Our justice system is something that makes our country unique. Everybody gets a right to a fair trial, and everyone is judged by a jury of their own peers. It is our civic duty to serve our time as jurors, and it is something that is the absolute foundation of our entire justice system. This is the short summary of a speech that was given to me and my fellow jurors on my jury selection day. Although I do agree with what the judge said to us, having taken a few Psychology courses by now, I know it is not this simple and clean-cut. Human memory is faulty, and as a result, many innocent people are sent to prison for crimes they did not commit.
(http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/sep/26/sdpd-change-lineup-practices/)
Something used as evidence in many cases is the eyewitness account. There are quite a few reasons why this is not as reliable as most people think. The entire witnessing process can be broken down into three parts: acquisition, storage, and retrieval (Aronson, 434). The acquisition stage takes place when the crime takes place. It involves the witness perceiving what is going on around them (Aronson, 434). Many problems interfere with this first stage. The witness at this point is most likely feeling a lot of stress, making it difficult to pay attention to details of the crime scene (like the criminals height or eye color) (Aronson, 435). A common phenomena that happens at this point is called “weapons focus” (Goldstein, 227). Basically, if you are a witness to a mugging on the street, and you see that the mugger is pointing a loaded gun, you are most likely to focus on the gun rather than other details of the scene (Goldstein, 227).
The next phase, storage, is the part where the information from the acquisition phase is stored to memory (Aronson, 434). The possibilities for error in this stage include things like suggestive questions from police officers, and source monitoring errors. A source monitoring error occurs when you remember information you learned after the event as being a part of the actual event (Wede, lesson 9). You are trying to find the correct source of the memory. A police officer’s question may very well ‘change’ the memory of an eyewitness (“Was the suspect driving the red van?”).
The last part, “retrieval,” is when the witness “recalls information stored in their memories” (Aronson, 434). This is a critical stage as it is when the witness is usually asked to pick the suspect in a lineup. Most people feel that if an eye witness identifies a man in a line up as being guilty, he must be guilty; however, there are some problems with this belief. One of the main problems is that the witness believes that the actual perpetrator is in the lineup, when a lot of the time he is not. This leads the witness to give their “best guess” for who they believe to look the most like their memory (Aronson, 438). Obviously, this can end with an innocent person serving time for a crime they did not commit.
(http://keenetrial.com/blog/2012/11/14/when-i-dont-know-improves-the-accuracy-of-eye-witness-identification/)
No matter how certain you are that you are right about something you saw, science says there’s a chance that you’re not. The situation in which you observe your surroundings, the people who speak to you afterwards, and the way you recall the information after time has passed can all influence the information itself. Knowing a little bit about how our memories may trick us can better help you to make your decisions the day you are in a juror’s chair. You may even be the one on the witness stand!
RESOURCES:
Aronson, Elliot, et al. Social Psychology. 8th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2013. Print.
Goldstein, Bruce, E. Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience. 3rd ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2011. Print.
Wede, Joshua. “Lesson 9: Everyday Memory and Memory Errors.” PYCH 256: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology. Penn State University, 17 April. 2014. <https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp14/psych256/001/content/10_lesson/08_page.html>