Today in class we were talking about eyewitness testimonies and how we need to keep them from being contaminated. I found this very interesting along with the various ways our memories work. So, I looked up eyewitness testimonies and the effects of contamination and came upon this video.
I found this video of an experiment at Brooklyn Law School. This experiment is a blind experiment, the perpetrator and teacher are in on the experiment, the students on the other hand do not know anything.
The video starts out with a Professor teaching in front of her students on a normal day of class, so they thought. Everything is going well until a guy walks into the room and steals the Professors' purse. Once this happens all of the students become witnesses to this experimental crime. The Professor plants evidence by stating that the perpetrator had a weird nose, and she could not remember anything else.
The next day, 29 students were interviewed to see if anyone could help with identifying the perpetrator. All of the students said something about the perpetrator having a weird looking nose while everything else varies.
So, contamination of an eyewitness testimony can happen within seconds. These seconds can make an innocent person into a criminal and in real life there are people serving time in prison because of from this contamination.
When you watch this video just ask yourself these questions:
1. What impact did the professor have on her students?
2. How credible are eyewitness testimonies after all?
3. How does this experiment relate to real life crimes?
4. What can we do to decrease the impact of false information on eyewitnesses?
Click here to watch the video
I found this video of an experiment at Brooklyn Law School. This experiment is a blind experiment, the perpetrator and teacher are in on the experiment, the students on the other hand do not know anything.
The video starts out with a Professor teaching in front of her students on a normal day of class, so they thought. Everything is going well until a guy walks into the room and steals the Professors' purse. Once this happens all of the students become witnesses to this experimental crime. The Professor plants evidence by stating that the perpetrator had a weird nose, and she could not remember anything else.
The next day, 29 students were interviewed to see if anyone could help with identifying the perpetrator. All of the students said something about the perpetrator having a weird looking nose while everything else varies.
So, contamination of an eyewitness testimony can happen within seconds. These seconds can make an innocent person into a criminal and in real life there are people serving time in prison because of from this contamination.
When you watch this video just ask yourself these questions:
1. What impact did the professor have on her students?
2. How credible are eyewitness testimonies after all?
3. How does this experiment relate to real life crimes?
4. What can we do to decrease the impact of false information on eyewitnesses?
Click here to watch the video
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