What happens during the reconstruction of the memory may significantly affect its accuracy. False eyewitness memory is the main factor leading to false convictions. The Innocence Project claims that eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful conviction in the USA, playing a role in more than 75% of convictions that were subsequently overturned through DNA testing. One explanation for the inaccuracy of EWT is that questioning by the police or other officials after a crime may alter witnesses’ perception of the events and thus affect what they subsequently recall. For example some questions may be more ‘suggestive’ than others.
Researchers focus on using two types of false memories, benine events and traumatic event memories. A false memory can be as simple as remembering a word that has not been presented. Or as serious a remembering an event which has never occurred. There are many false memories explored in the laboratory, using vey different techniques to implant or induce them. The Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm produces formations of false memory for words, for example participants are asked to study lists of words, often reporting seeing words that never appeared in the original list.
One will also explore different examples of spurious relationships that can be found in everyday life. In exploring these examples, one will finally see how an assumption can be made due to the facts at a specific moment in time. One will also see that if one looks a little deeper into how one came to the specific conclusion in the particular case, one can come to a more informed conclusion based on more concrete evidence. This can be uncovered because of the existence of a third variable which may or may not be easily visible to the observer. The concept of spurious relationships is especially interesting to me in that I am faced on a daily basis with cause and effect items such as: a student did not complete his admissions application to college and therefore he cannot attend courses in a program of study he is seeking.
When it comes to assault, robbery, and burglary cases there will be typically more error due to eyewitness identification and circumstantial evidence. b. Most exonerations are not tracked when it comes to local and state municipalities so most cases prosecutors will say and go with the original verdict because they feel they usually are accurately right even with new evidence that could show innocence this then clouds the understanding of wrongful convictions. 3. Causes of Wrongful Convictions a.
| The 5th stage of a criminal trial process known as the closing arguments is often the most important stage, especially in cases that are of tight tolerances that make it hard for the jury to predict an outcome. This stage then becomes the final stage as the attorney’s attempt to persuade the jury to derive a verdict in favor of their client. The following document describes the process of the closing arguments and how strict legal guidelines must be followed in an attempt not to convince the jury in any way that would mislead them in a verdict. In the conclusion of the document an example of how such unethical conduct from attorneys toward the jury and the effect of such conduct have on the court case. As attorneys attempt to proceed with the closing arguments, it is important that the summarization of the case along with all pieces of evidence be presented in a strong persuasive manner that shows validity based on the elements of the case and should be given in a precise organized way.
I’ll be using the same article in the next section, because he then informs his readers how to identify when a news corporation is considered bias. First, Entman states that “most of the studies that do explicitly explore bias focus on presidential campaigns and administrations and find little evidence of decisive or consistent, liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican bias, but yet this still sits uneasily alongside other findings that reveal news consistently favoring one side and seem to not be considered “bias”, but slanted.” ( Entman 2003) The best definition of power is the ability to get others to do what one wants, in order for a news corporation to disperse the power they wish to different issues, or in this case, political views, they use what is called
Even the most basic, everyday items often fail to be encoded into our memory. When reconstructing their memory of the crime, the eyewitness “unknowingly fills in the gaps in his or her factual memory of the crime based on such factors as the eyewitness’s expectations, attitude, beliefs and knowledge of similar events” (Wise, Fishman and Safer, 2009). This, in turn, produces a testimony that may seem believable and accurate, but does indeed contain many faults and inaccuracies. Another cause of faulty eyewitness testimony is eyewitness bias. Encoding is defined as “the set of mental operations that people perform on sensory information to convert that information into a form that is usable in the brain’s storage systems” (Ciccarelli and White, 2010 pg 214).
Since insanity is defined so arbitrarily, lawyers can protect their clients from their punishments with relative ease by dragging out the legal process for years at a time by using the insanity defense. To be protected with the insanity defense in many states, a criminal must take the M'Naghten test: failure to determine right from wrong deems the criminal insane (Cornell University Law School). Although some argue that people with mental illnesses cannot be held accountable for their actions, the greater concern should be for the overall safety for The United States of America because criminals who plead insanity can be a danger when released, legal definitions of insanity vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, Supreme Court has upheld four states' abolishing of insanity defense, and there is incomplete research on insanity. Shafer !2 Insane criminals who are found not guilty by reason of insanity are sent to mental hospitals to rehabilitate and treat their illness. The problem is that the criminals who are sent to a hospital and become "cured" could be a danger to society.
According to Terry Lenamon, expert Criminal Trial Attorney, the first, and most popular, is the “M’Naghten test.” Lenamon says, “Under M’Naghten, the determining factor is whether or not the defendant was (1) able to understand what he (or she) was doing at the time of the crime due to some “defect of reason or disease of the mind” or, (2) if he (or she) was aware of what they were doing, that he (or she) nevertheless failed to comprehend or understand that what they were doing was wrong” (Lenamon). With that in mind, think about how many inmates have not taken that test and have been wrongly convicted. The American Civil Liberties Union states, “Mental Health America, estimates that five to ten percent of all death row inmates suffer from a severe mental illness.” Furthermore, if these people could get tested, they would realize how many people are legally insane and do not deserve to be in jail, but rather a hospital. Consequently, some of the individuals sitting on death row may
This could be avoided if more caution was observed during the investigation process. Proper and accurate evidence should be the key to solving all investigations. An important piece of evidence is an eyewitness. Anyone can say he did it or she did it, but an eyewitness has to actually be at the scene of the crime and witness it taking place in order to stand and testify in a court of law as defined in The Oxford Dictionary.(“eyewitness”). Everyone has different features even if we are of the same race.