False Testimony Essay

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The article The Problem With EyeWitness Testimony that was written by Barbara Tversky and George Fisher it was a useful source in the paper. This source is the perfect fit for the topic for multiple reasons, first off they started talking about how the eyewitness could have a deep impression on a jury. However, when someone is giving false statement or false confession they call it perjury which is a Criminal offence of making false statements under oath of law or in any of various sworn statements in writing. This source provides several studies on human memory. One of the studies was about a car accident, it was whether the guy saw a stop sign or yield sign. Since the accident occur because of the misunderstanding or misreading the sign, the witness was asked a lot of question to make sure he remembers what happened. It is important that the false statement be material to the case at hand that it could affect the outcome of the case. It is not considered perjury, for example, to lie about one's age, unless that person's age is a key factor in proving the case. Perjury is considered a serious offense as it can be used to usurp the power of the courts. Furthermore, they also talk about the psychological side of the subject for example, if the witness lost his memory then he shouldn't give any statement because his statement might affect either the person on trial or the witness himself. For that reason the lawyer is allowed to ask question to the witness just to be sure that the witness is telling the truth. Furthermore, the journal talks about bias, however the study is not taking any side they are just giving facts and statement about the issue. One of the quotes that stood up in the article was “witnesses can distort their own memories without the help of examiners, police officers or lawyers” The main point of this quote is that the witness is capable of lying or

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