Eyewitness Testimony: Understanding Reliability and Factors Affecting Accuracy

Eyewitness testimony is significant to the system of justice, it is of great necessity for the criminal trials to rebuild facts from events of the past, and therefore, eyewitnesses are usually very important in the criminal justice system. However, the testimonies are not always accurate due to various psychological factors and this might result in some errors, for this reason various practices such as the evaluation of the accuracy of the eyewitness testimony by the judiciary group have been adopted.

Running head: EYEWITNESS TEWSTIMONY 1
Eyewitness Testimony
Name
Institutional Affiliation

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Introduction
Eyewitness testimony is a term used legally referring to the account that is usually given
by the individuals that have witnessed a certain incidence. For instance, the individuals may
describe an incidence of a road accident or a robbery at a trial and the process includes
describing the crime scene details and identifying the perpetrators (Wells, 2006). Eyewitness
testimony is a significant sector of research in human memory and cognitive psychology. In the
system of criminal justice, eyewitness testimony has been a dependable information source for
the juries.
Critically, eyewitness testimony is significant to the system of justice, it is of great
necessity for the criminal trials to rebuild facts from events of the past, therefore, eyewitnesses
are usually very important during this process (Douglass & Steblay, 2006). However, the
Psychological scientists challenge the assumptions made by the public in general and the legal
system concerning the precision of the eyewitness testimony accounts and incase of errors as a
result of eyewitness testimony misunderstanding, cases such as mistaken identification might
occur. For this reason, the supreme court outlined five factors to govern the trier evaluating the
accuracy in the eyewitness testimony account and they are: The time difference between the
identification and the crime; the opportunity of the eyewitness to observe the perpetrator during
the misconduct; the eyewitness’s accuracy of the preceding depiction of the perpetrator; the
certainty level established by the spectator during the identification; and the degree of the
witness’s attention at the crime (Henkel & Coffman, 2004).

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Eyewitness testimony account is not accurate always as it might result in some errors
which cause losses therefore high cost is incurred. Errors might result in conviction of innocent
individuals as the perpetrators stay unpunished, therefore the police lineups are required to
follow the protocol carefully to avoid high costs and rates of incorrect identification. However,
by adopting particular practices, it can still be of significance in the system of the criminal justice
(Whitehouse, Orne & Dinges, 2008). The supreme court puts forward four issues which are: The
appropriate time that the criminal has to be presented before the council for the eyewitness
description procedure; the rule governing the acceptability of the unreasonably suggestive
witness description procedure, the factors considered by the court when deciding whether to
acknowledge the testimony accounted by an eyewitness; the proof burden that the prosecutor has
to offer to ensure satisfactory of the council in acknowledging the eyewitness testimony
(Whitehouse, Orne & Dinges, 2008).
Research on the other hand has discovered that the testimony of the witnesses can be
influenced by various psychological factors such as reconstructive memory, stress/anxiety and
weapon focus(Doyle, 2010). These factors however can be adjusted to ensure that there is no
occurrence of eyewitness testimony error in the criminal justice system. This is because some of
them such as in the case of real life violence anxiety/stress has proved to be of great significance
as the witnesses tend to have an accurate memory of the event.
Reconstructive memory
The reconstructive memory is essential in understanding the reliability of the testimony
accounted by the eyewitness. It is suggested that recalling is subject to an individual’s
interpretation depending on cultural or educational values and norms, and therefore making

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sense to the world. Mostly, it is believed that the memory works like a videotape, as it stores
information by recording the information and remembering the recorded data. This information
can therefore be retrieved in the same way it was recorded. However, the human memory might
fail to record exactly what is presented to them and for this reason, they tend to extract the
information from the underlying meaning. People tend to store the information that is observed
in a manner that makes it more convenient to them and they tend to make sense of the info by
trying to fit the data into schemas as a way of organizing the information (Vedder & Klaming,
2010). On the other hand, the eyewitnesses can be manipulated by the offenders to report the
exact opposite of what exactly transpired in order to favor their judgment before the jury. In most
cases, such situations happen when the eyewitness is under siege, hence compelling the
eyewitness to report wrong information before the court that might compromise the fight to
justice. The pressure and psychological tougher forces the eyewitness not to appear before the
court and give accounts of what happened on that fateful day.
The schemas are the mental knowledge units that relate to people, situations or objects
that are frequently encountered. Schemas allows an individual to develop the sense of what is
encountered in order to foresee what is to happen and what is to be done during various
situations. The schemas might be biased as they are determined by various values such as the
social value (Nadel & Hardt, 2011). Schemas therefore have the ability to distort unconsciously
or unfamiliar information that is unacceptable so as to fit in the existing knowledge, this can lead
to unreliable testimony of the eyewitness (Burke, 2006).
Remembrance is just an active procedure and subject to personal construction or
interpretation, this is illustrated in a variety of studies: In the study of the “War of the Ghosts” it

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is shown that the memory not only records facts but also involves the process of making “effort
after the meaning”, this means that people try to fit what they recall with what is known and
understood by the world. This result in alteration of the memories so as to be more sensible to
the individuals. In the story of “The War of the Ghosts” the participants heard it and told others
and on asking the individuals about the story, each person had their own account about the story.
McAdams, (2001), explains that repetitive telling of the story resulted in the shortening of the
story together with omitting and rationalizing of the puzzling ideas for the purpose of making the
story more conventional or familiar. This shows a clear indication that the memory are
dependable photographic records of proceedings. They are personal recollections that have been
constructed and shaped basing on the person’s beliefs, stereotypes and expectations.
Stress/ anxiety
Stress/ anxiety is mainly associated with the violence crimes in real life. Ball, (2009)
illustrates that the performance of stress followed an inverted U functioning projected by the
Yerkes Dodson Curve.

