Eyewitness Testimony

2018 ◽  
pp. 31-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth F. Loftus
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Expert Testimony ◽  
Human Memory ◽  
Eyewitness Testimony ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Repressed Memories ◽  
Witness Memory

This chapter describes the author’s studies of human memory and eyewitness testimony that drew her into a long involvement with the legal system. The history describes efforts on the part of lawyers and eyewitness scientists to introduce expert testimony about witness memory into legal cases. The author discusses the contamination of accurate memories due to misinformation after the fact, such as witnesses talking to one another or erroneous media, and the role of repressed memories in court cases. The chapter includes a brief description of the rocky path from early resistance to ultimate appreciation of the science and its usefulness in legal cases.

scholarly journals Eyewitness Science and the Legal System

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth F. Loftus
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Human Memory ◽  
Eyewitness Testimony ◽  
Success Story ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Potential Problems ◽  
With Memory

For more than four decades, I have been studying the malleable nature of human memory. For most of this time period, I have also played a role as a consultant or expert in many legal cases that hinged on eyewitness testimony or other memory evidence. Here I describe some of the science that reveals how error prone eyewitnesses can be. Getting the legal field to recognize potential problems with memory evidence, and taking steps to solve those problems, has been a continuing struggle. It is a success story worth sharing.

Eyewitness Descriptions and Identifications of Familiar Perpetrators

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-54
Author(s):  
Joanna Pozzulo
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Eyewitness Identification ◽  
Eyewitness Testimony ◽  
Identification Accuracy ◽  
Innocent Suspect

This chapter discusses the role of an eyewitness, the importance of eyewitness testimony, and the different identification decisions that an eyewitness can make when the police have apprehended the guilty suspect or an innocent suspect of the crime in question. The chapter then discusses eyewitness recall of strangers, highlighting recent research focusing on an eyewitnesses’ ability to recall details about a perpetrator who is familiar to them. Furthermore, this chapter provides a description of other situations within the legal system in which familiarity recall may be required (e.g., the recall of familiar and unfamiliar events). The chapter also discusses familiarity in relation to how it may impact eyewitness identification accuracy by describing recent research that has utilized an eyewitness paradigm.

Recovered memories: Unearthing the past in court

1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth F. Loftus ◽  
Laura A. Rosenwald
Keyword(s):  
Expert Testimony ◽  
Human Memory ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Recovered Memories ◽  
Repressed Memory ◽  
Repressed Memories ◽  
The Past

In the past seven years, hundreds of lawsuits based upon repressed memories have forced courts to deal with a new set of issues, including the reliability of such memories, what kind of expert testimony would help judges and juries evaluate the memories, and whether professionals who help retrieve repressed memories should be held liable when therapy goes awry. Research has demonstrated the fallibility of human memory. Experts can help illuminate the controversy over memory in general and repressed memory in particular, as well as the external factors that may distort resurfaced memories.

The Occupational Therapist as an Expert Analyst on the Cost of Future Health Care in Legal Cases

1994 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 136-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Harris ◽  
Alison Henry ◽  
Nancy Green ◽  
Joanne Dodson
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Occupational Therapist ◽  
Future Health ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Future Health Care ◽  
Future Care ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Care Costs

The purpose of this paper is to explain the legal criteria the court follows when awarding monies to an injured individual for Cost of Future Care. It also describes the role of, and procedures used by, the occupational therapist in analyzing future care costs for the court's consideration. It describes the benefits to the client, the legal system and society arising from the occupational therapist's expertise, and the role the therapist plays in obtaining information related to the client's case from other professionals.

Teaching about Repressed Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse and Eyewitness Testimony

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 250-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie A. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Childhood Sexual Abuse ◽  
Practical Interest ◽  
Human Memory ◽  
Eyewitness Testimony ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Course Evaluations ◽  
Graduate Course ◽  
Repressed Memories ◽  
Student Thought

Victims and witnesses to crimes frequently must remember information about what they saw. What they remember can dramatically affect the outcome of cases and the lives of the victims, the accused, and family members. This article describes an under-graduate course that examines human memory and its role in two applied legal issues: repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse and eyewitness testimony. Because these issues involve applying memory to real-world situations, and because they directly and indirectly affect many people, courses dealing with these topics hold intrinsic and practical interest for students. Student thought pieces, class discussions, and course evaluations indicate that students enjoyed and benefited from a course on these applied and polemic issues.

Expert Testimony in the Social Sciences: A Historical Overview of Contemporary Issues

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-142
Author(s):  
Lawrence Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Expert Testimony ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Way

In this brief reconsideration of the roles experts may play in legal proceedings - and concentrating on the role of social scientists in particular - it may, therefore, be useful to revisit some very familiar issues and to address some seemingly peripheral matters that are nevertheless quite central to the way we think about the involvement of experts in legal cases. For purposes of introducing some of these issues it may be helpful to focus on three interrelated concerns: the ascertaining of expert qualifications, the role of evidentiary procedure, and the extra-judicial use of social information.

Alternatives to Traditional Adversary Methods of Presenting Scientific Expertise in the Legal System

Daedalus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 147 (4) ◽  
pp. 135-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Gertner ◽  
Joseph Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Expert Testimony ◽  
Expert Witness ◽  
Codes Of Conduct ◽  
Asking Questions ◽  
Scientific Expertise

The twin goals of any litigation are to arrive at a correct outcome and provide the parties with a sense that they were treated justly, even if they do not prevail. Adversarial proceedings are often perceived to be superior to inquisitorial proceedings with respect to the second goal but inferior with respect to the first. This is especially the case when proceedings involve expert testimony. In this essay, we discuss several relatively minor changes to typical adversarial processes that offer the potential of improving trial accuracy without disrupting the overall structure of adversarial proceedings. These changes include 1) alterations to the organization of the trial, including concurrent expert testimony; 2) alterations to the role of the jury, including taking notes, asking questions, and receiving written expert reports; and 3) formal expert witness codes of conduct designed to better arm experts to resist the adversarial pressures that lead to biased testimony.

“One of the most spectacular lawsuits ever launched”: Abdülhamid's heirs, his lands and the land case in Palestine, 1908-1950

2010 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 127-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Kark ◽  
Seth J. Frantzman
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Legal System ◽  
General Context ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Land Settlement ◽  
Private Lands ◽  
Legal Precedent ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
State Of Israel

AbstractThis paper is a sequel to Fischel and Kark's study on the private lands owned by Sultan Abdülhamid II (1842-1918, ruled 1876-1909) in Palestine and analyzes their fate after his forced abdication. In particular, we examine the court cases that arose around these lands, cases which were initiated by his heirs after 1920. For 28 years the heirs, led by his eldest son, Mohammad Selim and his daughter Amina Namika, approached half a dozen governments in the Middle East and Europe to regain the properties they claimed. The appeals represented a test of the British colonial legal system as well as issues of land settlement and the role of foreign courts in interpreting Turkish and Ottoman law. We furthermore examine the disposition of the sultan's lands from his abdication in 1909 to the last attempts by his heirs to recover them from the State of Israel in 1950, the general context of his lands in the Middle East as a whole, and the legal precedent set by the Mandatory Palestine court cases.

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