COM 122.

10
HARSH MENON

EYE-SPY

Life isn’t perfect. Neither are we. We strive to be perfect and

achieve excellence, but the truth is that even if some of us may get

close, a majority of us won’t get there. The truth hurts, but the basic

underlying fact is that human beings are flawed.

This truth finds applications in many places. One such place is

the empire of crime. Even if every criminal in the world were arrested,

we’d never be able to stop crimes from happening. A law-abiding

citizen may not be a threat to the society today, but there’s no telling

what’s going to happen tomorrow. He might be the same for the rest of

his life or might go on to commit a murder after having discovered his

wife cheating on him. The fact that crime exists in the first place shows

that we are far from perfect.

The world of crime is ugly, but the judicial system used to

bring justice to society and make criminals pay is not up to the mark.

There are flaws in the very basis of it and one of those flaws is almost-

blind belief in eye-witness identification. Eyewitness identification of a

criminal suspect can be one of the most influential factors in a criminal

investigation. Two consequences can result from an eyewitness

account that is accepted by an investigation, and subsequently a court

of law. First, the eyewitness's information could lead to the removal

from society of a dangerous offender. Secondly, “a false identification

could possibly lead to the incarceration of an innocent individual while

the guilty party remains as a risk to the community” (Decaire 1).

For the purpose of explanation, let’s consider a scenario. Place

yourself in the position of one of the members of the jury. You are in a

courtroom and a trial is in progress. A person is being tried for

homicide and the public prosecutor brings up an eye-witness. The eye-

witness is supposed to identify whom he saw commit the crime. The

eye-witness thinks for a while and then points at the defendant

implicating him.

As a member of the jury, you tend to give the eye-witness more

credit and his account seems to have more value than the others. This

is a serious flaw, because in truth the eye-witness is no better than any

other witness.

Eyewitness identification is a process involving recognition and

recall. Human memory is susceptible to change of information. An

example of this is the misinformation effect in which “a person who

witnesses an event gets his recollections all distorted when exposed to

new and misleading information about the event later”(Lohn). This is

caused primarily when we talk to others about the event, when we are

suggestively interrogated or when we read or view media coverage

about the event. Sometimes we confuse our imagination and reality

which is a phenomenon called “Imagination Inflation”(Lohn). This can

be a source of error too.

As far as the recognition goes, people tend to have a risky

response bias, which means that they guess a lot when making

identifications. Our recognition abilities are poor. “Psychological studies

indicate that only about thirty percent of what we observe is

retrievable” (Coon).

Often the interviewer getting information from the witness

affects the witness. Put yourself in the place of the public prosecutor

now and let’s say you had a bias against the defendant. You would try

to mould the eyewitness’ account by playing on the fact that the

eyewitness is not too sure about what he saw. For a true account, the

witness should be allowed to tell their story and not what you want

them to say.

Besides external factors, there are internal factors which

influence the witness too. The witness’ prior knowledge, experience

and feeling should be taken into account as well as whether they have
any physical impairments or have undergone any trauma. Witnesses

can also be influenced by what others say and as time between the

event and the present increases, people tend to fill in information and

the truth doesn’t remain the truth any longer. “Adults who were

exposed to a stranger for forty-five seconds were able to provide fifty-

five percent correct recognitions after a week” (Shepherd).

The most important question to be asked is how can we stop this

form happening. We can’t. What we can do is decrease the error to as

low as possible. As I said before, human perfection is a far off dream

and its not possible to get to perfection just before every trial. Some of

the methods are given below:

 Show Up Procedure

In this method, the witness is shown one suspect and asked if he

is the one. The suspect in reality is a placebo. If the witness says

“yes”, then we know that the witness is biased and less weight is

given to the witness’ testimony.

 Blank Lineup Control

 In this condition the witness is exposed to a police lineup that

does not included the suspect. This technique is presumed to

identify an eyewitness who has either a poor memory of the

perpetrator or who would identify an individual in the lineup

based on stereotypes or what they believe the investigator is

looking for. While it is deceptive, the blank-lineup control is a

very powerful a tool for identification of a witnesses’ response

biases. An additional encouraging note is that the eyewitnesses’

ability to identify the suspect in a second lineup is not affected to

a significant extent by the blank lineup.

 Mock Witness Control

In this case, individuals who are not eyewitnesses to an event

are exposed to a normal lineup containing the suspect. This is a

technique that can be quite effective in creating a valid and fair

lineup. If a mock witness is able to identify the suspect at a

higher rate, then there is a chance that a few things may be

occurring. First, it is possible that the suspect stands out from the

rest of the lineup because of the fulfillment of a certain

stereotype of the criminal associated with this type of crime. It

has actually been shown that a mock witness is able to identify

the offender at a rate significantly higher then chance through a

very basic description of the offender and the crime (like what
 people would get from hearing other people talk about a crime)

(Doob 1973). It is also possible that the mock witnesses are able

to detect the investigators hypothesis regarding who the

offender is. If an eyewitness, who has no memory of the event

and has been given no description of the culprit, is able to

identify the offender at a rate greater than chance, then the

investigators hypothesis is being transposed onto the witness.

The result is an identification based not on memory, but rather

on the witnesses’ deductions.

Even though we have a few methods to decrease error, much of

the efficacy of our methods depends on how we use them and that too

must remain unbiased. Unfortunately, that seems like to much to ask

for. The only way we can actually understand the importance and

imperfection of eyewitness identification is if we were innocent and

were identified by someone else as a murderer.

WORKS CITED
Coon, Dennis. Essentials of Psychology: Ninth Edition. Toronto:

Thomson-Wadworth, 2003.

Decaire, Michael. “The Psychology of Police Lineups.” Suite101.com:

Real People Helping Real People. 16 Aug. 2003. 25 Nov. 2003

<http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/forensic_psychology/34107

>.

Doob, A. N and H. Kirshenbaum. “Bias in police lineups - Partial

remembering.” Journal of Police Science and Administration 1

(1973): 287-293.

Lohn, Susan. “False Memories.” Introduction to Psychology. Embry-

Riddle Aeronautical University. King Engineering and Technology

Centre, Prescott. 4 November 2003.

Shepherd, J.W. Identification after long delays. Chichester, England:

Wiley, 1983.