Eyewitness Testimony Research Paper
CONTEXT STATEMENT
STRAND CONNECTION: Telling Truths
TEXT CONNECTION: Joe Cinque’s Consolation
DECLARED PIECE: Reflective
SELECTION OF FORM: Essay
INTENTIONS OF THE PIECE: To Reflect on the reliability of eyewitness testimony.
OTHER INFORMATION: Word count 1085
How close does eyewitness testimony allow you to get to the truth?
Eyewitness testimony has been considered a highly reliable form of evidence in law courts all around the world. But eyewitness testimony can easily be the most risky form of evidence for one to use in a courtroom. I believe that the correct use of multiple eyewitness’s that confirm each others testimonies are highly effective and strong pieces of evidence. But when two opposing witnesses …show more content…
have completely different statements and recounts of what actually happened at an incident, whom do we believe?
When someone is brought into the witness dock to give evidence one is either given a holy text or an affirmation card, They then make this statement “I swear by [substitute Almighty God/Name of God or the name of the holy scripture] that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” But this will rarely stop someone who needs to lie to cover up their tracks or the tracks of others, because as we know many people lie whilst under the oath.
Several studies have been conducted on human memory and on subjects’ propensity to remember erroneously events and details that did not occur. Elizabeth Loftus performed experiments in the mid-seventies demonstrating the effect of a third party’s introducing false facts into memory. Subjects were shown a slide of a car at an intersection with either a yield sign or a stop sign. Experimenters asked participants questions, falsely introducing the term "stop sign" into the question instead of referring to the yield sign participants had actually seen. -Stanford Journal of Legal Studies (1999). (1)
I believe that the truth can be whatever we want it to be as long as it has a strong enough following behind it. For instance if I said that the black seeds in bananas are tarantulas eggs and I had no one to back up my theory then it would be instantly dismissed by the greater community as the ramblings of an utter fool. But if I made the same statement and had thirty astute people concurring with my theory and I had a doctorate in Zoology and I had studied the effects of decomposing bananas as a part of the tarantula’s spawning cycle, then it is more than likely that people would accept it as the truth.
This means that people can be fooled into thinking that they saw something that in fact never occurred at all. This is shown in Joe Cinque’s Consolation when Garner meets an old school friend outside the airport and reminisces with him about the time he had his mouth washed out with soap. When said event is mentioned her school friend states that he does not recall the aforementioned event ever happening to him and that he is certain that he would remember something that confrontational. There are two possible explanations to that situation: either Garners memory or for the sake of this essay “eyewitness testimony” is false or her school friends testimony is false there is no way that both can be true, even though both are adamant that the other is false. So if an intellectual like Garner can so easily mistake fact and reality with misconception and imagination, what hope would a drug addled and emotionally-disorientated woman have when asked to recall her experiences and to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I know for a fact that I struggle to remember what I had for breakfast last week, and I don’t recreationally use drugs and alcohol, nor do I have a severe emotional or mental disability. She would find it insanely difficult to remember what she had for breakfast. This is perhaps why Anu Singh did not take the stand.
Whilst she looked like she was hiding from the consequences by not taking the stand, Anu Singh knew that people tend to react negatively towards her personality women in particular so the idea of being tried by a single judge instead of a jury must have been a slightly calming thought.
The use of eyewitness testimony will only allow one to get so close to the truth as there is no person on this earth who can view a situation, wait a month and then recall the exact situation moment for moment.
The human brain is not capable of doing so. Perhaps if one dwelled on said occasion day after day whilst doing as few mentally challenging tasks as possible then there is a chance that they may be able to recall said occasion. But that suggestion is ludicrous because there is a very high likelihood that this person would burn out due to over loading their brain with useless information, like the number of white lines that where dashed along the road. Although in some special cases people have been able to read short stories then recite them nearly verbatim a year later. But these cases are not 100 per cent accurate and they represent less than 1% of the world’s population so the idea of asking someone to remember something as well as this miniscule subpopulation of people is laughable. For instance if I could recite the story over and over for ten years then I would have a phenomenal chance of successfully recounting the story verbatim. But if I were asked to recount the story word for word in front of a judge and jury with a lawyer deliberately trying to make look like a liar, then I would most likely completely forget most of the
story.
Pressure is the key factor when looking at the reliability of eyewitness testimony. The pressures of the courtroom that Anu Singh underwent during the trial would have been immense and would have made her a severely unreliable and risky witness. The use of eyewitness testimony does not always let you get close to the truth. In fact they can sometimes hinder you in the pursuit. I believe that eyewitness testimonies should only be used when they have substantial evidence that can be used to validate their statements. A single eyewitness statement is unreliable and untrustworthy without something to bolster their evidence.
(1) Laura Engelhardt, 1999, The Problem with Eyewitness Testimony, Stanford Journal of Legal Studies, 24/4/12
(2) Helen Garner, 2004. Joe Cinque's Consolation. Edition. Picador.
