How Accurate Are Eyewitness Accounts in the Prosecution of Criminals? (Essay Sample)

Name: Instructor: Course: Date: How Accurate Are Eyewitness Accounts in the Prosecution of Criminals? Legally, eyewitness testimonies are understood as a person’s firsthand account or review of an event that experienced or witnessed. Albright (para. 3) describes an eyewitness as a victim or bystander present at the crime scene or operation under review. In contrast, the testimony entails a unique description of what transpired offered by the person. Although its role is complicated, eyewitness testimony often plays an integral role in the criminal justice system (CJS). When a legal group offers an eyewitness that could confidently determine a suspect or confirm what or who they saw commit an offense, jurors are often forced to believe them (Garrett et al. 556). Still, eyewitness testimonies have a major flaw because they are not always accurate, and if a false witness is offered, it could result in unjust imprisonment of some individuals. While eyewitnesses help jurors to convict criminals, a false testimony could result in unjust convictions of individuals in society today. How Accurate Are Eyewitness Accounts in the Prosecution of Criminals? Although witness identification always plays an essential role in enhancing the investigation or prosecutions of crimes, eyewitnesses make errors that have fatal consequences. Hurley (para. 2) reports that determination of criminal suspect using eyewitness to the offense comprises a unique type of testimonial evidence that could be utilized for forensic reasons. This statement shows that eyewitnesses could offer essential information useful in providing facts for criminal investigation and prosecution of a suspect. One of the devastating consequences of eye witness usage entails the wrongful conviction of innocent individuals in society (Bohannon para. 3). “…to date, nearly 350 people, many serving lengthy prison sentences, have been exonerated because their DNA was discovered to be incompatible with evidence long ago collected from the crime scene” (Gilbert 7758). The provided quote shows several people who might be adversely impacted by wrongful convictions caused by a false eyewitness. Thus, there is a need to review how eyewitness testimonials are utilized in the US CJS to limit the harm it could inflict on innocent individuals. Eyewitnesses are, on many occasions, used by law enforcement officers as the first source of data concerning a crime. According to Morin (para. 7), "eyewitness testimony frequently serves as the main lead in an investigation. It can lead to arrests, fuel the interrogation of suspects, and direct the creation of a lineup.” This statement underpins the extent to which eyewitnesses could positively impact criminal investigation, including helping police find viable suspects for the crime and other vital data to prosecute a certain offender. Although jurors tend to rely on eyewitnesses, some of these testimonies might not be as precise as other forms of forensic evidence like DNA (Morin para. 10). Morin (para 12) offers an excellent account of Jennifer Thompson, who was raped in her home but managed to escape and sought help from the neighbors. Another lady from the same area was also sexually harassed, making the police believe that one criminal was responsible for both attacks. Thompson helped with the sketching of the suspect resulting in the identification of Ronald Cotton as the prime suspect. Ronald was wrongly convicted of these crimes and given a life sentence (Jones para. 1). Still, after ten years, he was freed through DNA testing that proved he was not the offender. Albright (para. 4) claims that regardless of the volume of evidence available showing eyewitness errors, this approach is largely believed by jurors or judges today. Thus, there is a need to review the exact situations in which eyewitness account could be applied and others that require extraordinary measures to manage. Wise (para. 5) claims that it is essential to assess the accuracy of eyewitness testimony via scientific guidelines that provide room for assessing the fairness of the eyewitness inspections. The first step is to ascertain if the police could conduct the eyewitness interviews to acquire an optimum amount of data without contaminating the eyewitness's memory of the crime or artificially raise their confidence. OP RA (para. 2) further explains that it is imperative to ascertain if the identification measures utilized and assess the eyewitness factors could enhance or demean the testimonial account. This is often done by showing that law enforcement officers and prosecutors must be keen to ensure the stability of the measure used to identify the culprit. Furthermore, the eyewitness evidence could be made increasingly unreliable through its ability to manipulate quickly by showing high confidence levels in the court, making the jurors make uninformed choices about the suspect (Albright para. 5). The above statement is based on the fact that eyewitnesses could be trained into provided certain evidence before the jury resulting in unfair incarcerations. Thus, one solution to this issue is by enhancing the juror's sensitivity to witness identification and the testimony these individuals offer in court. The malleable status of human memory or visual perception constitutes eyewitness testimony from one of the highly unreliable sources of evidence. Pearson et al. (857) argue that in the past, courts took little notice of the challenges associated with eyewitness identification until the rise of DNA evidence began to be used to free wrongly imprisoned defendants. Lineups are often meant to a unique test of memory and entail several suspects increases the chance that a defendant might be wrongly identified. According to a survey by the Constitutions Rights Foundation (para. 3), over 52 % of wrongful convictions are realized from mistaken eyewitness accounts, considering jurors massively dependent on their testimony in making vital choices. The human brain can hold on to a certain peak memory (Pearson et al. 858). This implies that the neural recollection process often takes a unique significance during the interrogation process relies on the experience of inspectors, forensic experts, lawyers, and many other relevant officials. The survey was done by Wise (para. 2) describes one of the many ways a margin of error is created in eyewitness evidence using computer technology by presenting many images to the person rather than viewing a small set of faces picked by the investigators. It is worth understanding that many wrongful suspect identifications are always made unintended, and the jury or judges could detect a small number of them. Thus, having an increasingly observant court proceeding could play a major role in identifying issues presented by the eyewitness evidence. Morin (para. 5) claims that the sensitivity of the jurors to the specified eyewitness elements can be improved because it can mobilize varied witnessing and undertake the documentation process. Due to its complexities in the application, jurors cannot understand whether the input instructions help the jurors evaluate eyewitness factors. For instance, a criminal case brings about many more speculations and evidence that contrast with the existing actions about the same issue, thereby posing a great challenge to understand and evaluate the evidence from the eyewitness to direct action (Morin para. 4). In many cases, people present limited and mixed profs to the jurors, making it hard to analyze the eyewitness evidence. Therefore, it is important to understand that eyewitness instructions are useful for the jurors despite it not affecting the output of the judgment in any way, thereby leading to skeptics. The information received from an eyewitness has to be given close attention to reducing the errors that come with it, such as mistaken identity as human memory is not a perfect store of information and events instead of video recordings that will always maintain their original form. For the video evidence, it will be easy to evaluate the evidence as to the human mind, which may face some deletion of some important information to be used as evidence (Pearson et al. 857). Comparative evaluation of this information helps identify whether the evidence is accurate and reliable to work with. Eyewitness information can be evaluated using various systems evolution variables such as lineup type, weapon presence, and cross-race. The eyewitness confidence also played a good role in the evaluation process as it is claimed people holding some truth will always be confident about it (Wise para. 3). But the confidence of the eyewitness is not necessarily an accurate measure to evaluate the information. Therefore, it is important to support any decision from the evaluation before taking any conclusive decision. One potential solution to the problem of wrongful convictions caused by inaccurate eyewitness evidence is verifying the accuracy of the information through sc...