Eyewitness Testimony
The Supreme Court, in Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188, 93 S. Ct. 375 (1972), set out some guidelines as to what a court must consider when it is trying to determine how much credibility to give to eyewitness testimony. This case involved a woman who identified a man who she claimed had raped her. The case revolved around the credibility of her identification. The Court laid out the following factors that must be considered in such cases. The Court said that courts had to consider:

Whether the witness had a good chance to see the criminal.

How much the witness was paying attention.

How accurate the witness's description was.

How certain the witness was.

How long of a time elapsed between the crime and the identification of the criminal.

The Supreme Court set these out as the factors that must be considered. t did not, however, say how much weight must be given to….

41+). Loftus notes that science has found "post-event information" is integrated into what most people have actually experienced because, "when people experience some actual event -- say a crime or an accident -- they often later acquire new information about the event. This new information can contaminate the memory" (Loftus, 2002, March, p. 41+).
In addition, many false memories are created, deliberately or by accident, in response to leading questioning by therapists or aggressive lawyers. "Subtle cues can be inadvertently conveyed and social reinforcements provided by interrogators operating with a biased set of expectations. But here, too, therapists, interrogators, lawyers, or worried parents may be innocent of any conscious intent to produce false testimony" (Callahan, 1993, p. 6+).

Callahan noted that once a false memory has been established, it becomes, for all intents and purposes, a true account to the one remembering it. "It is important to realize that what psychologists….

Eyewitness Testimony
Current Event in Criminal Justice

The eliability of Eyewitness Testimony

The execution of Troy Anthony Davis on September 27, 2011, in Georgia has stirred new debate over the reliability of eyewitness testimony. Davis was convicted of the August 19, 1989 murder of police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia. Working a security guard at a Burger King, MacPhail was shot when he attempted to defend a man being assaulted in a nearby parking lot. At the trial seven witnesses testified that they had seen Davis shoot MacPhail, and two others testified that that Davis had confessed the murders to them. However, the murder weapon was never recovered. Ballistic evidence linked earlier shootings and bullets recovered at the scene to those of another shooting in which Davis was also charged. In 1991 he was convicted of murder and the earlier shootings. He was sentenced to death.

Davis maintained his innocence until his execution.….

Thus while an interviewer may simply be trying to pin down additional details of an incident (for example), the eyewitness may believe that she or he is being challenged about the accuracy of his or her memory and statement and begin (again, most likely unconsciously and not in any attempt to commit perjury) to shift answers to coincide with what the witness believes the interviewer want to hear (Poole & White, 1991).
The precautions that interviewers (from social workers to district attorneys) must take with children extend to all eyewitnesses. These include such procedures as having witnesses interviewed by someone who has no established theory about the case; having the interviewer make a written assessment of the eyewitness' certainty and apparent accuracy immediately after an interview; taking caution in repeating a question; and warning witnesses to a line-up that the suspect may or may not be present so that the….

Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Issues
When investigating and prosecuting crimes and other incidents, their can be a heavy level of reliance on eyewitness testimony to substantiate the facts that are suggested by other evidence and to fill in missing gaps in the story of the crime, accident, or other incident. This can be a problem, however, as two different eyewitness accounts of the same incident are likely to differ significantly in many ways, and even the same eyewitness can remember details differently at different intervals of time following the incident. This is due to the human function of memory: the differences between short- and long-term memory, the processes involved in creating and reinforcing memory, and various techniques that can be used to help bring out memories but are not always reliable. This paper will examine and explore many of the issues related to memory and eyewitness recall.

Short-term memory occurs when….

Criminal Eyewitness Testimony
Eyewitness testimony, or the sworn oath of persons who believe they have witnesses a crime, or portion of a crime, has long been studied in both the fields of criminology and psychology. esearch shows that a jury, for one, tends to convict a person when there is eyewitness testimony present by two to one odds. However, research also shows that criminal eyewitness testimony has the very real potential of being incorrect, and in fact has played a role in more than 75% of overturned and wrongful convictions using new criminological techniques and DNA testing (Eyewitness Misidentification, 2011). Thus, there is a very real concern with the contemporary judicial system that even at the best of times and with the best and most credible witness, eyewitness testimony is often suspect.

