Analysing Witness Testimony

The consideration of witness testimony had traditionally been a task left to fact-finders with scant guidance from legal professionals. As a result, various practices have developed during the investigative and trial process which can obscure or even eradicate critical material. Miscarriages of justice will continue to occur, so long as those working within the justice system continue to accept witnesses and their testimony at face value. This book aims to make practitioners, as well as the fact-finders and those who guide them, aware of a wide range of perspectives on witness testimony. Each contributor identifies bad practice and puts forward ideas for improvement or removal of previously acceptable investigative and forensic methods.

Credibility assessment refers to any attempt to ascertain truthfulness. Other terms which have been used to refer to the assessment of credibility include the detection of deception and lie detection. The term lie detection has become virtually synonymous with the use of the polygraph and can no longer be used to refer to the range of procedures currently employed to assess credibility. Also, both lie detection and the detection of deception have a negative cast which does not fully capture the orientation of current approaches to credibility. Consequently, the term credibility assessment has emerged recently as the preferred label. The goal of credibility assessment is typically the determination of the truth of a statement or be found in set of statements. The need or desire to make such an assessment can every human context from marital relations through clinical examinations to police and court interrogations. Examples of the kinds of statements which require credibility assessment are: 1) A child's assertion that she or he has been sexually abused. 2) The claim by a previously suicidal person that he or she has recovered and will not attempt suicide again. 3) The denial of guilt by a suspect in a criminal investigation. 4 ) The confident statement of a witness that he or she is sure in his or her identification of a thief. 5) The vow of loyalty by a potential employee for a security job. It is necessary to assess the credibility of these and similar statements.

Understanding evidence is critical in a court of law – and it is just as important for critical thinking. Elizabeth Loftus, a pioneering psychologist, made a landmark contribution to both these areas in Eyewitness Testimony, a trail-blazing work that undermines much of the decision-making made by judges and juries by pointing out how flawed eyewitness testimony actually is. Reporting the results of an eye-opening series of experiments and trials, Loftus explores the ways in which – unbeknownst to the witnesses themselves – memory can be distorted and become highly unreliable. Much of Loftus’s work is based on expert use of the critical thinking skill of interpretation. Her work not only highlights multiple problems of definition with regard to courtroom testimony, but also focuses throughout on how best we can understand the meaning of the available evidence. Eyewitness Testimony is arguably the best place in the Macat library to begin any investigation of how to use and understand interpretation.

This book provides a comprehensive and easily accessible guide to the decision-making and actions of the complete spectrum of practitioner involvement in the criminal justice process, right from initial investigation through to court-room proceedings.

Witness testimony in sexual cases is a complex and controversial topic and this practical guide provides comprehensive and balanced advice for criminal justice professionals at all stages of involvement in the legal process. It draws together essential legal and scientific information for all professionals working in this field.

Investigates the factors that influence the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.

Eyewitnesses play an important role in criminal cases when they can identify culprits. Estimates suggest that tens of thousands of eyewitnesses make identifications in criminal investigations each year. Research on factors that affect the accuracy of eyewitness identification procedures has given us an increasingly clear picture of how identifications are made, and more importantly, an improved understanding of the principled limits on vision and memory that can lead to failure of identification. Factors such as viewing conditions, duress, elevated emotions, and biases influence the visual perception experience. Perceptual experiences are stored by a system of memory that is highly malleable and continuously evolving, neither retaining nor divulging content in an informational vacuum. As such, the fidelity of our memories to actual events may be compromised by many factors at all stages of processing, from encoding to storage and retrieval. Unknown to the individual, memories are forgotten, reconstructed, updated, and distorted. Complicating the process further, policies governing law enforcement procedures for conducting and recording identifications are not standard, and policies and practices to address the issue of misidentification vary widely. These limitations can produce mistaken identifications with significant consequences. What can we do to make certain that eyewitness identification convicts the guilty and exonerates the innocent? Identifying the Culprit makes the case that better data collection and research on eyewitness identification, new law enforcement training protocols, standardized procedures for administering line-ups, and improvements in the handling of eyewitness identification in court can increase the chances that accurate identifications are made. This report explains the science that has emerged during the past 30 years on eyewitness identifications and identifies best practices in eyewitness procedures for the law enforcement community and in the presentation of eyewitness evidence in the courtroom. In order to continue the advancement of eyewitness identification research, the report recommends a focused research agenda. Identifying the Culprit will be an essential resource to assist the law enforcement and legal communities as they seek to understand the value and the limitations of eyewitness identification and make improvements to procedures.