FAULTY CONVICTIONS

Faulty Convictions

Faulty Convictions

Faulty Convictions are predominantly the punishment and conviction of any individual for a crime he/she never committed. This paper discusses faulty convictions related to eyewitness testimony and unreliable/improper forensic science.

Eyewitness Testimony

Eyewitness testimony is the provision of formal evidence on the basis of events experienced by the party providing that evidence. The testimony of eyewitnesses can be an incredibly powerful form of evidence. Yet, as psychologists have repeatedly shown for over 100 years, it can also be extremely unreliable. The aim of this entry is to provide a brief (and necessarily selective) overview of the findings of psychological research in three areas of eyewitness memory: the effects of suggestive questioning; memories of non-existent films; and memories of childhood events that did not occur. (Edmond, 2002)

Eyewitness testimony is considered powerful and persuasive evidence. Yet, as this very brief and selective overview has shown, there are reasons to be extremely cautious about its reliability. Memory reports can fairly easily become distorted, and these distortions can have serious implications for the legal system. Understanding the circumstances under which these distortions occur will undoubtedly continue to be an ongoing challenge for psychological research. Eyewitness Testimony is a misinformation effect. The American psychologists Elizabeth F. Loftus (1944-) and John C. Palmer (1954-) described this phenomenon whereby misleading post-event information may distort recall of an event by an eyewitness. The eyewitness misinformation consequence can be instigated by the eyewitness becoming puzzled concerning the foundations of diverse items of information or by the post-event information “overwriting” the memory.

Other related memory concepts in this area are: deferred action - a psychoanalytic term denoting the revision of memories (i.e., “after the event” or memory with “hindsight”) to fit in with new experiences and information or the achievement of later developmental stages; reconstructive memory - dynamic memory processes whereby a variety of scheme are employed in recovery of memory to reconstruct data from remembrance, and loading in absent parts as attempting to remember material (cf., confabulation - a recollection disorder connected to loss of memory, but connecting the falsehood of facts, events, and understandings, either consciously or unconsciously, in order to compensate for memory loss; sometimes called “honest lying”); recovered memory - the recall of some event, usually involving a traumatic incident (for instance being abused sexually as a kid), retrieved after having been repressed or forgotten for several years; often such recovered memories, unless verified by reliable sources, turn out to be. false memories, “ pseudomemories,” or “pseudomnesia;” constructive memory - memories produced under the influence of prior experience or expectations where existing “schemas” or new information determine how the information is stored in memory; and changed-trace hypothesis - posits that new information can change old information in memory and helps explain the misinformation effect (cf., multiple trace hypothesis which states that new information interferes with, rather than changes, old information). (Cohen, 2009)

Research indicates that law enforcement identification methods are subject to a wide range of biases, and there is evidence that these biases can result ...