Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Crime & Federalism

Criminal Law

: Crime & Federalism

Eyewitness Identification Remain Unreliable

What is the leading cause of wrongful convictions?  It's an easy answer: Unreliable eyewitness identification.  Most of us think that most eyewitness testimony is reliable.  Wanna bet your life on it?Associate Professor Dr Kimberley Wade from the Department of Psychology led an experiment to see whether exposure to fabricated footage of an event could induce individuals to accuse another person of doing something they never did.In the study, published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, Dr Wade found that almost 50% of people shown fake footage of an event they witnessed first hand were prepared to believe the video version rather than what they actually saw.Not surprising but still demoralizing.  Details here.

Full post as published by Crime & Federalism on September 16, 2009 (boomark / email).