STRAND CONNECTION: Telling Truths
TEXT CONNECTION: Joe Cinque’s Consolation
DECLARED PIECE: Reflective
SELECTION OF FORM: Essay
INTENTIONS OF THE PIECE: To Reflect on the reliability of eyewitness testimony.
OTHER INFORMATION: Word count 1085
How close does eyewitness testimony allow you to get to the truth?
Eyewitness testimony has been considered a highly reliable form of evidence in law courts all around the world. But eyewitness testimony can easily be the most risky form of evidence for one to use in a courtroom. I believe that the correct use of multiple eyewitness’s that confirm each others testimonies are highly effective and strong pieces of evidence. But when two opposing witnesses …show more content…
have completely different statements and recounts of what actually happened at an incident, whom do we believe?
When someone is brought into the witness dock to give evidence one is either given a holy text or an affirmation card, They then make this statement “I swear by [substitute Almighty God/Name of God or the name of the holy scripture] that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” But this will rarely stop someone who needs to lie to cover up their tracks or the tracks of others, because as we know many people lie whilst under the oath.
Several studies have been conducted on human memory and on subjects’ propensity to remember erroneously events and details that did not occur. Elizabeth Loftus performed experiments in the mid-seventies demonstrating the effect of a third party’s introducing false facts into memory. Subjects were shown a slide of a car at an intersection with either a yield sign or a stop sign. Experimenters asked participants questions, falsely introducing the term "stop sign" into the question instead of referring to the yield sign participants had actually seen. -Stanford Journal of Legal Studies (1999). (1)
I believe that the truth can be whatever we want it to be as long as it has a strong enough following behind it. For instance if I said that the black seeds in bananas are tarantulas eggs and I had no one to back up my theory then it would be instantly dismissed by the greater community as the ramblings of an utter fool. But if I made the same statement and had thirty astute people concurring with my theory and I had a doctorate in Zoology and I had studied the effects of decomposing bananas as a part of the tarantula’s spawning cycle, then it is more than likely that people would accept it as the truth.
This means that people can be fooled into thinking that they saw something that in fact never occurred at all. This is shown in Joe Cinque’s Consolation when Garner meets an old school friend outside the airport and reminisces with him about the time he had his mouth washed out with soap. When said event is mentioned her school friend states that he does not recall the aforementioned event ever happening to him and that he is certain that he would remember something that confrontational. There are two possible explanations to that situation: either Garners memory or for the sake of this essay “eyewitness testimony” is false or her school friends testimony is false there is no way that both can be true, even though both are adamant that the other is false. So if an intellectual like Garner can so easily mistake fact and reality with misconception and imagination, what hope would a drug addled and emotionally-disorientated woman have when asked to recall her experiences and to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I know for a fact that I struggle to remember what I had for breakfast last week, and I don’t recreationally use drugs and alcohol, nor do I have a severe emotional or mental disability. She would find it insanely difficult to remember what she had for breakfast. This is perhaps why Anu Singh did not take the stand.
Whilst she looked like she was hiding from the consequences by not taking the stand, Anu Singh knew that people tend to react negatively towards her personality women in particular so the idea of being tried by a single judge instead of a jury must have been a slightly calming thought.
The use of eyewitness testimony will only allow one to get so close to the truth as there is no person on this earth who can view a situation, wait a month and then recall the exact situation moment for moment.
The human brain is not capable of doing so. Perhaps if one dwelled on said occasion day after day whilst doing as few mentally challenging tasks as possible then there is a chance that they may be able to recall said occasion. But that suggestion is ludicrous because there is a very high likelihood that this person would burn out due to over loading their brain with useless information, like the number of white lines that where dashed along the road. Although in some special cases people have been able to read short stories then recite them nearly verbatim a year later. But these cases are not 100 per cent accurate and they represent less than 1% of the world’s population so the idea of asking someone to remember something as well as this miniscule subpopulation of people is laughable. For instance if I could recite the story over and over for ten years then I would have a phenomenal chance of successfully recounting the story verbatim. But if I were asked to recount the story word for word in front of a judge and jury with a lawyer deliberately trying to make look like a liar, then I would most likely completely forget most of the
story.
Pressure is the key factor when looking at the reliability of eyewitness testimony. The pressures of the courtroom that Anu Singh underwent during the trial would have been immense and would have made her a severely unreliable and risky witness. The use of eyewitness testimony does not always let you get close to the truth. In fact they can sometimes hinder you in the pursuit. I believe that eyewitness testimonies should only be used when they have substantial evidence that can be used to validate their statements. A single eyewitness statement is unreliable and untrustworthy without something to bolster their evidence.
(1) Laura Engelhardt, 1999, The Problem with Eyewitness Testimony, Stanford Journal of Legal Studies, 24/4/12
(2) Helen Garner, 2004. Joe Cinque's Consolation. Edition. Picador.