Memory and the Law Criminology

Criminology: Memory and the Law

Memory has ample implications in the field of law for detecting a true criminal and the defenders who are struggling to prove themselves innocent. The journey from the investigator seeking for the truth to the final verdict of the court is affected by various factors of the memory, even the participants in the process such as the eyewitnesses, the jurors’ and the emotions of criminal investigators all serve differently in the operational circle of the investigations. This paper aims at elucidating memory and law by presenting six scholarly journal articles, the methods used in their evaluations, the results of those studies, and the future directions identified from their outcomes. Limitations are also presented in the findings so that future research gaps can be detected accurately.

Importance of the Topic to Study

The inability to remember the crime that a person committed does not mean that the accused did not intend to commit the crime or there is no proof of committing it. The mental state and loss of memory due to certain reason reasons such as amnesia or alcohol intoxication could come in the way of being proven guilty in the light of the courts’ verdict. Punishing the rightfully guilty and providing justice to the affected ones is the sole responsibility of the criminal justice system of any country that has to be done carefully under strict measures so that no innocent is punished.

The disturbance in memory causes disruptions in the facts quoted related to the crime scene, be it from the eye witness’s side or the juror’s note-taking abilities or even the defendant himself who might not have any memory at all of the criminal activity taking place ever. The functions of cognitive consciousness, identity, and the environment’s perceptions all play a part in a person’s memory that is an integral part for a court to look into while deciding for the case in the courtroom.

Psychiatrists have investigated various cases in which they have identified the accused suffering from a dissociative disorder that has affected their memory. He does not completely recall or is aware of his surroundings at the time of the incident. There are specifications that the psychiatrists have to consider before clinically proving that the accused had some mental problems, so that memory and law could balance each other while deciding for the accused’s and victim’s fate. The specifications include mental suffering of the accused, having the unsound mental capacity of the person, the extent to which the accused is mentally ill such that he could commit a murder, whether the accused in the soundness of his mind to take care of himself and being able to continue his healthy life or even taking care of his property, etc. (Chadda, 2013).

The criminal justice system is responsible for conducting fair trials under the country’s constitution laid down by the 18th amendment. It says that the determination of the civil rights and their provision lies in the impartial trials where the court is obligated to present truthful process and resulting charges against the entitled person (Cornell Law School, n.a.). since it is serious accountability with which the court has to proceed by taking into consideration that wrongly accused should not suffer afterward because of social stigma, psychological distortions, effects on memory by staying in prison for long without having committed the offense, behavioral attitudes towards the justice system for life, hardships in adjusting within the society after getting back from jail, impact on family relations and the effect of false allegations on the family members, and negative impact on the financial and social wellbeing of the wrongfully proven guilty individual (Brooks & Greenberg, 2020). Hence, the topic holds immense significance when a complex element like memory is involved. The judicial system has to act reasonably at every step of the court proceeding. Strategies for making positive public perceptions about the court’s decisions related to memory and the resulting decisions have to be devised so that mental trauma could be avoided that could adversely impact the economic costs.

Research Methods

Researchers choose research methodology based on the aptness of each distinct methodology for answering the research question. The contextual approach set for understanding the issue of the research topic is conducive to the selection of the research method. The topic of this paper is studied with various research methods in the selected six journal articles. They would be discussed one by one as follows:

The first selected scholarly journal article uses the qualitative research method via case study evaluation and a description of the theoretical and practical implications in criminology and memory in law cases. The author, Marko Jelicic, of the article “Testing Claims of Crime-Related Amnesia,” talks about a case of a 29-year-old Randy who murdered his girlfriend but had no memory of it. Memory loss, amnesia, can play in victimizing the offender, specifically in terms of homicide case is critical since it is a serious crime leading a victim to life imprisonment (Jelicic, 2018).

The second selected scholarly journal article uses evidence-based practices and previous research, mainly secondary research, to scrutinize the fairness of law case verdicts when the accused are suffering from amnesia and resulting memory loss with psychological testing support (Go, 2017). The current court standards are investigated with a debate on whether they should focus on the accused’s intent or rely on his medical condition to conclude.

