Importance Of Eyewitness Testimony

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A twenty-two year old African American man is on trial for mugging a woman in broad daylight. There is one Caucasian woman eyewitness who saw the crime and identified this young man in a line-up. His lawyer calls you to evaluate the reliability of this eyewitness memory. What would you say to raise questions about the credibility of eyewitness testimony in the minds of the jury? Would it be any different if the witness were African American, Hispanic, or Oriental? This is the scenario that I will be discussing throughout the rest of this paper. Eyewitness testimony is a hotly debated topic given that it has a very important purpose in the outside world. Many times when a crime has been committed, the single most important piece of evidence is the eyewitness testimony. In some cases this is the deciding factor in sending a perpetrator to prison. However, eyewitness testimony is not to be fully trusted. Many things can go wrong and end up in a mistaken identification, which can lead to an innocent person being convicted for a crime he or she did not commit. Throughout this paper…show more content…
When the police conduct a show-up, they search the area of the crime scene looking for a person who fits the description of the perpetrator. If they find someone matching the description they bring that person to the eye witness, alone, and ask the witness if the suspect is the perpetrator. If a show-up is used then it is much more likely that an innocent person may be picked and accused of the crime. The problem with this is that the eye witness is being subjected to the influence of the police. The witness may think that the suspect looks guiltier since the police have already picked him or her out (Smith, Bertrand, Lindsay, Kalmet, Grossman, & Provenzano, 2014). This may cause the witness to accuse this suspect as being the perpetrator, when in normal circumstances the witness would not have made a similar

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