PSYC3016 lectures - Lecture notes 1-10 PDF

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Week 1 Lecture 1 out of 3 Eyewitness testimony 3 lectures that will cover coursework So after these you can start on coursework early Lecture 1: Eyewitness testimony, how different it is now, Lecture 2: how eyewitness testimony can affect the jury in a case. Lecture 3: looking at the issue of children as witnesses. One of the key things for eyewitness testimony is what Haber and Haber (2000) found, that people tend to believe that our memories are like video recorders that faithfully record things. So if you witness a crime, you have a play by play of it all in your head, and you just need to play it back. Sometimes we remember things and we are confident about what we have remembered, but research says that what we remember may not always be accurate. Memories, unlike videotapes or photo copies, are personally constructed. And that is why two people can experience the same event but recall it differently (Myers,2001). Our brain will try to make sense of what it sees and if there are bits that don’t follow, then the brain will often fill in the gaps and interpret accordingly, so actually it is reconstructive. So it is not playing a video, it is reconstructed. Different people will reconstruct in different ways. 1923 Wigmore: If ever there is devised a psychological test for the evaluation of witnesses, the law will run to meet it. 1923 related to today: despite advances in psychology, there is still no way to evaluate eye witnesses and if there was, the law would be thrilled about that. This is a big debate. James Hanratty: He was accused of the A6 murder in 1961. - Murder of Michael Gregson and rape and shooting of Valerie Storey - James Hanratty was identified by Storey - He was then convicted and hanged at Bedford prison in 1962 - Controversial trial centered on identification evidence - Body exhumed in 2001 Why is this case important today? - Controversial trial because the only evidence against Hanratty was the eyewitness testimony that Valerie storey gave. - He was convicted on the basis of her identification, even tho it was dark, she was shot and probably traumatised so her memory could be questioned. - Key point: one man was hanged on the basis of one eye witnesses identification - This was one of the first cases where someone was sentenced to death on the basis of eye witness alone. This kicked off a new era in terms of research and evidence.

In 1976 the government issued the Devlin report and that was to look at how safe it was to look at identification evidence to convict people. Could this happen today (the case of Hanratty): Although we have more research into eyewitness testimony today, we’re not necessarily better off Scheck et al., (2000): He set up the innocence project, and what he did was that once DNA had been established, he looked at cases where people had been put in prison before DNA came in, on the basis of eyewitness testimonies alone. In 2000, 80 people had been released from prison following the fact that they had been mistakenly pointed out by eyewitnesses. Some of them had been sentenced to death and they had served an average of 8 years before getting released. Innocent project 2010 What they discovered was that when you looked at the DNA exonerations, mistaken identity was a major source of miscarriages of justice. In 2010 there had been more than 250 DNA exonerations and there are more to come. Eyewitness testimony is the principle cause of wrongful convictions in the US The fact is that DNA can only be used to exonerate a small fraction of those that are imprisoned on the basis of eyewitness testimony and nearly all exonerated cases involve sexual assault. DNA can only be used to exonerate people in those cases where DNA has been collected and kept. Where there has been no DNA collected in a case, it will be very difficult to look into an exoneration. Garrett (2011): if you look at reasons for misidentification, they’re quite interesting. Garrett also looked at the race of the people being exonerated and the type of cases they were exonerated in and the type of cases tended to be rape or murder or rape and murder. Only 2% were other cases. This is american research and when you look at the racial distribution, it is mostly black and some hispanic/latinos, there are big issues in the american justification system. Reasons for misidentification (GArrett, 2011): discrepancy for description (100 cases out of 161), Did not see face (15/161), Initial uncertainty (34/161), Initial non-ID (64/161), Hypnotised (5/161), Suggestive remarks (44/161), Suggestive lineup (55/161), Show-up (mugshots)(53/161). The Steven-Avery case - Penny Beernst was taken from one spot to the woods where she was attacked. - Penny Beernsten identified Steven Avery as her attacker, - Using 13 hairs recovered from Mrs Bernsten after rape, a state crime lab found that the DNA taken from these hairs did not match samples taken from Steven Avery, the DNA they found did match a man anmed Gregory Allen who was serving a 60 years sentence on a rape conviction in Brown county, Wisconsin. - This meant that all that time before, she had identified the wrong man. - What was found is that there were some similarities in appearance between Steven Avery and Gregory Allen, looking at the mugshots, you can see how a mistake might have been made.

