Eyewitness Testimony

Eyewitness testimony is, at best, evidence of what the witness believes to take on occurred.  It whitethorn or may not tell what re whollyy happened. The familiar problems of perception, of gauging time, speed, height, weight, of accurate identification of persons accused of wickedness all contribute to making honest testimony something less than altogether credible (Cramer and Levin, 1968).  Eyewitness testimony, which relies on the accuracy of the military personnel memory, has an vast impact on the outcome of a trial. Aside from the gage gun, nothing carries as much weight with a jury than the testimony of an actual witness. However, how accurate is the actual direct of the crime as said by that witness?  The human memory is far from being perfect and, lets face it, forgetfulness is a fact of life. One of the most unmistakable reasons for forgetfulness is the nature of the human memory itself. Even the most basic, quotidian items often fail to be encoded into our memory. When reconstructing their memory of the crime, the eyewitness inadvertently fills in the gaps in his or her factual memory of the crime based on such factors as the eyewitnesss expectations, attitude, beliefs and knowledge of similar events (Wise, Fishman and Safer, 2009).



  This, in turn, produces a testimony that may seem believable and accurate, but does indeed contain many another(prenominal) faults and inaccuracies.

Another cause of faulty eyewitness testimony is eyewitness bias. Encoding is defined as the set of mental operations that people perform on sensory information to diversify that information into a form that is usable in the hotshots storage systems (Ciccarelli and White, 2010 pg 214).  Because encoding likewise involves interference and interpretation, what is stored in memory is not just what the eyewitness had seen, but also the meaning the witness gave to what happened. For example, if a hair stylist witnesses a crime, he or she may focus more on the suspects hair than other features.  Factors present during a crime...If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



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