The Intersection

                                                                                                              Decades of forensic psychology research has intersected with law and in many instances drove right past each other. Research that could prove very advantageous in a courtroom is being ignored throughout the United States. Topics such as the shortfalls of eyewitness testimony are being overlooked in the courtroom. The need to find the perpetrator of a crime is so great that police officers, victims and their families, the media, and members of society, prefer to lock someone up instead of no one at all. It comforts us knowing that the criminal is behind bars and not out roaming the streets. Even years of research (which is readily available to lawyers, judges, politicians, police officers, policy makers, and the general public) get silenced when it comes to a human beings need for justice. Emotions run so high that it clouds our better judgment and objectivity.

The human element that forensic psychology brings to the courtroom needs to be seen in a more serious light. Experts are not conducting research simply for their own entertainment. They are not spending endless hours designing and leading research experiments so that the data could sit somewhere and collect dust.  A couple of years ago, the National Research Council (NRC) organized a committee of psychologists and criminologists to report specifically on the topic of eyewitness testimony. As they poured through the data collected in the last 30 years, the scientific evidence was overwhelming. They released their report in October, 2014 and below are just a few of their science-based recommendations regarding police procedures:

·        Implement double-blind lineups

·        Take confidence statements

·        Electronically record identification sessions

Establishing such protocol may lead to fewer identifications which may be why officers and courtrooms are hesitant to enforce them, but it’s still no excuse. The recommendations are not burdensome and enforcement agencies should get on board.

Getting locked up for a crime you did not commit sounds like someone else’s problem – but it’s not. Laws need to change as science and technology evolve. At this moment, people in prisons throughout the country are begging for science to intervene so that they can prove their innocence. Policy makers throughout police agencies need to update their procedures to accommodate the new research. Lawyers and judges need to be mindful of the research and change how cases are prosecuted. Politicians and legislators should engage with the public on such issues and consider updating state and federal laws. Meanwhile, psychologists need to communicate the science behind eyewitness testimony to the jury and continue to shed light on the topic through more rigorous research.  

Only time will tell whether their recommendations will be taken seriously. Fortunately, even if the recommendations aren’t implemented, activists will continue working to exonerate the innocent. They will use whatever scientific tools available to them to get their points across. I imagine that at some point, legislatures and police precincts will have to heed the advice of experts. I am hopeful that eventually forensic psychology and law will make an effort to head in the same direction – but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Question for you:

Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus states that one of the best ways to improve the police identification process is to use a computer system to generate the lineup without any interference from law enforcement. This could improve the procedure but it is costly. Essentially the computer would auto populate the lineup using a photo database. What are your thoughts about this costly but effective future recommendation?


Special thank you to all the readers who have commented on this topic throughout the life cycle of this blog. Please see below for a collection of your wonderful feedback!!

Amanda Kelsheimer: Firstly, I think it is because the field of Psychology, a very legitimate and relevant science, has been and still is today this day, treated like a pseudo-science by many. I don't think people respect Psychology enough and thus tend to dismiss psychologically proven arguments and theories that can be lifesaving. Second, I think that our judicial system has yet to change because we as humans want to believe that we do not make these kinds of drastic mistakes. We want to believe that we know what we see, that we are accurate and that our brain does not play tricks on us. These two unfortunate reasons are probably why the system has yet to change.

 

Karine Hensley: I think people hold on to the notion that eyewitnesses are factual and trustworthy because they are so eager to catch the perpetrator. People also underestimate how priming and emotions can negatively affect the validity of an eyewitness. Lastly, the pressure put on the eyewitness may lead them to confabulate facts so they can provide answers.

 

Crystal: I still think eyewitness accounts are very damaging and should not be used in court or in a line up. Police can also alter the memories of what the person looked like, helping the problem with wrongful convictions. Therapy can also trigger false memories and could cause a person to make false allegations, like child abuse or molestation.

 

John Fadoju: As much as I hate to hear and see innocent people go to jail for what they’ve been wrongly accused of, the question is what other methods are there especially in situations where there are no security cameras to review, finger prints or DNA to go on.

 

Tesfay: Another problem is, the quality of ‎defense. Most of these people are not too rich to afford high profile lawyers to match the state’s ‎prosecutors to fight and prove their innocence

 

Andi Robbins: When I was looking at the lineup I didn't think he was there, but there was no option for that so I just chose one. I can see how people in real life might think they also have to from the people in a line up. They have probably assumed that the police have done their jobs correctly and have included the guilty party.

