Critical Part of Criminal Justice (Term Paper Sample)

Forensic psychology is a critical part of criminal justice. Forensic psychology professionals often assess whether defendannt in a case from a psychological perspective to determine whether defendants have the psychological fabric to commit a given crime. Besides, these professionals analyze all factors resets were wrongfully or rightfully prosecuted. This paper evaluates the role of eyewitness identification in the wrongful prosecution of the defendant Brenton Butler. These evaluation will be supported by empirical evidence. As such, it argues that inaccurate eyewitness identification majorly contributed to the wrongful prosecution of Brenton Butler in the documentary Murder on a Sunday morning.

A key evidence that supports this proposition is Mr. Stephens changing descriptions of the assailant. At first, he described the assailant to the police as a thin black male who wore shorts and a t-shirt that had no logo. However, during the hearing, he says that the assailant could have changed shirts in a bid to support his argument that Butler was the assailant. Besides, the evident racial bias on the part of detectives that caused them to casually handle the case also pokes holes into the prosecution’s case.
Noteworthy, Mr. Stephens misidentification could have been due to multiple reasons. First, at the time of identification, he was psychologically traumatized as he had just witnessed the gruesome murder of his wife. As such, he could have pinned it on anyone as long as they looked anything like the assailant he had seen. Besides, Mr. Stephens’s age could have been a contributing factor since our cognitive abilities generally depreciate with age. The delay in time and individual biases such as the overall perception of young black males could also have contributed to the inaccuracy of eye witness identification
According to a study conducted by West & Stone (2013) age significantly affects the accuracy of eyewitness identification. Specifically the research focused on better understanding the impact of misinformation on eyewitnesses who were either younger adults or older adults. This research question was motivated by the suggestion of past studies that age could significantly affect the accuracy of eye witness identification. Besides, when investigators or law enforcers offer misleading information to suspects the accuracy of their memory is often compromised.
The procedure involved 99 undergraduates and 77 community-dwelling older adults the researchers gave participants a story to read and memorise. This acted as a filler task. Half of them under the intentional condition segment were then warned about an imminent interruption and we told to recall the event. This was followed by the administration of a demographic questionnaire and memory tests. The results of the experiment supported existing study that suggested that age had a significant influence on the accuracy of the memory of eye witnesses. Younger adults generally performed better than older adults in all tests under intentional and incidental conditions. A key weakness of this experiment was the use of a premeditated events as opposed to a naturalistic event. Wes & Stone (2013) contend that the results could have been affected by experimenter bias in terms of how the event was designed to unfold.
Results of this experiment reveal that the age of Mr. Stephens who was the husband of the murder victim could have significantly affected the accuracy of the eyewitness identification process. Noteworthy, Mr. Stephens was visibly older than his wife who was 65 years old at the time she was murdered.
Studies also suggest that distance plays a major role in the accuracy of eye witness identification. Lindsay et al., (2008) conducted extensive research on this. Their research question was how variations in distance affect the reports of eye witnesses and identification accuracy. Consequently, they evaluated the accuracy of witnesses’ judgement of the distance between themselves and the perpetrators of a given crime. The researchers then examined the implications of this distance on the accuracy of eye witness descriptions, identification test accuracy and choosing tendencies.
In the experiment, the researchers randomly approached 1,321 participants during normal day-to-day activities, and asked them to observe a target person from varying distances for ten seconds. It is worth noting that the participants were not informed in advance that they would identify the target. These participants were then placed under delayed memory, immediate memory and perception conditions and asked to briefly describe the target person. In the perception and immediate memory conditions, participants were asked questions on site while in the delayed memory condition, an e-mail was sent to participants. They were also asked to estimate the distance between them and the target after which they were taken to a 6-person target present and target absent line up to identify the target person.
The findings of the results suggested that although distance did not impact identification choosing rates, it affected the accuracy of identifications. Particularly the research concluded that investigators did not have to rely on the principle of a 15m viewing distance to determine the accuracy of eye witness identifications and any other information provided by the eyewitness. Besides, there were substantial errors in the estimation of the distance between the witness and the target. A key strength of this experiment was its use of varying memory conditions as time also significantly impacts the accuracy of eye witness identification.
These findings provide insights into the contribution of distance and time in the wrongful identification and prosecution of Brenton Butler. During the hearing of the case by the jury, Mr. Stephens was unable to correctly estimate the distance between them and the assailant. Besides, he offers a wrong description of the assailant. Time could have also played a role in the wrongful identification of Butler by Mr. Stephens as evidenced by the varying results from the various groups under various memory conditions. Noteworthy, immediate memory condition participants performed better at identification than those under perception and delayed memory conditions. From his account, Mr. Stephens most likely belonged to the perception group hence the inaccuracy.