key question - EWT

• what is the key question

  should eyewitness testimony (EWT) be trusted by the criminal justice system?
• what does EWT refer to

  the information given by a witness who sees a crime occur
• do juries tend to trust EWT


  yes
• why could juries trusting EWT be a bad thing sometimes

  there are cases where EWT has been inaccurate and has so lead to miscarriages of justice
• who showed that EWT can be unreliable

  Loftus and palmer
• what was the aim of L+Ps experiment

  to test if language used in EWT can alter memory, aimed to show that leading questions could distort accounts and have confabulating effects
• what was the experiement

  ppts shown films of traffic accidents, asked to recall them

  . then asked specific questions using different verbs for different ppts eg how fast were the cars going when they bumped/smashed/hit each other
• what were the findings

  the responses to the questions were affected by the verb used in the question - showed that memory of events is highly flexible and can be modified/changed/supplemented when other information is heard
• conclusion of experiment on EWT

  can be biased by the way questions are asked
• strengths of experiment


  high control of confounding variables = high validity
• what can we get statistics from

  the innocence project
• how many wrongful convictions were there in this sample

  232
• what percent of those involved eyewitness misidentification

  63%
• what percent of those convictions involved EWT alone

  33%
• what case can show the flaws of EWT

  ronald cottons case
• what happened in Ronald cottons case

  . was convicted of rape and given a life sentence

  . 10 years later DNA proved he was innocent

  . h had been convicted with evidence heavily relying on eyewitness identification from the people he allegedly assulted

  . their accounts were wrong/they misidentified him leading to the miscarriage of justice
• answer to the key question

  . is a necessary means of hearing evidence from many people to see many sides of evidence of a story

  . however should not be used as evidence alone to avoid miscarriages of justice
• how can this affect society

  . induce fear as criminals may be free as not been convicted

  . hard for families and individuals involved in convictions that are wrong - spend time in prison for no reason - emotionally distressing for all