The prospect of an eyewitness’s testimony can often be enough to convince those facing criminal charges that the game is up. Whether they committed the crime or not, they may figure that convincing a jury the eyewitness is lying is unrealistic, and their best option is to take the plea deal on offer.
Yet the truth is that eyewitness testimony is not as reliable as a prosecutor might make out. In fact, a lot of eyewitnesses are completely wrong about what they remember seeing. Why is this? Are they lying on purpose, or is there some other explanation?
There are cases of eyewitnesses who have lied intentionally. Yet these are the minority. The majority of eyewitnesses believe that what they are saying is true.
People don’t realize their memory can change
What an eyewitness remembers is not necessarily what they saw. It’s their latest version of that particular moment in time, and there may have been many variations. These shifts in recall of an incident can occur for various reasons, often due to outside influence, whether intentional or unintentional.
For example, they might overhear a conversation between two officers who mention that the suspect had a gun in his hand or was wearing a t-shirt with a specific logo. The eyewitness may unwittingly absorb this information and repeat some of it later.
If the interviewing officer asks if they can remember much about the suspect’s clothing, they might know it was a black t-shirt, but might now say it was a black Adidas t-shirt. They haven’t tried to lie, it’s just the information they overheard has mixed in with their memory of events, forming a new version of events they believe to be true. Similarly, if an officer asks whether the suspect was armed, they might now say they think they may have had a gun but aren’t sure, whereas until that point, a gun was never part of their memory.
Understanding more about eyewitness unreliability should prompt anyone facing charges based on someone’s testimony to consider challenging it.