Eyewitness Testimony

Eyewitness Testimony #lawyer #law #court #attorney #personalinjurylawyer

[Renteks-]

I remember seeing a Vsauce video where he demonstrated how easy it was to create implanted memories on a focus group, and it really made me realize just how unreliable witness testimony would be, especially if they've been coached, either intentionally or otherwise, into a certain narrative.

[joed]

Some people would be shocked to learn how often people are convicted of serious crimes based on the testimony of one eye witness and no real corroboration.

[justwhistlinpixie]

When I was a teller we had it drilled into us to NOT discuss the appearance of the robber in the aftermath. Everyone writes their own description on a form to avoid mixing up their own memories.

[elijahpark]

I don't remember how the exact quote goes or where it's from, but it's something along the lines of "There is nothing more unreliable as the human memory; what happened a second ago is sometimes like it never happened at all".

[HaniiPuppy]

From Scotland: Corroboration is actually one of the basic requisites to be able to bring a case to court here. If you can't corroborate evidence, there's no case.

[poseidon]

We learned about this in psychology class. The imperfection of memory is incredible

[Wrathlon]

I was in a car accident recently. Fairly minor, I drove off the road, got out, exchanged details.

Next thing I know 2 fire trucks, an ambulance and a cop car show up because someone called in "Totalled car, someone trapped inside and its on fire". People are fucking insane.

[IrukaShinkai]

I remember my dad telling me a story about him arguing with the police over my brother not being able to become a cop simply because he was colorblind. The argument was that if a witness called in and said, 'He was wearing a red jacket, ' everyone would look for a red jacket. My dad simply asked, 'What if the witness is colorblind?' He never really got a clear answer.

Witness testimonies should NOT be considered evidence—only a backup to real evidence.

[mattd]

Former LEO here. If you ever ask 5 people what happened, you'll get at least 8 different versions of events.

[Nick-mzjh]

Yep. I was in a crash when i was a kid, it happened right outside of a coffee/smoothie place and one of the workers brought me a smoothie because i was freaking out (I'd never been in a crash before and i was like 8). I could swear, even to this day, that his nametag said "Steve-o smoothie-o" (this place makes people have some weird ass nametags lmao). Even now, if i close my eyes and think about it, i can see the nametag plain as day. Well, it turns out his nametag actually said "Name-o (not gonna say the guy's actual name, but it wasn't steve) supreme-o".

TLDR: adrenaline can make you get details wrong and SWEAR they were right, including the smoothie guy's name

[bearsharkp]

I've interviewed people as the witness to the last person to see a missing person. 9 times we found the missing person deceased and 9 times there were things about clothing, backpack color, hair length that ended up not being accurate

[M_M_ODonnell]

We don't _recall_ memories, we _reconstruct_ them -- which means getting details wrong is the rule, not the exception, especially once our expectations and what we've been told later about events get into the mix.

[PeacefulChaoticGoddess]

Yep. I've had an instance once where I remembered a shirt being blue but it was RED.

[Tea-KW]

Honestly without physical proof it's so hard to go off of witness testimony. A few weeks back my partner accidentally started moving when the light was red, and suddenly stopped.
The thing is, my partner says they stopped because they heard a car honk and it made them realize. From my perspective we started moving, jerked to a stop, and THEN i heard a car horn. We didnt argue on the semantics because fortunately nobody got hurt (we moved maybe a foot at most before stopping), but it's bizarre knowing that in the exact same situation we somehow processed things in a different order. I remember the seatbelt jerking on me before i heard a loud horn, but my partner says the horn is what got them to stop moving. Its not like we talked about it weeks later and couldn't remember, it was IMMEDIATELY after it happened that we had different versions of what just happened.

[daemn]

A friend and I witnessed a bank robbery from across the street when were about 12-13yrs old. We wandered over to the bank afterward to see if our description of robbers and their car would be useful, but as various people came out of the bank and communed in small groups, we overheard some of their descriptions and *every* one was different. Tall/short/clothing/car make/mode/color.. etc.. all different from each other, and different from what we thought we'd seen. So we just left, realizing we could do nothing but add to the noise, and I never forgot how crappy eye witnesses are, myself included.

[noxproductions]

If "eyewitness testimony" is the only evidence a prosecutor has and I am the juror, then I will not convict. The fallible recollection of a human memory is, in my opinio, not enough to strip the freedom of a person and cage them.

[achanwahn]

I was burgled in college while working a gas station. Everything happened so fast and my brain legit shut down and blocked out a whole chunk. Then when trying to memorize the getaway car, I inverted the colors of their fuzy dice and flipped the last two numbers of the plate in my initial call to dispatch. When I wrote my statement, I got it correct. Crazy

[MrRelic]

Neil DeGrasse Tyson was called for Jury Duty. He said based on everything he knows about humans, eyewitness testimony alone is not enough to convict. The judge asked "Is there anyone else that would require more than 1 witness." Another juror said "That's not what he said." Tyson restrained himself from saying "Your Honor, you were eyewitness to what I said 20 seconds ago, and got it wrong."

[NopeUghUghAbsolutelyNot]

The game Telephone tells us how reliable eyewitness testimony can be

[sssdddkkksss]

The only time I've been robbed, me and my mate the next day had different recollections about the age and race of perpetrators.