Reliable Memory In Eyewitness Identification

Superior Essays
Memory plays significant role in eyewitness identification by retrieving the correct information, its performance should be sound, reliable and accurate for eyewitness line-up identification .
There is a big difference between reliable memory and unreliable memory.
Reliable memory however, is the consistency and justice, thus; accuracy in recalling coding/ decoding the right event from the past, and accurately identifying the right suspect as he / she ’s the right offender with strong confidence without interferences. And unreliable memory, inconsistency, thus; shaky / week confidence, interferences wrong identification and this consequently would lead to miscarriage justice.
Nevertheless, eyewitness goal is that , when presenting a suspect in line up, before the eyewitness identification, the focus should be on his/her memory to either identify the suspect as the real offender or to exclude from the crime (Godfrey , & Clark, 2010). The case scenario of Ronald Cotton in literature review and Thompson –Cannino, reminded me of how many innocent people in my former country ( Lebanon), being wrongly convicted and wrongly sentenced to serve years of their good life for crime never been committed. Ronald Cotton served 12 years behind bars for wrongly accused of raping Thompson due to memory failure, as eyewitness had repeatedly consistency identified three times Cotton from photograph line-up, live line-up and at preliminary hearing before trail as he was the actual attacker (Godfrey , & Clark, 2010, p. 241-43) . Further, after serving his conviction, he was taking back to court to face another charge, for raping another woman on the same night. Due to this wrongly accused, further wrong sentencing were extended , Cotton was sentenced to two life sentences plus fifty-four years. They look alike and confusing. Being incarcerated at the same prison the real rapist/ attacker Bobby Poole and Cotton. Feeling angrier, full of disgust, Cotton was trying to kill Poole. Psychological, stress anguish was significant, together with other psychological factors had raised due to wrong identification and wrong conviction. Negative impact, judicial inconsistency , law violation ,were important issue of forensic investigation to underlie miscourage justice causes . Why this unsound? Was it the prosecutor’s responsibility? Or, eyewitness’s memory deficiency led to wrong accusation? Typically, wrong identification is still prevalence, and prosecutor should do his/her work efficiency, and provide information more accurately, to serve the law/ justice, and avoid victimisation. 11 years in prison, before he was freed by DNA evidence. DNA profiling, was significant in the case and the work of forensic were remarkable. Freed, outside the prison, mistaken identification, made the victim afraid for her life, and for her children, fearing revenge/ retribution for wrong accusation. This important evidence made Thmpson-Cannino, to publically voice her opinion , her role in the identification process and to tell her real story about the pressure/ interferences, that she was enduring , from the police. Further, she conceded that her identification was unreliable and mistakenly accused an innocent person and made his life miserable ( Ferster, J. 2011, p. 331-33). Flaw information wrong eyewitness testimony, consequently led to faulty court verdict and miscarriage justice due to unreliable eyewitness testimony. In the
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Further study, concerning memory distractions, was, the fact that memory is also distracted by violent incident and with more than one offender. The study was done to a sample of sixty subjects (30 males/ 30 females). The study was presented in form of video tapes, where made of three high violent scenes (5 men violently attacking a woman), and three nonviolent scenes. Experiment demonstrated, that memory recalling offender’s description (for clothing, height, weight, age, and male character) in the violent videotape was decreased in efficiency for both testimony and identification and not accurate due to violence distraction intensity and increase number of offenders. On the other hand, in nonviolent videotape, witnesses’ identification was more correct and with more confidence than those who made identification for violent scene (Clifford, Brian R. & Hollin, Clive R. 1981, p.366). According to the study, a violent scene could generate some kind of nervousness and stress in the eyewitness’s judgement, therefore, the eyewitness mental state was highly influenced/ distracted by violence and the number of offenders . Further, accuracy, confidence was also

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