The third selected scholarly article discusses the eyewitness memory based on the evidence present and some graphical presentation of the earlier cases and their laboratory studies that involved the scenarios where eyewitness memory produced close to accurate identification (Wixted, Mickes & Fisher, 2018). Again, this study does not include any primary research and heavily relies on secondary data. The majority of the findings led to the fact that the time duration of the eye witness retention indicates how well he can recall an incident; however, it does not always stand true.

The fourth selected article is about juror’s note-taking and their ability to recall what evidence was presented in the trials. This is the first primary research study included in this paper where three studies were conducted to test three different scenarios for jurors’ memory. The first study involved mock juror participants assessing their handwriting speed, the amount of critical evidence they could note down, the amount of information they were able to recall, and the if the information they noted down predicted the final verdict (Lorek et al., 2019). For this purpose, 141 participants were selected, of which 234 were males and 117 females aging between 18 years to 66 years. The Alphabet Fluency Task was utilized to check the handwriting speed. The participants were to watch a video of the 1992 murder trial and note down the important points. The data obtained was run through ‘Process’ in SPSS. The second study examined the relationship between the capacity of jurors’ short-term memory, their working memory capacity, the ability of information processing, and the amount of critical information noted. Here, 85 mock jurors were selected for participating, of which 17 were males and 68 females aging between 18 to 61 years. The Letter Span Task, Listening to Span Task, and Word Reordering task was used to obtain data. The trial footage used in study one was again used in this study too. The results were analyzed through correlational analyses to build associations between the variables. The third study within this article was based upon testing the relationship between jurors’ attention, the ability to collect critical evidence as they noted down the trial, and the amount of information they remembered. This time, 134 participants were included, of which 24 males and 110 females were invited. The Lottery subtest of Everyday Attention Test and Dual-Task technique by Baddeley and Hitch were made handy for obtaining data. Again, a correlational analysis was run to see the linkage between the selected variables.

The fifth study is interesting because emotions play a key part in changing the memory and recall ability of the individuals and the final verdict of the cases. For instance, a study was conducted to check the mock jurors’ mood, especially anger, to detect evidence inconsistencies. This is another primary research study in which 123 random community members eligible for jury posts and the student population were invited to listen to four audio trials concerning their mood, meaning anger (Semmler & Hurst, 2017). There were 53 males and 70 females where individuals above the age of 70 years were excluded. Four versions of the same trial were created to induce anger or neutrality of the case to check the cognitive functioning and psychological wellbeing of the participants. There were 14 multiple choice questions and the open-ended question to examine the number of inconsistencies in memory recall associated with their angry mood. The design of the study used was a two-factor subject, angry mood and inconsistencies. It is known well that a courtroom is a place where emotions are at play that could directly affect legal judgment. The results were presented through Welch’s t-test. The jurors’ reasoning and ability to recall the case facts depending on their state and trait anger are heavily impacted by the number of inconsistencies in their memory.

The final sixth selected scholarly journal article explored the reliability of memory and its ability to make mistakes, generally known as fallibility, and their effect on judicial cases. The study is again dependent on secondary data since it made use of the prominent cases during the 1980s and 1990s to check the reliability of memory of three critical forensic areas: children as eyewitnesses, sexual abuse and its history, and misidentification of the eyewitnesses (Howe & Knott, 2015). The truth and falsity of the memory have been discussed and whether their successful integration within the courtroom trials has produced fair verdicts. The recollection, effect of amnesic factors, gaps in the collection of memories regarding certain dates, times, and places, and making guesses have presented fundamental attributes that have been studied in the past and recently for conscious awareness in forensic settings.

Results of the Research Studies

The results of the first scholarly journal article uncover that the case of Randy was based on his memory loss due to an amnesic condition. He was not taking any prescribed drugs, was not an alcoholic, and was not even under any intoxication from drugs. The forensic psychologists and psychiatrists indicated that the offender was suffering from disruptions in the hippocampus when the incident took place. The important information of the crime was not recalled by the accused, and the knowledge of memory loss showed in the scores was relevant to the court’s decision whether the accused was guilty.

