key question: EWT

Question 1

what is the question?

Answer 1

should EWT be trusted by the criminal justice system?

Question 1

what is EWT?

Answer 1

• it refers to information given by a witness who sees a crime occur.
• very important part of the common law system.
• juries tend to trust EWT but this might be misplaced because there are lots of examples of inaccurate EWT leading to miscarriages of justice.

Question 2

why is it important in society?

Answer 2

• inaccurate EWT which results in a wrongful conviction is problem for wider society because it means: the guilty person not caught, free to commit again, and the innocent goes to prison.

Question 3

Jenifer and Ronald cotton study

Answer 3

Ronald cotton spent 11 years in prison convicted of rape based on the inaccurate EWT of the victim. Bobby poole remained free to commit

Question 4

what is the innocence project

Answer 4

committed to exonerating wrongly convicted people through the use of DNA testing.

• it is estimated that in the US 2.3 -5% of all prisoners are innocent.
• the percentage of wrongful convictions that are down to EWT is 72%.

Question 5

what concepts and theories from cog approach can be applied to help undsertand and resolve this issue?

RECONSTRUCTIVE

Answer 5

Reconstructive memory:
- according to Bartletts theory of reconstructive memory, memories are actively reconstructed using schema. Bartlett called this ‘effort after meaning’. schema are learnt from past experiences.
-the problem with this is that we may use our schema to fill in gaps in our memories. therefore if our schema for a bank robber is that they would wear a hoodie when an eyewitness reconstructs their memory of a robber, they may recall them wearing one because they cannot remember what they were actually wearing.
-however this theory has been criticised for over emphasising the inaccuracies in memory.

Question 6

EPISODIC MEMORY

Answer 6

• According to Tulving’s theory memories of events such as witnessing crime, would be stored in episodic memory, like a mental diary.
• episodic memories are dependent on context and more prone to distortion than semantic memories.
• if they are prone to distortion, thus means EWT may be inaccurate. however the theory also suggests that it may be more accurate if the right retrieval cues are present. therefore, the accuracy of EWT should be better if police recreate the scene of the crime. such as witness being taken to crime scene.

Question 7

MSM

Answer 7

• according to MSM, information only enters STM if the information is attended to.
• info can only enter LTM via STM, so if an eyewitness is not paying attention, their recall is likely to be inaccurate.
• some witness to a crime may not be paying attention
• according to this theory, information can only enter LTM if it is rehearsed. however the problem with the MSM is that some information does not seem to require rehearsal- these are known as flashbulb memories. being a witness to a crime is likely to be momentous and highly significant, so may qualify as a flashbulb memory.