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Category: Societal Issues
Date Submitted: 01/16/2012 10:16 AM
Let’s Abandon or Strictly Regulate Eyewitnesses Testimony in Criminal Trials
David S. Smith
Behavioral Issues
Mike Eagen, MA
November 24, 2007
Let’s Abandon or Strictly Regulate Eyewitnesses Testimony in Criminal Trials
View: Eyewitness testimony is destroying our Criminal Justice System.
I. Get the facts: Eyewitness testimony is falsely incriminating people.
A. The legal profession well aware of eyewitness inconsistencies.
B. Eyewitness testimony has been removed from some foreign courts during criminal trials.
II. Establishing burden of proof.
A. What is evidence?
B. Who can testify?
C. Some problems associated with eyewitnesses
III. A case study in Canada.
A. The incident as it happened.
B. Processing and collecting the data.
C. The final results.
IV. The history of eyewitness testimony.
A. How eyewitness testimony started.
B. How eyewitness testimony is used today.
C. The closing point of view.
Every year countless American Citizens are found guilty in American Courts because of eyewitness testimony. Thousands and thousands have been incarcerated or put to death based upon eyewitness testimony. We often read about cases of mistaken identity after one has spent years of incarceration. Bodies are being exhumed all over the world because of new DNA advances and fingerprinting techniques that can disprove prior eyewitness testimony. As new forms of identification techniques become available, we will continue to hear about prior injustices due to eyewitness testimony in criminal cases.
Most judges and lawyers will agree that eyewitness accounts are often distorted by most people’s inability to remember what really happened. False eyewitness identifications occur frequently in laboratory and field studies and appear to be one of the leading causes of erroneous convictions (Frazzini, 1981, pp. 474-77). Research indicates that people will...