Juveniles Trial

EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY SHOULD NOT BE USED AS RELIABLE EVIDENCE IN COURT

Eyewitness testimony can play a big part in criminal court cases. Whether or not a person is convicted of a crime can come down to the reliability of an eyewitness. However, eyewitness accounts aren't always accurate. In fact, in a statistical data, about wrongful convictions in the United States, showing that mistaken identifications are the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the country. Alarming statistics state that in 2000, of 62 cases that involved the conviction and imprisonment of individuals for felonies, 52 of them-including 8 of them that had death sentences-involved mistaken eyewitness identifications. These individuals were later acquitted of these charges with the use of DNA testing. This proves that eyewitness testimony has a high rate of error. Thus, eyewitness testimony should not be used as reliable evidence in court due to reasons such as memory unreliability, the possibility of intentional deception and poor visibility conditions.

One of the major reasons why eyewitness testimony is considered as an unreliable type of evidence is because of memory unreliability. The most important foundation for eyewitness testimony is a person's memory. Human memory, though remarkable in many ways, has its flaws. Human memory is far from perfect or permanent, and forgetfulness is a fact of life. As stated by Bryant (2013), our memory does not operate anything like a videotape. On the contrary, memory is reconstructive, not a record (Green,n.d.). Bryant (2013) also said that our memories are not photographic records of events. Almost no human has a photographic memory and details do get lost or confused. Plus, memories are often changed so they become more sensible to us (Lehrer, 2007). Our memories actually fill in the missing information unconsciously whether we like or not (Green, n.d.). According to various studies, it’s proven that memory can also change as time passes and...