Both prosecutors and law enforcement, sometimes knowingly ignore this behavior, in hopes that their testimony will secure a conviction in their favor. Law enforcement who work closely with the crime lab in their department will often try to influence Pathologists to tailor their analysis and testing of evidence to suit their needs in assurance of a solid conviction. Consequently, Pathologists are criminally mishandling and presenting false testimony of the evidence and tests. Regardless of their underpinning of excuses, we must find some means of addressing these issues on a broader scope within the criminal justice system. Dr. Ralph Erdmann is a prime example of one who would
Criminals especially those who are going through court proceedings may not feel comfortable disclosing certain information to someone they know to be a researcher. Typically most researchers are similar to police in characteristics, white and middle class, so acting covertly will most likely increase comfortability between the researcher and criminals, allowing more valid research to be acquired. Similarly judges and police may alter their behaviours if they know the researchers true identity in a bid to disguise any flaws in their practices and unjustified law enforcing. However, Positivists would argue that data collected by covert observations aren’t at all valid, they are biased as they are based off of the observer’s interpretations. This could be especially true in the case of researching court proceedings as it is unlikely many researchers have gone through one themselves.
If such identifications are excluded, police will begin to use only reliable identification procedures. A wealth of research has been done on why mis-identifications occur and what the best practices are to minimize the possibility of mis-identifications – why shouldn’t we insist that police use these best practices and insist that only reliable testimony be admitted at trial? "An in-court identification of an accused is inadmissible if a suggestive out-of-court identification procedure created a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification." In considering whether error is harmless, a case's particular facts must be considered along with various factors including: "the importance of the witness' testimony in the prosecution's case, whether the testimony was cumulative, the presence or absence of evidence corroborating or contradicting the testimony of the witness on material points, the extent of cross-examination otherwise permitted, and, of course, the overall strength of the prosecution's
This allows the results to be generalised. Weaknesses The hospital staff was deceived - this is, of course, unethical. Although Rosenhan did conceal the names of hospitals or staff and attempted to eliminate any clues which might lead to their identification. Rosenhan did note that the experiences of the pseudo-patients could have differed from that of real patients who did not have the comfort of knowing that the diagnosis was false. Perhaps Rosenhan was being too hard on psychiatric hospitals, especially when it is important for them to play safe in their diagnosis of abnormality because there is always an outcry when a patient is let out of psychiatric care and gets into trouble.
Eyewitness testimony can leave a deep and lasting impression on the jury, perjury is a harshly frowned upon crime as lying whilst under oath is practically a mockery of the integrity and legitimacy of the court system. However perjury is defined as the act of knowingly making a false statement while under oath – determining the truth is made difficult enough without the added possibility that the witness may not actually be aware of inaccuracies in their testimony. Eye witness testimony is evidence of what a witness believes to have occurred and although eye witness testimonies aid in making a conviction creditable they are often backed up by a lot of supporting evidence as an eye witness testimony can be harmful to a conviction as memories change. The growing length of time, the emotion experienced before and after the event and the pace of which the event happened can alter the memories drastically, there is also the chance that memories can be altered by third parties, enhanced features and false claims; the list above are just some reason for why our court system doesn’t base conviction on eye witness claims and try to find as much supporting evidence as possible to from a creditable conviction. One of the first identifiable flaws in the case of James Taylor is that his conviction was based on eye witness testimonies that throughout the case had been inconsistent and altered after the witnesses were shown a photo of James Taylor several months after the crime had occurred and given information about his past however the witnesses remained unsure and were left with the possibility that it could’ve been him.
For instance, because a "psychopath" may display a general coldness toward others, they are more likely to commit criminal acts, and afterward not respond to punishment or deterrent tactics. Hare’s psychopathy checklist when used as a tool to identify psychopaths prevents harmful exposure of non-psychopaths to this dangerous group of offenders. In fact, key words have been repeated several times by numerous psychiatrists diagnosing Psychopaths at different times and in different places. The connection between these thinkers is not casual but determinative. Terms such as anti-social, inability to exercise self restraint,
1. The repressed memory concept is also known as false memory syndrome. False memory syndrome is caused by memories of a traumatic experience most often they are associated with memories of childhood sexual abuse. Many of these types of memories are objectively false, but in which the person believes the memories are true. Because sexual abuse is such a disturbing incident, false accusations of sexual abuse have huge, if not shocking, consequences for families.
False confessions can be classified as the "coerced-compliant" or "coerced-internalized". In a coerced complaint the confession merely amounts to an act of compliance. Suspects actually know they are innocent, but confess believing that their confession will lead to a more beneficial outcome than not confessing. Interrogators or rather law enforcement at times tend to stretch/exaggerate the truth, they may even lie on what evidence they have in order to use it as having an upper hand on a suspect to just tell them the whole truth and basically obtaining a coerced complaint. In coerced-internalized, suspects actually come to believe they are guilty of committing a crime.
Confessions can be a tough thing to get out of a person, or sometimes the investigators can be so tough on a person that it can cause a person to give a false confession. Confessions and false confessions are tough because the courts have to make sure you confessed and where not in any kind of way coerced into a false confession. Confessions grant the interviewer access to the defendant’s inner thoughts, beliefs, knowledge and thinking to why they may have committed the crime. An investigator can have all the evidence in the world against you, but getting you to confess is like putting icing on the cake. Confessions must go through five hurdles in order to be considered valid, these hurdles are: The voluntariness test, one part of this test focuses on the susceptibility of the suspect like the background and intelligence, mental and physical condition and prior experience with the law.
It has been criticized to be too complex and sophisticated for some of the sex offender population. It has been argued that the treatment’s main focus should not be to avoid certain triggers, but to set goals and healthy coping mechanisms (Saleh, et al., 2009). Avoidance strategies can be very difficult and hard to stick with, and results in lowering the self esteem of the offender. Another weakness of the didactic treatment models is that they do not take into account individual factors and treatment may not be really effective because of this (Saleh, et al., 2009). Chemical castration is aimed to reduce recidivism in sex offenders, as it has been thought that reducing or suppressing the production of testosterone will suppress an individual’s deviant fantasies, sex drive, sexual behavior, and