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Steven Avery was exonerated in 2003, after serving 18 years of a 32 year sentence. But in 2005 he was charged witht he murder of Teresa Halbach, and was convicted in 2007. Teresa was a journalist that had gone to interview him. This is a very contrversial case and he is still appealing that he was only convicted because people remembered him from the previous miscarriage of justice.

Ronald Cotton and Bobby Pool: - Ronald cotton was convicted and spent time in prison for attacking a young woman, based on her eyewitness testimony. He served quite a few years, and whilst he was in prison another person came in (Bobby Pool) who a lot of people confused with Cotton. - Turned out that ronald cotton was innocent, he realised that there was a similarity between him and bobby pool, so he put in an appeal but didn’t get anywhere. He wanted a retrial - Jennifer thompson was angry because she was sure in her head that it was ronald cotton that had attacked her and so did not agree with retrial, she was certain that it was him. However when the DNA was examined, it turned out it was Bobby Pool. Troy Davis: - Executed in 2011, davis was convicted in 1991 of killing MCphail, an off-duty police officer, but always maintained that he was innocent. - Mcphail was sot dead in july 1989 as he tried to help a homeless man who was being attacked in a burger king car park, - Prosecutors says davis was beating the man with a gun after demanding a beer from him. - No gunwas found and no DNA evidence, conclusively linked Davis to the murder. ACcording to CBS news: - Witnesses placed Davis at the crime scene, and identified him as the shooter, but several of them have recanted their accounts, and some jurors have said they've changed their minds about his guilt, others have claimed that a man who was with Davis that night has told people he actually shot the officer. - There has been talks about how this is inexcusable and that no one should be executed on such inconclusive eye witness testimonies. According to Amnesty international: - The case against Davis consisted entirely of eye witness testomnies, that were inconsistend even at the time of the trial - All but two of the states non-police witnesses from the trial recanted or contradicted their testimony. - Many of these witnesses have sworn affidavits where they mention that they were coerced and forced by the police to testify against Davis One of the witnesses that have not resigned their testimony is sylvester red coles- the principle alternative suspect, according to the defense, against whom there is new evidence pointing him as the gunman. Nine individuals signed affidavits implicating Sylvester coles. Going back to Hanratty and its significance to today: its important to note that this is not just something historical, it still happens today and it is a big problem. EYEWITNESS MEMORY

Memory is one of the most complicated bits of psychology that we have What are the three stages of memory? 1. Acquisition 2. Storage 3. Retrieval Our memory can be contaminated or lost at any point of these stages. These three stages tie in good with what is happening when we witness a crime. 1. Witness → acquisition 2. Delay → storage 3. Statement → retrieval What you will need to cover for coursework: - What research tells us - How the evidence is used - The use of ‘experts’ Historically Munsterberg (1908) ‘ On the witness stand’ → one of the first people to look at eyewitness testimony Aim: to turn the attention of serious men to an absolutely neglected field, which demands the full attention of the social community This is the beginning of the law-psychology debate. System and estimator variables: - Estimator variables are those that affect the accuracy of an eyewitness, but cannot be controlled by the criminal justice system - Estimator variables tend to be in the acquisition phase of memory, such as lighting conditions, distance, arousal, the presence of weapons and so on. - System variables also affect the accuracy of an eyewitness, but the criminal justice system can control those variables. - System variables include the way in which the police question a witness and the procedures for asking a witness to identify a perpetrator in an identification parade. Factors influencing reliability Kapardis 2003 :35 Variables influencing EWT in 4 categories 1. Event characteristics 2. Witness characteristics 3. Perpetrator variables 4. Interrogational variables

Turnbull 1976 Jury should examine the circumstances of the witnesses identifications including:

Amount of time the culprit was observed Distance of witness from perpetrator Visibility: how good was the light? Obstruction: whether the observation was impeded Known: whether the accused had been seen before Any reason to remember Time elapsed before identification Error: any material discrepancy in the description of the suspects appearance Estimator variables: characteristics of the event - Opportunity to observe - Exposure time, lighting and distance - Nature of the incident Opportunity to observe - Neil vs Biggers case (1972) - US supreme court accepted opportunity to observe as a criterion for judging eyewtiness reliability - Clifford & Richards (1977) - Laszlo Virag: arrested and convicted for a crime, one of the biggest issues was that the person who identified Virag was actually someone who spent some time with him at a bar, he did not know that he had committed offence but the person who committed the offence sat at the bar with the witness, on this occasion the opportunity to observe did not work, it was a misidentification, in fairness the actual culprit looked very much like Virag. Logic: the longer you have to see someone, the bigger the chances are that you will be accurate. Duration and distance - Duration: identification accuracy rates for both young and old participants were significantly higher under the long exposure condition. - Memon, Hope and Bull (2003) - Long distances are associated with poor recognition memory - Lampein, Erikson, Moore & Hittson (2014) Confidence and duration - Memon, Hope and Bull (2003) - In the short exposure condition, witnesses who had made a correct identification of the target were more confident than incorrect witnesses. In the long exposure condition, the confidence ratings of accurate and inaccurate witnesses did not differ. - Logic: after a very short exposure, if you are confident you are more likely to be accurate but after a long exposure, confidence isn't a very good way to determine accuracy. Lighting Kuehn (1974) - Less complete statements at twilight than day or night Yarmey (1986) - Accuracy for recall and recognition better in day and start of twilight than end of twilight or

night Nyman et al., (2019) - Positive correlation between low lighting levels, conditions and inaccurate IDs -

Logic: if the lighting is poor, you tend to get more inaccurate identifications and this is recent research

Nature of the incident - What would you remember better, a violent attack or a shoplifting incident? - Do serious crimes lead to poorer memory performance? - Think about your own thoughts vs general public - Clifford & Scott (1978) violent vs nonviolent → people remember nonviolent crimes more accurately -

CLifford and Holin (1981) Nature and complexity → the more people that were involved, the less likely people were to be accurate.

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Loftus & Burns (1982) → they showed participants two videos, one violent and one non violent and they found that people remembered the non-violent crime better

Seriousness of crime - Leippe et al., (1978) the effect of the value of stolen item on memory for the theft Deffenbacher (1983) the Yerkes-Dodson Law - If we wanna look at the importance of the seriousness of the crime and the type of the crime it is important to look at is stress and performance or arousal and performance. - Basic law: you need to have a little bit of stress or arousal to have any decent performance, so a little bit of stress probably makes you do better at something. But the key thing here is the bell shaped curve, there is a bit where you need a certain amount of stress and arousal to make you alert, checking things, remembering things, and working at your optimal level. However, if you have too much arousal or stress level, you will perform less well. - The application of this law to EWT is that what happens is that at a point , if someone takes a bag of sweets of the self you probably wont remember, but if it is something more arousing (a more serious crime) you will most likely take notes and remember things, but if it gets to a point where it is actually really stressful or really arousing, then actually in the more serious crimes where people have been shot or something horrible like that, then chances are that you might not be as good of a witness. Clifford and Hollin (1981) - Conclude that high arousal experienced during a violent incident causes a narrowing of factors to which the witness attends - Logic: if you have a higher arousal it makes you narrow the factors that you can attend to. Deffenbacher, Bornstein, Penrod & McGorty (2004) - A meta analytic review of the effects of high stress on eyewitness memory - There was considerable support for the hypothesis that high levels of stress negatively impact eyewitness memory If someone pointed a gun at you, would you remember their face?

