Elizabeth Loftus

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Introduction

When it comes to justice in law courts, perception matters more than anything. One can get away with formidable offense if they can create the right perception of them and the situation. Likewise, it is easy for an innocently accused person to be found guilty of crimes they did not commit due to perception. In this research paper, we will be examining how eyewitness testimonies in courts influence the perception of guilt. Wil will look at the eye witness testimonies and focus more on the type of eye witness presented and whether discredited eye witness testimonies sway the jurors to convict a person compared to no eye witness at all.

The general area to be studied is eye witness testimonies' influence on jurors. However, this study will be keen to isolate the cases of discredited eyewitnesses to test if the jurors still believe their testimonies. It will be testing to see if no eye witness at all is better than having a discredited eye witness presented in court. This study is important as it will present information that will guide both prosecutors and defense attorneys in the future to decide on whether to present eyewitnesses with testimonies that can be discredited or not. The study also hopes to settle the eternal question of whether eyewitness memory evaluation is vital before being presented in a court to testify.

Background/ Literature Review

Many studies have been done on the influence of eyewitnesses in courts. For example, (Cutler, Penrod & Dexter, 1989) studied the eye witness and the jury. Their findings were that the jurors often believe what the eyewitnesses say as they are unaware of how some factors may influence the eyewitness memory. Many other studies related to this specific research, like one done by (Leippe & Eisenstadt, 2009). Have concluded that jurors cannot appropriately adjust their estimation of the accuracy of the eyewitness testimonies.

However, the studies fail to mention or consider that even though the expert's goal is usually to persuade jurors to trust or distrust eyewitnesses, whether they succeed depends on their ability to convince the jurors that the eyewitness memory is intact and reliable. These studies also fail to factor in the human mindset of "seeing is believing," which means that by having someone saying they saw something happen, the jurors are already almost believing that what they say they saw deed happen. Therefore, they are more likely to not pay attention to the finer details that require their credibility to be ascertained. That is why this research focused on whether the type of eye witness testimony presented swayed the jurors towards a guilty conviction and whether discredited eye witness influences jurors’ perception of guilt. In the future, more studies should be carried out to research the juror’s ability to estimate the accuracy of their estimation of eye witness memory abilities.

Research question

Does the type of eyewitness testimony present in court influence perceptions of guilt?

The research question directs this study to look more into the type of eyewitnesses and their influence on the perception of guilt. Will seek to answer whether it matters if the eye witness cannot recall certain aspects correctly, or just by the mere presence of an eye witness, the jurors' perceptions are influenced to lean towards a certain direction? This question will also lead to answering the overlooked question of whether challenging eye witness is important or not. And whether the challenge is adding any value to the accused. We will also use the research question to find out if discredited eyewitnesses affect the guilt ratings in any way and how no eyewitness situations also affect the same.

Research hypothesis

The prediction is that the findings are more likely to support the theory that having a discredited eyewitness has the same effect as having an unchallenged one. Both will change the perception of guilt to guilty.

Loftus (1974) suggests that when jurors are presented with a discredited eyewitness (e.g., an eyewitness who was not wearing their glasses at the time of the incident), they are just as likely to rate the defendant as guilty. Therefore, we predict that participants presented with the discredited eyewitness vignette will rate these defendants as guiltier than participants in the no eyewitness condition and the unchallenged eyewitness condition.

According to Loftus, the statement "I SAW IT WITH MY OWN EYES." is often more than enough for many people. People don't ask questions like were the witnesses' eyes in good condition, can they see far or near, have they had any issue with their sight? No, the takeaway message people take s the witness saw the occurrence with their eyes, and so what they say happened did happen. The same applies to jurors participating in a court. Therefore, it is to assume that having no eyewitnesses presented reduces the guilt perception than having a discredited eyewitness.

There are cases where different eyewitnesses say different things about the same scenarios. Still, the jurors attribute the difference in testimonies to different memory abilities instead of questioning the authenticity of the stories. In fact, studies have shown having more than one eyewitness with different narratives leads to guiltier verdicts as the jurors tend to take the many eyewitnesses as testimony that indeed something did happen. This somehow proves (Yarmey, 2001) findings that eyewitness memory research doesn’t have probative value for the courts where jurors are involved.

The research will test this hypothesis to see if having discredited eye witness does not favor the accused in any way and to test the hypothesis that suggests that no eye witness is better than a challenged eye witness. This research will not only test the above hypothesis. Still, it will further test other related theories like the common belief that children's testimonies are always credible because they are more believable, and having them as eyewitnesses in court automatically leads jurors to believe what they say to be the gospel truth.

References

Cutler, B. L., Penrod, S. D., & Dexter, H. R. (1989). The eyewitness, the expert psychologist, and the jury. Law and Human Behavior, 13(3), 311-332.

Leippe, M. R., & Eisenstadt, D. (2009). The influence of eyewitness expert testimony on jurors’ beliefs and judgments. Expert testimony on the psychology of eyewitness identification, 169-199.

Yarmey, A. D. (2001). Expert testimony: Does eyewitness memory research have probative value for the courts? Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 42(2), 92.