Literature eview -- The three articles under consideration are quite detailed in their literature review, citing examples from sociological, psychological,….

In as much as intelligence is influenced by experience, the elderly have opportunity to acquire and process enormous amounts of information. While short-term memory may be affected by attention and emotions, the corpus of information available to an older adult is substantial, and -- unless they show signs of progressive or absolute deterioration as in dementia -- they tend to be skeptical with a broad base of human behavior available for comparison and contrast. Psychologists suggest that the schemas of older adults tend to solidify, as people tend to look for characteristics and events that support their frame of reference. owever, here again, it is important to consider the intellectual capacity and education levels of the individuals, as formal instruction requires a more disciplined, nuanced manner of thinking about the world -- which is reflected in the frames people apply to what they see and what they remember.
In your….

eyewitness testimony is far from being a gold standard in criminal justice. At least 75% of wrongful convictions for violent crimes including rape and murder were based on eyewitness testimony, and many of those convictions led to the death penalty (Bohannon 2014). Stambor (2006) found that 78% of wrongful convictions were based on overreliance on eyewitness testimony. It is therefore critical to reexamine the policies and procedures surrounding the collection and use of eyewitness testimony in criminal cases. Emerging research in perception, cognition, and the study of memory provides the framework with which to base a reform of criminal justice procedures. Training of police officers, and a comprehensive debriefing of judges, juries, and the witnesses themselves, are also possible solutions for minimizing problems with eyewitness reports. Although eyewitness testimony can be tremendously helpful in criminal cases, the evidence must be analyzed in a scientific and systematic manner.
Some of the….

Eye witness testimony can be unreliable for a plethora of reasons, not the least of which include ulterior motives on the part of the individual testifying. People do not always testify to ensure that justice is served. Witness tampering can definitely affect the veracity of what eye-witnesses state when they testify, including partisanship tendencies towards sides of the issue considered in court.
From a cognitive perspective, however, there have been several studies performed that empirically validate the fact that the mind and various facets of it is not always consistent with reality. Perhaps the most tenuous aspect of cognition in regards to eye-witness testimony relates to the nature of memory. People do not always remember things correctly. Crucial details including those related to size, color, and even sequence, are extremely mutable to one's memory. Eye-witnesses, then, can actually observe an event that they are brought into court to testify about, witness….

Eyewitness and ecalling
Shook hands

I shook hands with Bugs Bunny... Describe and evaluate the role of schemas and stereotypes on recalling past events. What implications does this have for the accuracy of eyewitness accounts of events?

I shook hands with Bugs Bunny... Describe and evaluate the role of schemas and stereotypes on recalling past events. What implications does this have for the accuracy of eyewitness accounts of events?

Literature on Schemas

Literature on Schemas and Stereotypes and their role in Eyewitness

I shook hands with Bugs Bunny... Describe and evaluate the role of schemas and stereotypes on recalling past events. What implications does this have for the accuracy of eyewitness accounts of events?

Introduction

To investigate and prosecute crime the criminal justice system heavily depends on eyewitness identification (Wells & Olson, 2003). An eyewitness goes through different psychological procedures prior to the courtroom testimony. It is evident that before coming to the court, an eyewitness goes through….

eye witness testimony and the use of lineups have long been considered reliable mainstays of prosecutorial evidence, misidentification has been the "greatest contributing factor to wrongful convictions," according to the Innocence Project. As many as one in every four eyewitness identifications prove to be incorrect (California Innocence Project, 2015). The Innocence Project therefore works in part to train law enforcement departments to develop eyewitness interrogation procedures that eliminate bias and prevent misidentification of suspects.
The case of onald Cotton highlighted some of the specific problems with witness identification through the use of police lineups. Inadvertent use of pressure and subtle verbal or nonverbal cues may cause eyewitnesses to misidentify a suspect, especially when the law enforcement officers administering the lineup knows who their suspect was in the case. The victim of the crime might be misled by officer support for their decisions. Stress, trauma, and general anxiety may also be….

Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony The Scientific Method

The scientific method is one of the most commonly utilized mechanisms in physical science to develop and conduct experiments. This method consists of several sequential steps, which are reflections of what happens during the scientific process. The use of the scientific method in conducting experiments is influenced by its ability to help lessen experimental bias and errors, which contribute towards poor results. Through lessening bias and errors in experiments, the scientific method enhances the reliability and accuracy of the results, which in turn enhances the researcher's confidence. The sequential steps in this method contribute to achievement of accurate results through proper organization of thoughts and procedures by scientists when performing an experiment (Science Made Simple, n.d.).

As a result of its capability to produce accurate results in experiments, the scientific method can be applied to problems or challenges in a particular field of study or everyday….

Threat or perception of threat is best described by protection motivation theory:
This theory states that the extent to which people show preventive behavior in light of a threat depends on their protection motivation (. W. ogers, 1975, 1983). According to this theory, the level of protection motivation depends on the seriousness of the threat, the probability that the threat will manifest itself, the judged efficacy of the recommended behavior (called response or outcome efficacy), and the self-efficacy expectation relating to that behavior. (Wiegman & Gutteling, 1995, p. 235)

In a practical sense what this theory says about the perceived threat is that as incidences of observation occur in the lives of individuals, be they real or imagined they will likely become more protective and therefore attempt to engage in avoidance of behaviors that have been identified with the production of environmental threat. By doing so this the individual, and the….

..]; and (b) external factors that involve juror and defendant demographic characteristics" (Gordon & Anderson, 1995, p. 455-456). These factors can be difficult, if not impossible to overcome, and lead to numerous problems in the court system, from hung juries to incorrect decisions about guilt or innocence.
Trial lawyers are exceedingly good at using social psychology methods during trials. These lawyers use the principles of how people relate to each other and get along in life to make their clients seem more sympathetic and innocent to the jury and judge. For example, a murder suspect comes to court with his young baby in the front row for all the jury and courtroom to see. These psychological persuasion tactics are quite influential to many jurors, who have their own belief systems and ideas about what is right and wrong and the lawyers understand this and use it to their advantage.

eferences

Gordon, .A., &….

Gordon, Betty N., Baker-Ward, Lynne, and Ornstein, Peter A. (June 2001) "Children's testimony: A review of research on memory for past experiences."
Clinical Child & Family Psychology Review. Volume 4(2), 157-181. Retrieved at http://www.wkap.nl/journalhome.htm/1096-4037 on December 7, 2003. Document Link URL:

http://www.wkap.nl/issuetoc.htm/1096-4037+4+2+2001

The goal of the article was to evaluate several recent studies on children's memory the implications for the accuracy of children's testimony in the legal system. Although the studies were not all purely focused on sexual trauma recollections, the implications for legal court battles focusing on these recollections are of particular interest to the authors.

Pertinent to evaluating importance of article is how thoroughly it deals with the question of how memory develops in children over the course of the development process and how this memory may be tampered with.

The article also touches upon the idea, slightly more tangentially of how subjective is autobiographical and/or eyewitness testimony in general.

The authors' hypothesis was….

Forensic psychology refers to applying psychology to legal issues.  Forensic psychology can be applied to civil and criminal legal cases but is most commonly associated with criminal cases.

Ten possible essay topics / titles for forensic psychology are:

1. Future Dangerousness: Can Forensic Psychologists Assess Future Risk
2. Beyond Criminal Profiling: How Forensic Psychologists Help Law Enforcement
3. Legally Crazy Versus Mentally Ill
4. Victim Profiling: What Makes Some People Targets
5. The Psychology of Policing
6. Best Interests of the Child: How Forensic Psychologists Can Help in Child Custody Cases
7. Inherently Unreliable: The Problem with Eyewitness Testimony
8. Undeveloped Brains: Why Juveniles Should Not Be in the....
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Certainly! Here are some essay topics related to Criminal Investigations:

1. The role of evidence in criminal investigations: How is evidence collected and analyzed in criminal investigations, and what impact does it have on the outcome of a case?

2. The use of technology in criminal investigations: How have advancements in technology improved the process of investigating and solving crimes? What are the potential risks and ethical considerations associated with using technology in criminal investigations?

3. The challenges of conducting criminal investigations in a digital world: How has the prevalence of digital technology, such as social media and smartphones, affected the methods and....