to go along with the wishes of adults, and to incorporate adults ' beliefs into their reports." (Ceci & Bruck, 1993). A prime example of this factor affecting suggestibility is where an alleged child abuse victim speaks to a parent about the matter. The parent would then ask questions and there is a great chance of the evidence being corrupted.
In acquiring information from a witness, such as obtaining a witness statement, questions must be asked to elicit the information. Different types of questions can affect the suggestibility of the witness. Selection questions are one example of suggestive questioning. For example, "Was he wearing a red hat or a blue hat?" This is selective as the witness only has two options to choose from. The person in question may not have been wearing a hat at all, but due to the choice of questioning, the witness may be misled to believe that the person was wearing a hat. Leading questions are also considered to increase suggestibility. According to Endres (1997), "A leading question with a premise contains items of knowledge that did not yet occur in the interviewee 's preceding answers." Therefore, details that may not have been known in relation to the incident have been disclosed by the interviewer, thus potentially misleading the witness to believe that this information is true, and that it actually occurred. Similarly the same applies to implied descriptions and evaluations. This can be seen in the study conducted by Loftus and Palmer (1974) where participants viewed a video of a car accident. Following this, participants were then given a questionnaire. Some of the participants were asked, "How fast were the cars going when they contacted?" and others were asked, "How fast were the cars going when they smashed?" The study showed that the group offered the word 'smashed ' believed that the car was travelling at a faster speed then the group offered the word contacted. Therefore, according to Roediger and Gallo (2002) "How a question is asked helps determine the answer given."
There is a strong case against repeating both questions and interviews. A number of studies have shown that asking children the same question repeatedly within an interview and across interviews, especially a yes/no question (e.g., Poole & White, 1991), often results in the child changing her original answer. "When children are asked the same question again, they may assume that the adult interviewer did not approve of the first answer given." (Mosten 1987 in Fivush, Peterson and Schwarzmueller. 2000)
Can someone remember something that never happened to them? Elizabeth E. Loftus 's article, _Creating False Memories_, in the September 1997 issue of Scientific American, proves the answer to be yes. It shows many instances where people have remembered eating babies, being raped, seeing their best friend murdered, or have belonged to a satanic cult. Most of the time these memories are false, and have been brought on by misleading questions asked by psychiatrists or another authority figure. As the questions progress witnesses start to imagine that for instance they were raped when they were eight years old; it then seems as if they really do remember most of the circumstances related to their rape. They then often sue the person whom they think raped them resulting in an innocent person being convicted. In some cases like this it has been proven afterwards that they are experiencing a false memory.
As psychology defines memory - memory is an organism 's ability to store, retain, and also retrieve information. Memory is divided into three separate categories: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. An example of sensory memory is a subject 's ability to observe an object for a very short period of time such as 1 or 2 seconds, and recall what that item looked like or what was printed on it. Short-term memory is a combination of some sensory memories and memories you can recall several seconds or minutes after initially being exposed to it. George A. Miller worked with short-term memory in his experiments and found that the average person could memorize 7-9 figures after a short period of time, but this memory could be enhanced if the person used a process called "chunking". Memories that go into the sensory and short-term storage have a strict limit on capacity and duration which makes them unavailable after long periods of time. Long-term memories however can be accessed for a much longer period of time sometimes an entire lifetime. However, a person 's memory of an actual event is still able to be contaminated or even misguided. The hope is to obtain new research, so the instance of falsely accusing someone is greatly decreased.
In conclusion, the problem of wrongful convictions in America is much larger than many people appreciate, but that should not stop Americans from trying to seek out the truth to release the innocent people that have been wrongly convicted. Daily, throughout this country people are convicted of crimes they did not commit, or worse, set free when chains of investigators fail to prosecute those guilty of a crime. The future of our criminal justice system 's success relies heavily on today 's education system and the hiring process of highly educated individuals. A deeper understanding of the mind, memories and how they work will also help maintain a just judicial system. A solid education system will produce competent and reliable police officers, forensic scientists, lawyers, and every other employee in our criminal justice system. More knowledgeable and competent employees in the criminal justice system will be better equipped with the tools they need in order to reduce or possibly eliminate these errors that exist in our systems current state.