 

Kevin C: Eyewitness testimony, as you suggested, is an extremely dangerous concept and it shocks me how this is even admissible in a court of law.

 

Brandon Gum: As for those that are eventually proven innocent, they have most likely wasted the best part of their lives in prison. How will a person find a job and start a life after they have been set back 20 years or so? There is no way that someone could possibly live a positive life after these situations.

 

Wendy Morales: I also think that in general every American should have some kind of knowledge of the reality of our correction & law system so that if selected to be part of a jury one is conscience of misidentification vs. evidence, in order to make ones cast: guilty vs. not guilty.

 

Ayesha Qadri: This seems like a simple issue to comprehend but why is it so difficult for our system to understand and take try to change it.

 

Cristina D.: It was really interesting to read about Hugo Munsterberg. He definitely accomplished a lot during his lifetime and made some great contribution for society despite his apparent reputation.

 

Carlos Zavala: Eye witness testimony in my opinion could be used as an aid but not sole evidence to put someone away.

Distorted Memory

Several weeks ago I was sitting in my car in front of the brightly lit lamp post located at the entrance of my house. It was around midnight and I was getting ready to pull an all-night study session. As I was getting out my car, I noticed a dog running on the sidewalk and eventually stop beside my house. As I stepped outside my vehicle, the dog (which appeared to be an American pit-bull terrier) gazed directly at me for what seemed like more than five seconds. Moments after we made eye contact, he quickly ran towards the woods and out of sight. This is how I remember the dog’s appearance from my first recollection.

 

The next day I learned from a neighbor that animal control was actively searching for the dog I saw that evening. Through our discussion, she told me that the dog in question was an American bulldog with a red collar around his neck. Soon the appearance of the American pit-bull terrier I thought I witnessed that night started changing in my mind. I still remember getting out of the car and making eye contact with a dog, but which dog I saw and how it looked seemed more unclear. This is how I remember the dog after my discussion with my neighbor.

I was confident that I saw what I saw that night but I was completely wrong. What’s even more interesting is that as my neighbor started describing the dog and its breed, my memory of the dog started to change based on this new information. Now when I remember the event, I see the image of an American bulldog with a red collar around his neck.

I provide this real-life example to show how malleable human memory really is and how easily it can be altered. Many people are under the false assumption that memory is much like a video camera that accurately captures events as they take place. Research has proven time and time again that human memory is not reliable.

Published last year, researchers conducted a study involving 861 U.S. soldiers to learn more about the impact of misinformation (false or incorrect info) on memory. In this high stress environment, soldiers who were enrolled in Survival School were divided into several groups:

Misinfo Questionnaire group =372

Misinfo Photo group = 85

Misinfo Video group = 246

Control group = 158

During the training, each group was put through high stress interrogation sessions (among many other things) and given a questionnaire at the end of the training to assess their memory. Below is a table taken directly from the research that captures some of the questions asked.

Table 1 Assessing misinformation: non-leading and leading questions.

Non leading: “Did your interrogator wear glasses? If so, what type?”

Leading: “Did your interrogator remove his glasses before interrogating you? Please describe the glasses worn by your interrogator.”

Non leading: “Was there a telephone in the interrogation booth? If so, what color was it?”

Leading: “Did your interrogator allow you to make a phone call? Describe the telephone in the interrogation room.”

Non leading: “Please describe the uniform and rank of your interrogator.” “If you do not remember, please indicate that you do not remember.”

Leading: “If your prisoner number was an odd number, please answer this question, if not please skip this one and answer the next question.”

Non leading: “Did your interrogator carry or have a weapon?” “If so, please describe it?”

Leading: “When the interrogator wearing the weapon interrupted your interrogator [note: a fictitious event] and argued with him, what did they argue about?”

“Describe the weapon worn by your interrogator.”

 During the interrogation sessions, participants were required to focus directly at the interrogator at all times. Despite this rule, results of the study showed that 53% (84/158) of the control group gave a false positive id of their interrogator. It was also noted that participants did better with identifying race, height, build, and gender but did poorly on assessing features unique to an individual such as eye color or facial hair. You can check out the other findings here.

This study along with many like it try and point out how easily memory can be distorted. If false memories can be implanted easily by suggestive questioning and post event information, and memory without misinformation still leads to false id’s, then this type of research has implications for police investigative methods, psychologists, and the courtroom. Whether you’re discussing “repressed” memories with a therapist, recollecting childhood memories with your friends and family, or identifying a suspect from a photo or physical lineup, I hope you think twice before accepting your memory as the absolute truth.