The second scholarly journal article results showed that courts do not seriously consider amnesia as a condition that might stand against the final verdict. The court considers it a made-up situation by the accused showing his inability to stand and face court trials against his crime. The current legal standards for the court involve the accused’s competency to face the trial, the intent of the offender to commit a crime despite the psychiatrist’s report testifying that the person lost his memory, and ‘men’s rea’ terminology applying to the defendant’s mental condition when he committed the crime. In contrast, certain requirements for certain crimes are different. Particular problems with the current legal standards were also discussed to give the defendant the leverage of accurately communicating in a normal manner if he is suffering from any memory loss or amnesiac symptoms that would directly affect the final court’s decision. Solutions to deal with these problems were also presented for a secure future for both the innocent defendant and the society.

The results of the third scholarly journal article showed that psychology depends on the strong relationship between confidence and accuracy when the eyewitness’s memory and recalling information of the incident are concerned. The reliability of eyewitness information was seen through contaminated and uncontaminated memory tests. It was discovered that contaminated memory is unreliable, and the evidence is taken to be defective. The results based on the prior studies also showed that the correlation between confidence and accuracy is irrelevant since sometimes there is either a very weak or moderate relation. Even sub-optimal conditions force us to question the reliability of the eyewitness’s evidence, such as being under strong emotional feelings, including anger, stress, etc., in the presence of some weapon at the crime scene, traumatic experiences, and racial discrimination, etc. Short and long-term retention intervals are another factor for the eyewitness creating distortions in recalling evidence facts, impacting their accuracy and trustworthiness.

The results of the fourth journal article corroborated with the third one since the second study conducted within the fourth article showed that there is an important role of short-term memory in recalling accurate evidence information compared to working memory. The memory storage capacity had to be higher to store the important information for reaching a final verdict. If the greater its amount, the closer to the final verdict likely results. Though the third article indicated that it always might not be true, the fourth article is the actual experiment that showed the concrete results of the finding being true with the hypothesis. Also, the fourth article relied heavily on the female mock jurors; the reason is that the selected participants had very few males and two to three times more females involved for note-taking of the trials. A recent study supports that females have a better memory than men, especially for verbal-based episodic memory tasks rather than spatial-based memory tasks (Loprinzi & Frith, 2018). Females can access their short-term memory information faster than men, recall dates more accurately, use emotional terms is higher than men, and the description of memories has greater specifications.

The results of the fifth study again created a linkage between a person’s mood or emotions and the ability to recall an incident’s memories correctly. If the juror is angry, then the trial information might be subjected to his anger opinionated version of the facts noted. The impact of mood on information processing would distort how the facts would be jotted down. The manipulation was seen when the jurors were listening to the angry trial compared to the neutral one. There was a high probability of ‘guilty’ reporting of the defendant by the jurors when they were in a fury mood. There were slightly more inconsistencies in the data reporting when jurors were angry, and the recalling was affected compared to the neutral mood. Moreover, the young mock jurors showed more signs of rage than the older mock jurors, causing more inconsistencies and lesser for the older ones.

The results of the final sixth study revealed that there still are gaps in the evidence present about certain historical cases since there are shortfalls in the memory science and how it works in the courtrooms when testimony is required for reaching a decision, the beliefs of clinicians and the weightage given to the memory evidence when facts are highlighted. However, when studying the hallmark cases from the 1980s to 1990s are considered, the shortcomings of those cases are still of benefit for forensic scientists and scientific research into the biological and neuropsychological explanations of how the memory works under certain conditions and stressful conditions events.

Discussion/ Conclusion

In cognitive psychology, memory works as a limited system with the restricted capacity to facilitate either temporary or permanent storage of certain facts. The manipulations should be considered vital under particular conditions such as anger, trauma, and medical conditions where memory and recall abilities are disturbed. The comprehension, reasoning, and recall skills become complex tasks in criminology applications. The episodic and long-term memories are closely monitored with the association of semantic memory so that its functionality could be understood when case facts remembrance is concerned.

The memories of eyewitnesses and jurors hold a substantial place in courtroom testimonials due to the gender-based difference in memory workings of both males and females. It has been studied earlier that females have better memory other than after menopause. There are considerable changes in neuronal activity in memory retrieval, and the reliance upon verbal information is changed altogether (Loprinzi & Frith, 2018). The biological explanations for this explanation persist since there is greater activity in female’s right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex when compared to male’s more activity in the left parahippocampal region. Blood flow is increased in these specified areas. Still, the same does not stand true for either of their estrogen levels, as the correlation between estrogen level and episodic memory has not been strong in earlier studies.