How Memory Impacts the Validity of Eyewittness Testimony (by Aylanies Feliciano)
It's a given that eyewitness testimony is essential to identifying potential suspects of a crime. Although this eyewitness testimony has been a common practice in the court system since the early 1900s, psychologists soon realized the unreliability that came with it.
Eyewitness Testimony is the formal account of an event (typically a crime) that a bystander or victim gives in the courtroom. This account details what they experienced during the specific incident that is under investigation. The primary goal for eyewitness testimony is that the event is recalled with great detail that can help investigators identify the perpetrator of the crime, however, that is not always the case. Due to eyewitness testimony solely relying on a person's memory, misidentification or flaws in the details of the incident are common.
Most people believe that memory works similarly to a video camera. The storage portion is the recording, and retrieval, the memory itself, is similar to playing that video back. If that were the case then there would be no error in recalling memories and those memories would replay just as they appeared when you first experienced the event. However, psychologists all around the world have proved that memory does not work this way. According to “Simply Psychology,” Fredrick Bartlett’s study on memory showed that “we do not store information exactly as it is presented to us. Rather, people extract from information the gist or underlying meaning.” People store memories in a way that makes sense in their brains. People have to make sense of the information presented to them, and often a way that makes sense can warp or distort these memories. Many of these issues stem from the way that our brains try to organize information.
One of the many ways our brains organize information is by the use of schemas. Schemas typically organize information that allows us to recall people, objects, or situations we have encountered. This process allows people to anticipate what will happen in any specific situation because the brain relates it to a previously encountered event, experience, or even a learned/ instilled prejudice. This relation can sometimes lead to a distortion of an event or the visual perception of a person which can impact the validity of eyewitness accounts.
According to “Teach Democracy” in a 1988 study that surveyed court prosecutor an estimated 77,000 suspects are placed under arrest based on eyewitness testimony which is why eyewitness testimony is so prevalent in the courtroom. However, researchers at The Ohio State University determined that roughly 52% of errors that resulted in wrongful convictions stemmed from eyewitness mistakes. On the same note, legal scholar Edwin Borchard determined that 45 percent of the wrongful conviction cases he studied stemmed from misidentification from eyewitness accounts. These two studies show that although eyewitnesses may result in a multitude of arrests per year, they are also the leading cause of wrongful convictions.
A prime example of this is the Jennifer Thompson case. In 1984 the assailant broke into Jennifer Thompson's home and assaulted her. Ms. Thompson was said to have remembered her assailant's face and drew a composite sketch. Later on, based on the composite sketch and the memory she had of the assailant she chose Ronald Cotton out of the lineup after almost choosing another suspect in the lineup. The only physical evidence that was collected from the scene that could support Cotton as the assailant was a flashlight found in his home that resembled the one the assailant had on the scene as well as rubber found on Cotton's shoe that was consistent with what was found at the scene of the crime. Due to the very limited physical evidence, eyewitness testimony was very important in this case. Ronald Cotton was convicted of two counts of rape and burglary and was sentenced to 50 years of prison. Thankfully DNA testing proved that Cotton was not the assailant and he was freed after ten years of incarceration.
During an experience, whether it be something as minor as a conversation you have with a friend, or as major as what Thompson experienced, we hold visual details for only a very short period. Our brains typically only hold on to the gist of the visual aspect of the experience. Oftentimes memories are stored without these specific details which is likely one of the reasons why misidentification is so common in eyewitness testimony. Other issues in visual memory recall often occur during rehearsal and storage. Verbal overshadowing can cause all specific details to become generalized. For example, saying someone is tall with dark curly hair could be a feature of a person but that vague description can cause all of the other features to be vague as well. You may know that they are tall with dark curly hair but you may lose the color of their eyes, the build of their body, the shape of their nose, the bushiness of their brows, etc. Generalization oftentimes leads to even more generalization.
Memory reconsolidation causes distortions every time the memory is recalled. When recalling a memory we create a new neural memory representation. In other words, every time we talk or bring back a memory we often destroy that memory to a certain degree. Either we generalize and add in information that fits in with the gist of the memory (despite it not being in the actual memory) or we simply remember something slightly different from the way that it occurred. These distortions often compound on one another. These slight distortions keep building upon each other making the mistakes bigger and bigger ultimately changing the memory completely.
Despite eyewitnesses being extremely helpful in many court cases and being one of the strongest factors in identifying suspects, our memory is simply too unreliable for this system to be functioning. Our brains are constantly distorting or misinterpreting information which distorts these eyewitness accounts. This distortion is detrimental to so many due to the amount of people wrongly convicted because of eyewitness identification.
Work Cited
“Bria 13 3 c How Reliable Are Eyewitnesses?” Teach Democracy, www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-13-3-c-how-reliable-are-eyewitnesses#:~:text=Stud ies%20have%20shown%20that%20mistaken,errors%20resulted%20from%20eyewitness%20mistakes. Accessed 20 Nov. 2023.
By, et al. “Eyewitness Testimony in Psychology.” Simply Psychology, 15 June 2023, www.simplypsychology.org/eyewitness-testimony.html#Reconstructive-Memory. “False Memories: The Hidden Danger in Criminal Trials.” Houston DWI Defense & Criminal Defense Matthew Sharp, 18 May 2023, sharpcriminalattorney.com/criminal-defense-guides/false-memories/#:~:text=False%20memories %20can%20pose%20major,who%20did%20the%20crime%2C%20too.https://open.lib.umn.edu/humanbiology/chapter/1-12-problems-with-memory-eyewitness-testimony/#:~:text=Because%20memory%20is%20so%20fragile,the%20creation%20of%20false%20memori es.
“What Is a Schema in Psychology?” RSS, www.structural-learning.com/post/schema-in-psychology#:~:text=In%20psychology%2C%20a%20schema%20is,lens%20of%20pre%2Dexisting%20schemas. Accessed 20 Nov. 2023.
“Ronald Cotton.” Innocence Project, 18 May 2023, innocenceproject.org/cases/ronald-cotton/