 

Citation:

Morgan III, C.A., Southwick, S., Steffian, G., Hazlett, G. A., & Loftus, E. F. (2013).

     Misinformation can influence memory for recently experienced, highly stressful

     events.International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 36(1), 11-17.

     http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlp.2012.11.002  

 

Question for you:

On a scale of 1-10 with 10 indicating the greatest amount of confidence

How would you rate your recollection of what you were doing the morning of September 11, 2001?

In other words, how confident are you in your memory of a past event?  

Father of Forensic Psychology

Retrieved here

Long before Scott Fraser discussed the shortcomings of eyewitness testimonies during his TED Talks presentation, there existed a scholar named Hugo Munsterberg who is known to many as the “Father of Forensic Psychology”. Born in Danzig, Germany on June 1, 1863, Hugo Munsterberg was a student of Willhelm Wundt (1832-1920) who first developed the scientific methodology which later paved the way for Hugo to conduct his numerous research experiments. Hugo was a brilliant German-American Harvard psychologist with so many interests and contributions to the field of psychology that all of his influence simply cannot be covered in a 500 word blog.

Hugo Munsterberg absolutely loved experimental psychology and even had a makeshift laboratory in his own house. His passion for research never ceased and his work is cited in countless journals. Many Industrial\Organizational psychology students also consider him to be one of the founders of their branch of applied psychology.

For clinical psychology, Munsterberg wrote Psychotherapy (1909) which outlined the discussion of mind and body. For Industrial psychology, he showcased the application of psychology in the workplace by publishing Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913). As stated by Munsterberg, the aim of this book was to “sketch the outlines of a new science which is to intermediate between the modern laboratory psychology and the problems of economics”.

However, my favorite of his contributions is related to the branch of Forensic Psychology and the topic of this blog. His work, titled On the Witness Stand (1908) discussed in length the problems surrounding eyewitness testimony and false confessions. To support his argument, he would oftentimes display a white cardboard decorated in black dots for five seconds and ask his students to jot down how many dots they saw. Even though the students knew in advance what they were supposed to be looking for prior to the start of the brief task, some students still counted 7 to 8 times more than other students. This type of simple experiment acknowledged what he always suspected regarding the differences that exist between human beings in their assessment of an occurrence and how individual perception and memory should not be overlooked when considering the accuracy of a testimony. He even described his own personal experience with a home burglary to outline the significant role his own biases and experience played in his recollection of the event. It has also been suggested that Munsterberg had reason to believe that a relationship existed between blood pressure and the truthfulness of a person’s testimony. His theory on blood pressure was brought to fruition by one of his own students and would later become one of the major recorded measurements in lie detector tests.

Unfortunately, he had a controversy-ridden career. In addition to holding very negative views on women, his choice to remain loyal to Germany during World War I cost him dearly. So much so that people accused him of being a German spy and hated him profoundly. Although he vehemently denied these claims, it was too late because his reputation and his legacy took a huge hit. His untimely death occurred on December 16, 1916, when he had massive cerebral hemorrhage while giving a lecture at Radcliffe College. He died at the lecture platform.

Some people overlook this scholar when discussing the pioneers of psychology and others briefly make mention of his name. I say his legacy still lives on and I commend and applaud him for taking on highly debatable topics such as eyewitness testimony. This area of forensic psychology is still controversial and I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it was for him to discuss this matter openly over 100 years ago.  

Question for you: Since Hugo brought up the issue of eyewitness testimony over 100 years ago, why do you think our judicial system, members of the jury, and some of the general public still hold on tightly to the notion that eyewitness accounts are completely factual and trustworthy?

The Power of the Eyewitness

 

"I don't have any knowledge about what happened at the scene of the crime.''

Ohio Dept. of Rehabilitation and Correction.

Ricky Jackson [Photograph]. Retrieved here

          That was what Eddie Vernon said after recanting his eyewitness testimony that sent an innocent man to prison for 39 years. You read it correctly – 39 years! Until a few months ago, Ricky Jackson, was locked up in prison for a murder he did not commit. How did he get convicted for such a crime? Based on the eyewitness testimony of a 12 year old boy who admitted years later that he lied to everyone – including the prosecutors, the judge, the police, and the jury. What he said he saw on May 19, 1975 built the entire case against Jackson, who is now 57. Vernon was eager to please the police and only learned about the details of the murder by what they told him. "All the information was fed to me,” he now says. There was no physical evidence in this case. No DNA to exonerate this man. It took a witness to recant his story and correct a horrific wrong, in order to free a man he wrongly accused of murder decades ago.

