Eye witness identification is one of the most powerful types of evidence in a trial. However, it’s also one of the most problematic evidence as it’s the main cause of a majority of wrongful convictions. An eye witness is an individual who was present and witnessed as the action was taking place. This is because a person claiming to be present during the crime activity provides direct evidence since this statement directly links the offender with the specific crime mentioned (Devine, 2012). This is opposed to the physical evidence such as fingerprints, which does not show the criminal being directly linked with the crime scene, people may have their fingerprints, but they were there for different intentions. An eye witness testimony is one of the most convincing evidence in a trial, making it the most important form of evidence. It’s convincing as it is very easy to trust and believe in our own experience and perception. “Seeing is believing” applies in this context as one went through the specific experience, making it persuasive. In the prosecutors’ eyes, it’s only the eyewitness evidence that has the greatest impact except a suspect’s confession signed, which can convince the jury on an individual’s guilt. This kind of evidence is also considered robust because of the common belief of the accuracy of the observation and human memory.
Although it’s persuasive and convincing, eye witness testimony may sometimes be inaccurate. According to research, in many cases, the eye witness evidence is usually dubious. Such inaccuracies may result in the wrongful conviction of people sending them in jail for many years for crimes that they did not commit. According to Bartol (2015), the eyewitness evidence should be handled carefully; they could be misleading at times. Wells and Loftus state that the justice system is always using scientific and sophisticated methods to ensure the physical evidence they have is accurate but approach the eyewitness evidence blindly. The memory is prone is a variety of biases and errors; people often forget the occurrence of events or even people they knew earlier. Eyewitnesses are not an exception; the memory could mix u the details about the time and place or even the people one saw (Bartol & Bartol, 2015). The witness’s memory is mainly corrupted by the many questions, misinterpreting the events that took place, conversations with other witnesses, and a person’s expectation of what could have happened.
In eyewitness identification, there two methods that are recommended, which include the simultaneous line-up and the sequential line-up. While in the simultaneous line-up, the eyewitnesses are required to identify the suspect as ell the culprits are line up together. The sequential line up involves one suspect at a time presented in the line-up for the eye witness to identify (Bartol & Bartol, 2015). Following the high rates of wrongful convictions resulting from eyewitness misidentification, there are several best practices that institutions should flow to ensure the line-ups and the eyewitness identification procedure are successful. Refresher and training should be adequately provided to the law enforcement staff on their observation and memory and the practices they should employ to ensure there is utmost accuracy in the identifications made. A blind administrator should also conduct the identification of both live and photo line-ups. In double-blind line-ups, both the administrator and the eye witness is able to identify the suspect. Also, law enforcement should create a standard set of instructions that can be used to communicate to the witness of whether the suspect is or is not on the line-up. The identification procedure must be recorded in a video all through to document a permanent record of the process.
The incorporation of science and psychological methods in interrogation is designed to create reliable results for law enforcement. By applying scientific techniques such as lie detection, the interrogators can separate the guilty and the innocent suspects in a room even before the actual interrogation. Therefore these techniques make it easy as only the guilty suspects that are usually interrogated (Davis, Leo, & Williams, 2014). Ultimately, the use of these techniques would reduce the rate of false confessions and reveal the guilty and eliciting the true confessions from the guilty people. Based on this, the Reid techniques require that the people using these methods should refrain from interrogating innocent people. If they are interrogated, they will not foster the innocent people to confess falsely. False confessions are as a result of an improper interrogation technique. In many cases, it’s the nature of the interrogation which determines how they can elicit the false confessions or the nature of the content of confessions, which can be manipulated by the interrogator in such a way that the suspect appears to be guilty.
The tunnel vision is the tendency of the system’s participants, such as the police and the prosecutors, to focus on a specific case’s specific narrative and end up overlooking the provided evidence, which is contrary to their theory. This is a psychological aspect that results in unconsciously filtering the provided evidence (Rossmo & Pollock, 2019). This impacts the case negatively since the system builds on a case against the suspect as they overlook the evidence, which is meant to help the suspect look less guilty. This is a collection of different processes in the human brain and cannot be prevented by mere education; rather, it can be avoided by engaging in regular practices. Similarly, confirmation bias is also another robust psychological process that results in an individual to believe more information that supports a certain stereotype that one has regarding the matter. This can impact the interrogation as the interrogators become skeptical about the information provided, which is contrary to their conclusion. While the confirmation bias causes the investigators to filter information to support their narrative and overlook the provided evidence that proposes the contrary, the tunnel vision directs its focus to a specific target.
According to studies, innocent people are more likely to provide false confessions. The system’s interrogation techniques have been said they induce false confessions as psychologists have states that innocent people end up being fostered into confessing and believing that they did something that they actually did not (Davis, Leo, & Williams, 2014). There are three reasons why people confess; others confess voluntarily to gain attention. Some people confess to bringing to an end an aggressive interrogation they are known as the compliant individuals. Finally, others are convinced into thinking they are guilty, ultimately giving an internalized false confession. Generally, the innocent people falsely confess to actions they did not do based on the assumptions that the evidence provided concludes about them.
The existing legal protections such as Miranda have proven to be inadequate in diminishing false confessions since they divert the judicial system’s attention away from the truth of the confessions provided towards the procedural issues concerning the waivers and other warnings. It has also ultimately harmed innocent people by preventing the police from accessing confessions from the actual offenders, therefore creating a possibility for innocent persons to be convicted wrongly (Davis, Leo, & Williams, 2014). This is because innocent people are highly likely to waive their Miranda rights while the real criminals are adept in using rules to avoid any interrogations.