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This indicates that for the moderately complex tasks, the performance escalates with
stress until the optimum is reached where performance then starts to decline. People that have
seen a violence attack film remember fewer items and lesser data about the occurrence than
another group of individuals who have watched a less stressful video. Therefore, observing of a
crime that is real is even more stressful, and this might affect the accuracy of the memory as a
result of anxiety or stress.
However, other studies challenge the significance of anxiety in affecting the memory of
the eyewitness. Porter et al, (2001) illustrates that, spectators of a real life violence crime of gun
firing outside a Canadian gun shop were extraordinarily accurate in remembering the occurrence
of the incidence. The witnesses were interviewed by the police and they gave a clear account of
what they saw and thirteen of the witnesses we re-interviewed after five months. It was
discovered that their remembrance was accurate even after a given period of time, the memory
remained accurate even after the involvement of various misleading questions by the group that
was conducting the research. The weakness of the research was, the eyewitnesses who had the
highest anxiety levels where very close to the event and this might have been the reason to their
memory accuracy. Porter et al, (2001) indicates two vital aspects which are; there are some real-
life cases where the memory for a stressful/ anxious happening is accurate even after a long
period of time, and questions that are misleading may not have the same effect on real life
experiences as it has been discovered in studies conducted in laboratories.
Weapon focus
Weapon focus is referred to as the concentration of the eyewitness on the weapon excluding
the other vital details of the crime. Wells et al, (2000) suggests that, in crimes where weapons are

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involved, it is common for the eyewitness to give a more detailed description of the weapon that
the individual that was holding the weapon. Studies to illustrate this involved showing a number
of slides of a buyer in a cafeteria, in the first version the customer had a gun and in another
version the same buyer had a checkbook. The participants who observed the gun slides focused
on the gun more than the customer, this is because the mind is built to take precautionary
measures and therefore it tends to quickly recognize danger. The participants who saw the
checkbook slides were able to describe the customer in detail.
However, Porter et al, (2001) challenge the significance of weapon focus in affecting the
memory of the eyewitness. In the real life case of gun shoots outside the Canadian gun shop the
witnesses give a clear account of what happened even after a period of five months.
Eyewitness testimony has not been accurate always but through implementing various
practices, it can be significant to the criminal justice system (Damaska, 2001). These practices
involve the development of a method on how the prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges can
assess the accuracy of the eyewitness in the criminal cases. It is important for the judiciary group
to understand how to evaluate the accuracy of the testimony accounted by the witness (Levine &
Tapp, 2002). This knowledge is of importance to the judiciary so as they can evaluate the
probative eyewitness testimony’s value accurately in the illegal cases, therefore preventing
incorrect convictions that might be from the mistaken eyewitness testimony accounts. Schmechel
et al, (2006) suggests that, the judges at the trial require this technique when deciding if they
should; acknowledge the testimony involving a pretrial eyewitness documentation, permit an in-
court documentation by the witness, acknowledge the eyewitness proficient testimony, allow
other legal defends to train assessors about the eyewitness proof, during the ruling on the

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evidentiary issues of the eyewitness and during the bench trial when evaluating the eyewitness
testimony’s accuracy (Osterburg & Ward, 2013).
The appellate judges are required to understand the evaluation process of the accuracy of
the testimony accounted by the eyewitness. The appellate judges then decide whether the court’s
trial abused its preference by eliminating the expert testimony concerning the weaknesses of the
testimony of the eyewitness (Lynch, 2014). This knowledge is essential to the appellate judges
in determining whether the testimony of the eyewitness in a given case is reliable sufficiently for
the affirmation of the guilty judgement on appeal. The Prosecutors should assess the testimony
of the eyewitness in a given case and should decide if it is sufficiently accurate to accuse the
suspect and take the case to the trial (Wald, 2002).
Conclusion
Eyewitness testimony is significant to the system of justice, it is of great necessity for the
criminal trials to rebuild facts from events of the past, and therefore, eyewitnesses are usually
very important in the criminal justice system. However, the testimonies are not always accurate
due to various psychological factors and this might result in some errors, for this reason various
practices such as the evaluation of the accuracy of the eyewitness testimony by the judiciary
group have been adopted. The adoption of the practices is to ensure the improvement of the eye
witness testimony to ensure its usefulness in the criminal justice system. Therefore, this means
that eyewitness account should not be used solely as a piece of evidence in incriminating a
suspect in court, rather the accounts should act as a resource that would help gather more
evidence on the suspect before getting them charged for an offense. In order to convict and
sentence a person to prison, other substantial evidence must be provided to charge the suspect

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guilty of the crime committed otherwise they will remain innocent until more evidence is
brought forth to substantiate the claims.

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adults (Doctoral dissertation, University of Cape Town).
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Douglass, A. B., & Steblay, N. (2006). Memory distortion in eyewitnesses: A meta‐analysis of the post‐
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