Weapon focus (loftus et al.,1987) - The idea that if someone actually points a gun at you, you tend to focus more on the thing that is pointed at you ie gun, rather than the face of the individual holding the gun. - You focus on the threat and there has been instances where people have been able to describe the weapon very well but not the person who held it. Mitchell and Livosky (2011) - Reliably poorer memory for details of the perpetrators appearance was demonstrated by participants who viewed a crime scene with: a gun, but also an unexpected novel (a piece of celery) - Logic: something that pulls your attention, will most likely affect your ability as a witness Mansour and Hamilton (2018) - Examined the role of exposure duration and scene complexity of the weapons focus effect (WFE) - Memory for the mock crime was affected more by a weapon than an unusual but threatening object. - Threat reduced correct identifications when the event was short but not long - WFE for target-absent lineup decisions, but only for the accomplice lineup, not the objectwielding perpetrators lineup. - Logic: actually, having a weapon there affected peoples decisions if the target wasn’t on the ID parade, but only for the accomplice lineup not for the object-wiedling perpetrators lineup (ie the person holding the gun towards you) Retention: what happens between seeing the crime happen and then giving your testimony afterwards, this is the retention period. - Does memory deteriorate over time? - How important is the length of delay between witnessing an event and giving a statement? - Do events that occur during the retention interval effect memory? - Memory does deteriorate: we need to remember how memory works, once you’ve given a version of something, that then becomes your new memory, so we have a complication between the source memory (what you already saw) and the memory that you have once you’ve given a statement. The effect of delay on that may be quite strong. - Does events that occur during the retention interval, affect the accuracy of the memory? Discussion - Alper et al., (1976) concluded that group consensus descriptions are more complete but have more errors of commission (ie reporting things or events that were not there or did not happen) - Warnick and Saunders (1980) group discussion prior to the delivery of testimony is probably an advantageous procedure. - Usually if there has been a crime, there are usually people around you and the first thing that happens is that you discuss what happened amongst one another. The way people have responded to discussion has changed over time and we certainly wouldn't agree with what Alper et al (1976) said. - Hollin and Clifford (1983) came to the opposite conclusion, ie group discussion prior to giving a statement is a disadvantageous procedure.

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Loftus and Greene (1990) and Lacy and Stark (2013) → witnesses can incorporate post event information

Co-witness effect - Skagerberg and Wright (2008) - 88% cases more than one witness (mean 4) - In 60% cases witnesses reported discussing detail of the crime with at least one other witness. Thorley (2018) ● ● ● ● ●

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Most crimes have multiple eyewitnesses. Police typically interview co-witnesses separately. In time-sensitive investigations, having co-witnesses collaboratively recall a crime could potentially expedite evidence accumulation. BUT Past research shows that collaborative group members often have conflicting retrieval strategies that disrupt each other, degrading overall recall. Solution - aligning group members’ retrieval strategies with category clustering recall (CCR), where information is recalled from a series of forensically relevant categories (e.g., recalling the protagonists’ appearance, then actions). There is therefore a speed-recall completeness trade-off when collaborative groups recall crimes. CCR is superior to free recall in groups

Estimator Variables – characteristics of the witness Age - Does the age of an eyewitness have any effect on the accuracy of EWT? ● ● ● ● ●

Aizpurua, Garcia-Bajos, & Migueles (2009) the older adults remembered less information than the younger adults aging is an important factor in false memories for events Some argue that children, adolescents and adults perform equally well if interviewed appropriately. (e.g. Jack, Leov and Zajac, 2014)

Race Does it make a difference to eyewitness accuracy if the perpetrator and eyewitness are different races? Own-race-bias (ORB) ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Meissner and Brigham (2001) Chiroro, Tredoux, Radaelli & Meissner (2008) People are better at recognizing faces of their own race than faces of other racial groups. Jackiw, Arbuthnot & Pfeifer (2008) Higher rates of false identifications with cross-race ID Houtihan, Benjamin & Liu (2012) The Cross-Race Effect (CRE) is the well-replicated finding. New concern - when eliciting or evaluating eyewitness identification: people are less accurate in judging whether they will or will not recognize a face when that face is of a different race than they are. Alcohol

❏ Impairs attention and concentration ❏ Tzambaziz & Stough (2000)

❏ Disrupts the consolidation of memories ❏ Soderlund, Parker, Schwartz & Tulving (2005) Some argue that: ● Alcohol has little effect on EW accuracy e.g. La Rooy, Nicol & Terry (2013) Flowe et al (2017) though there are criticisms of the research in relation to amount of alcohol. ●...