Not just studies. Actual caselaw has show the unreliability of memories and recollection even amongst people who were confident and certain. Please see for instance the Adolf Beckcase.
And I would counter that actual case law shows that many defendants are actually successfully prosecuted due to testimony from witnesses. What you seem to be keying on is certain cases where they were not, exceptions to the norm. It’s up to a jury to decide if a witnesses memory is reliable evidence that’s how it works in the real world and I’d say that more often than not people are convicted on the memory of witnesses that the defense hasn’t been able to prove false. Of course there are exceptions, but if courts were to deny the testimony of witness based upon the possibly of false memories the world would be in chaos.
The fact that they are successfully prosecuted just means that people perceive eyewitness testimony to be reliable. Factfinders can and certainly do reject the testimony of witnesses as not credible. Nobody is saying there shouldn’t be any testimony, just that it is much less reliable than people think it is. This is particularly true of identifications.
And it’s the defense attorney’s responsibility to bring up that doubt that a witness’s memory is not reliable. If they fail then the** perception becomes reality** and there client goes to jail. Believe it or not many of the people who go to court accused of crimes actually committed the crimes they are accused of and are convicted them because people remembered the details. It doesn’t get much more real than when they haul you out of the court in chains to go to prison.
In my naivete, I was under the impression that we only wanted to put people who are actually guilty in prison. My mistake.
Your mistake is in thinking that everyone is being convicted of false memory testimony. Some are, the vast majority are not. That’s all I’m saying and that is what you are being naive about.
But a defense attorney is not allowed to call in expert testimony that eyewitnesses in general tend to be unreliable. It’s just something a juror is “supposed to know” Frankly, the US court system puts way more emphasis on witness testimony than the reliability of witness testimony should warrant.
My favorite legal resource is right now doing a section on witness testimony.
I’m not sure where you got the idea that I think “everyone is being convicted of false memory testimony.” Perhaps you missed this:
Well, I agree to an extent. Certainly a recent memory can be false. However, as long as jurors take that into account fine. I think recent memories are fairly trustworthy*.
But decades old memories? Worthless.
I have an excellent example of this. My GF and I were held up in Hollywood, many, many years ago. I noted the guy had a .22 Ruger target pistol, and didnt know how to hold it*, so I wasnt too scared (but scared enuf, mind you). My GF was really frightened. Afterwards she described the gun as being “very large with a huge bore, must have been a large calibre”.
- It was also likely stolen.
Which is why Courts on both sides of the Atlantic have stated that juries should be careful in convicting merely on the basis of eyewitness testimony. In England.
I’ve been a witness for both the prosecution and for the defense several times. One thing I’ve noticed in my times as a prosecution witness is that criminals know when they are guilty and have a reliable witness against them and their lawyers are quick to get them to accept a deal and plea no contest rather than face me in court. So that statistic doesn’t get measured into actual pool of cases that go to trial concerning the reliability of witnesses. The ones that go trial are deemed by the defense to have witnesses that can be discredited. And that is likely a good thing for their client that their lawyer can read people like that.
It’s much more difficult being a witness for the defense. The prosecution will claim that the witness is friendly with the defendant, separate the defendant and the witness during questioning in order to manipulate or intimidate the witness. The prosecution will also make outlandish statements that if you don’t offer up a retort with will make you perceived as wishy washy. It’s much tougher to be a witness on the defense side because the stakes are higher. mess up or cave in to a prosecutor and an innocent may go to jail.
So it’s right that juries should be instructed to weigh into account that eye witness testimony alone can be misleading, but on the other hand they are not told to ignore it either. It’s called taking it on a case by case basis and just blatantly saying that witness testimony is unreliable after a certain amount of years is just something that the defense would like the jury to believe. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Let the jury decide for themselves.
There are prisons full of “innocent” inmates that claim that the witnesses against them were mistaken.
Whoa… Eye witness testimony has been shown to be the LEAST reliable evidence. Example: a couple of people on stage, one of them holding an iPad. Someone walks up and takes the iPad (after a short struggle) and runs out of the room.
80% of the audience MIS-IDENTIFIED the culprit. And this is for something that just happened right in front of their eyes.
J.