Witness

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Witness

A witness is someone who has firsthand knowledge about a crime

Crime

Societies define Crime as the breach of one or more rules or laws for which some Government or force may ultimately prescribe a punishment.The word crime originates from the Latin crimen , from the Latin root cerno and Greek ????? = "I judge"....
or dramatic event through their sense

Sense

Senses are the physiological methods of perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology , and philosophy of perception....
s (e.g. seeing, hearing, smelling, touching), and can help certify important considerations to the crime or event. A witness who has seen the event firsthand is known as an "eye-witness". Witnesses are often called before a court

Court

A court is a body, often a government institution, with the authority to adjudication legal disputes and dispense private law, criminal justice, or administrative law justice in accordance with rules of law....
of law to testify in trials.

A subpoena

Subpoena

A subpoena is commonly defined as a written command to a person to testify before a court or be punished.More accurately, a subpoena is the conditional threat of punishment made by a governmental authority....
commands a person to appear.

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Encyclopedia

A witness is someone who has firsthand knowledge about a crime

Crime

Sense

Court

Subpoena

Jurisdiction

In law, jurisdiction is the practical authority granted to a formally constituted legal body or to a political leader to deal with and make pronouncements on legal matters and, by implication, to administer justice within a defined area of responsibility....
s it is compulsory to comply, to take an oath

Oath

An oath is either a promise or a statement of fact calling upon something or someone that the oath maker considers sacred, usually God, as a witness to the binding nature of the promise or the truth of the statement of fact....
, and tell the truth, under penalty of perjury

Perjury

Category:Limited geographic scopeCategory:USA-centricPerjury, also known as forswearing, is the willful act of swearing a false oath or Affirmation in law to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to a judicial proceeding....
. It is used to compel the testimony

Testimony

In law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter....
of witnesses in a trial

Trial (law)

In law, a trial is an event in which parties come together to a dispute present information in a formal setting, usually a court, before a judge, jury, or other designated finder of fact, in order to achieve a resolution to their dispute....
. Usually it can be issued by a judge

Judge

A judge, or arbiter of justice, is a lead official who presides over a court of law,which is operated by the local, state, and/or federal government....
or by the lawyer

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an Attorney at law, counsel or solicitor; a person licensed to practice fraud." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain stability, and deliver justice....
representing the plaintiff

Plaintiff

A plaintiff , also known as a claimant or complainant, is the party who initiates a lawsuit before a court. By doing so, the plaintiff seeks a legal remedy, and if successful, the court will issue judgment in favor of the plaintiff and make the appropriate court order ....
or the defendant

Defendant

A defendant or defender is any party who is required to answer the complaint of a plaintiff or pursuer in a civil lawsuit before a court, or any party who has been formally indictment or accused of violating a crime statute....
in a civil trial or by the prosecutor or the defense attorney in a criminal proceeding.

A witness who specializes in an area of study relevant to the crime is called an expert witness

Expert witness

An expert witness or professional witness is a witness, who by virtue of education, training, skill, or experience, is believed to have knowledge in a particular subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may officially rely upon the witness's specialized opinion about an evidence or fact issue within the scope...
. Scientists and doctors are often called to give expert witness testimony.

Eyewitness testimony

Eyewitness testimony is generally presumed to be better than circumstantial evidence

Circumstantial evidence

Circumstantial evidence is a collection of facts that, when considered together, can be used to inference a conclusion about something unknown. Circumstantial evidence is usually a theory, supported by a significant quantity of corroborating evidence....
. Studies have shown, however, that individual, separate witness testimony is often flawed, and parts of it can be meaningless. This can occur because of a person's faulty observation and recollection, because of a person's bias, or because the witness is lying. If several people witness a crime it is probative to look for similarities in their collective descriptions to substantiate the facts of an event, keeping in mind the contrasts of individual descriptions.

One study involved an experiment in which subjects acted as jurors in a criminal case. Jurors heard a description of a robbery-murder, then a prosecution argument, then an argument for the defense. Some jurors heard only circumstantial evidence, others heard from a clerk who claimed to identify the defendant. In the first case, 18% percent found the defendant guilty, but in the second, 72% found the defendant guilty (Loftus 1988). Lineups, where the eyewitness picks out a suspect from a group of people in the police station, are often grossly suggestive, and give the false impression that the witness remembered the suspect. In another study, students watched a staged crime. An hour later they looked through photos. A week later they were asked to pick the suspect out of lineups. 8% of the people in the lineups were mistakenly identified as criminals. 20% of the innocent people whose photographs were included were mistakenly identified (University of Nebraska 1977). Weapon focus

Weapon focus

Weapon focus is a factor affecting the reliability of Eyewitness Identification. Weapon focus signifies a witness to a crime diverting his or her attention to the weapon the perpetrator is holding, thus leaving less attention for other details in the scene and leading to memory impairments later for those other details....
effects in which the presence of a weapon impairs memory

Memory

In psychology, memory is an organism's mental ability to store, retain and recall information. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of mnemonic....
for surrounding details is also an issue.

Another study looked at sixty-five cases of "erroneous criminal convictions of innocent people." In 45% of the cases, eyewitness mistakes were responsible (Borchard p. 367).

The formal study of eyewitness memory

Eyewitness memory

Eyewitness memory refers to the episodic memory of specific, often Eyewitness memory, which is relied upon in the process of eyewitness identification, is be and easily distorted information obtained event....
is usually undertaken within the broader category of cognitive processes

Cognition

Cognition is the science term for "the process of thought."Its usage varies in different ways in accord with different disciplines: For example, in psychology and cognitive science it refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological Functionalism s....
— the different ways in which we make sense of the world around us. We do this by employing the mental skills at our disposal such as thinking, perception, memory, awareness, reasoning and judgment. Although cognitive processes can only be inferred and cannot be seen directly, they all have very important practical implications within a legal context.

If one were to accept that the way we think, perceive, reason and judge is not always perfect, then it becomes easier to understand why cognitive processes and the factors influencing these processes are studied by psychologists in matters of law; not least because of the grave implications that this imperfection can have within the criminal justice system.

The study of witness memory has dominated this realm of investigation and for a very good reason because as Huff and Rattner note: the single most important factor contributing to wrongful conviction is eyewitness misidentification.

Witness

Eyewitness testimony

See also

External links