References
Ceci, S.J., & Bruck, M. (1993). Suggestibility of the Child Witness: A Historical Review and Synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 113, 403-439.
Dorahy, M. (1998). Cognitive Interviewing: A User Friendly Guide. (Unpublished)
Endres, J. (1997) The Suggestibility of the Child Witness: The Role of Individual Differences and Their Assessment. Psychological Institute, University of Bonn 1997. From. http://truth.boisestate.edu/jcaawp/9701/9701.html
Fisher, R.P.
& Geiselman, R.E. (1992) Memory Enhancing Techniques for Investigative Interviewing: The Cognitive Interview. Charles C. Thomas Publishers. Springfield Illinois.
Fivush, R. Peterson, C. & Schwarzmueller, A. (2000). 'Questions and Answers: The Credibility of Child Witnesses in the Context of Specific Questioning Techniques ', in Memory and Suggestibility in the Forensic Interview, M Eisen, J Quas & GS Goodman (eds), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, New Jersey.
Gray, P. (1999). Psychology. 3rd edn. Worth Publishers Inc. Boston.
Kamira, J. (2002). Revisiting the Interview - Cognitive Interviewing and Communication for General Duties Police. (In Print.)
Kapardis, A. (1997). 'Children as Witnesses ', in Psychology and Law: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Loftus, Elizabeth. Creating False Memories. Scientific American. September 1997: 30-35.
Loftus, E., & Palmer, J. (1974). Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An
Example of the Interaction Between Language and Memory. Journal of
Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 13
McCloskey, M., & Zaragoza, M. (1985). Misleading Post Event Information and Memory for Events: Arguments and Evidence against Memory Impairment Hypotheses. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,
114(1)
Memon, A. (1999) Interviewing Witnesses: The Cognitive Interview, in Handbook of the Psychology of Interviewing. A Memon & R.H.C Bull John Wiley: West Sussex England.
Moston, S. (1987). The Suggestibility of Children in Interview Studies. First Language.
Mura, K., Stacey, H. (2005). JST313, Investigative Interviewing. Learning Materials Centre, NSW.
Ord, B., Shaw, G., & Green, T. (2004). Investigative Interviewing Explained. LexisNexis Butterworths, Sydney.
Peterson, C., & Biggs, M. (1997). Interviewing Children About Trauma: Problems With "Specific" Questions. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 10, 279-290.
Poole, D.A., & White, L.T. (1991). Effects of Question Repetition on the Eyewitness Testimony of Children and Adults. Developmental Psychology, 27, 975-986.
Roediger, HL & Gallo, DA, (2002). 'Processes Affecting Accuracy and Distortion in Memory: An Overview ', in Memory and Suggestibility in Forensic Interview, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, New Jersey.
Rubin, Z & McNeil, E. (1985). 'Memory ', in Psychology: Being Human, 4th edn. Harper and Row, New York.
Schacter, D. L. (1999). The seven sins of memory. Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist, 54, 182-203.
Shaw, G. (1996). Go With the Flow. Police Review, 19 January.
The Suggestibility of Children: Evaluation by Social Scientists (From the Amicus Brief for the Case of State of New Jersey v. Michaels, Presented by Committee of Concerned Social Scientists) from http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mcmartin/suggestibility.html
Wells, G. L., & Bradfield, A. L. (1998). Good, you identified the suspect: Feedback to eyewitnesses distorts their reports of the witnessing experience. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83, 360-376.
Wells, G & Olson E. A. Olson. (Annual Review of Psychology, 2003, Volume 54, pp. 277-295). _"EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY,"_
Wilson, C & Powell, M. (2001). 'Understanding a Child 's Mind ', in A Guide to Interviewing Children. Allen and Unwin, Crowns Nest, Sydney.
Websites
http://www.memorylossonline.com/eyewitness.htm
http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/02/wrongful-conviction-feedback-increases.php
http://www.abuse-excuse.com/home.html
http://www.acfnewsource.org/science/false_memories.html
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1101/hotline/hschacter.htm
http://www.innocenceproject.org/