[Derrick Hamilton]. Retrieved  here

Take the case of Derrick Hamilton, who was cited in the New York Daily News on November 15, 2014. Imprisoned for 20 years due to a faulty eyewitness testimony, he spent the prime of his life behind bars. He always maintained his innocence and blamed famous NY detective, Louis Scarcella, of setting him up. Whether Scarcella set him up or not, the prosecutors were quick to prosecute and the jury was quick to believe the testimony of a single witness.

[Bobby Poole (the man who actually committed the crime) and Ronald Cotton].

Retrieved here

Even witnesses who don’t lie and sincerely believe they have identified the correct person, such as the famous case of Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson, play a huge part in swaying the jury towards a guilty verdict. In Ronald’s case, Jennifer truly believed she had correctly identified the man who raped her and that was a powerful enough testimony to send Ronald to prison. Without the DNA evidence that would later exonerate him, Ronald would still be sitting in jail today.

Iwabu, T.[Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton].

Retrieved here

All three stories are unique in their own way but what they share in common happens to also be the deciding factor that put these innocent people in prison in the first place – that being the testimony of an eyewitness. More times than not, all a jury needs to hear is that someone witnessed the crime take place and it’s enough to render a guilty verdict.

For this blog post, I simply provided stories whereby eyewitness testimony was a deciding factor for members of a jury. I made no mention of how easily influenced the human memory is or the lengthy research surrounding such testimonies. I even opted to exclude how police can improve their eyewitness procedures to obtain better results. All these areas will be discussed in later blog posts. Indeed, the jury should care about human memory, research, and police procedures in obtaining the direct evidence, and maybe we will one day head in that direction, but for now, let’s just start from the foundation, which happens to be the power of the eyewitness in swaying a jury of their peers.

So now to you...If you were a member of a jury and there was no substantial physical evidence linking the defendant to the crime, would the eyewitness testimony be enough for you to consider the person guilty?  

 

Take the very quick Eyewitness Test here 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Misidentification

 

 

You are walking to your car after attending your evening class and suddenly out of nowhere a person appears and physically assaults you. You make brief eye contact with the individual but the suspect scurries off with your wallet in their possession. Stunned at what just happened – you call the police and file an incident report. Several days later, you are asked to come down to the police station to identify the suspect from a police lineup. You ID the individual and the person is handcuffed and sent to jail. Easy enough, right? No – not really. Few months later, just when you think you are putting the whole thing behind you, the police officer notifies you and states that a camera installed near the location captured the whole event on tape and the person you identified was not the person who committed the crime against you.   

 

Now let’s look at it from another angle.  

 

You are driving to your new job after dropping off your daughter at daycare. After working several minimum wage positions, you are so happy that you have finally secured employment in a job that pays a decent salary. As you drive, you think wonderful thoughts about the future of your family and how this new job is going to change your current living situation. Before you know it, police sirens behind you damper the mood and you pull over. Darn- you didn’t come to a complete stop at the stop sign. While being asked for your license and registration, the police officer begins to question you about an assault and robbery incident that happened a few days ago at the college campus. You insist that you have no idea what the officer is referring to but he asks that you come by the police station for questioning. So you cooperate. At the police station, you are identified by the victim as the suspect who committed the crime. You insist on your innocence and provide an alibi but because you have a criminal record, you are held without bail till your trial begins. You are placed in a 6 by 8 feet jail cell and lose your job and your apartment. Your daughter moves in with her grandmother who is unable to provide for her or take her to daycare. You sit in jail hopelessly for months agonizing over how you lost everything. The video tape surfaces and the officers release you with no more than a simple apology. Back in society, you are forced to start from scratch. Damage done.

What I have outlined above is a simulated scenario whereby an eyewitness testimony sent an innocent person to jail and damaged his life. I wish I could say that these sorts of mistakes are uncommon, but that’s just not the case. Misidentification is the “single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in 72% of convictions overturned through DNA testing” (Innocence Project, 2014). With numbers such as this, how reliable are eyewitness testimonies anyway? How well does our memory actually serve us? What type of ways can we counteract this problem? With this blog, I will shed light on all these questions as I detail the problems surrounding eyewitness testimonies with the hope that if you are ever on a jury or even the victim/witness of a crime, that you take into account science in the courtroom.