Eyewitness Testimony Exercise

Eyewitness Testimony Exercise

How reliable is the standard eyewitness's testimony?

Section A & B

One day, I took my friend Robert to McDonalds where we bought two dine-in deals for ourselves. I had to pay $20, so I gave $100 to the cashier and he returned to me $80. The cashier was an average looking girl around 20 to 25 years of age with a sleek physique. She was wearing a silver chain in her neck. I also observed that she was wearing a pink hair band with a matching scarf. I wrote all these descriptions on a paper while Robert was away.

Two days later I told Robert that the cashier didn't give me enough change back.

When I asked him if he remembered the transaction, he said, “Peter I think you are wrong. What I believe is that you gave her a $100 and she returned $80 to you back.” But when I asked him if he remembered anything about the cashier's appearance, he said, “I don't exactly remember the looks, but I think she was a very skinny girl.” Asking about age, weight, dress etc, Robert replied, “I don't remember that much Peter, but I think she was wearing something on her head, yeah that was a hair band I guess. And regarding the age, I think she was a young girl.” When I asked him, if she was wearing glasses, he said “yes”. On the whole, Robert remembered my transaction at McDonalds accurately. Regarding the appearance of the cashier, he was right about the age, gender and the pink hair band however, the glasses thing was not correct. Thus, in my opinion my friend did a good job as an eye witness. He was only mistaken at one point, however other than that he proved to be a helpful eye witness for me.

Section C

Eyewitnesses are significant in providing information at the early stages of an investigation and at times there are also crucial at the later stages of a prosecution (Greene & Heilbrun, 2013). An expert witness is an advocate for the truth who works for neither the prosecution nor the defense. Expert testimony is used in criminal and civil cases, where an expert in a particular field assists the Trier of facts in comprehending evidence that the Trier otherwise would not understand. However, the prosecutors and police come across several challenges when they rely on eyewitness observers for solving the crimes due to the fact that even though a good majority of eyewitnesses provide reliable reports, many of them make mistakes as well. Thus, these mistakes can direct the police to take the wrong suspect into custody which sometimes results in unfair convictions by the juries (Greene & Heilbrun, 2013).

What factors do they believe might influence an eyewitness's testimony to be less accurate?

Expert witnesses are called upon to provide two types of evidence that is the information on the facts in issue and inferences drawn about facts by testifying as to their professional ...